The Case for Space Billionaires

Statistically, Americans love space. Anecdotally, they hate it when billionaires go there. Majorities of all parties, genders, and geographies tell pollsters they support U.S. missions to the moon and Mars, and three-quarters say that the effort to land the first men on the moon was worth it. But last year, when the big three spacefaring billionaires—Virgin's Richard Branson, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Tesla's Elon Musk—managed successful manned missions in rapid succession, Twitter (and Congress) were bursting with rage.

Every corner of the internet was filled with the same hot takes. Sen. Bernie...