Poor Jeff Bezos has come under fire for sending crews of the rich and famous into space for brief rides aboard his Blue Origin rockets. It’s an elitist and a waste of money business, critics say. I say, give Bezos a break.

What is happening now with the rich and their rockets reflects the early days of the airline industry, an industry that now enables millions of average people to travel fast and far every day. The process begins with a few intrepid souls, like the early pilots and astronauts, risking their lives as systems and machines are perfected. Then, those who are able to afford the high upfront cost of a ticket get started as the industry grows. Eventually, almost everyone gets on board to travel to Omaha to visit their grandmother or go to the moon for spring break.

So Bezos doesn’t need to apologize for spending some of his vast fortune on big toys that fly beyond the stratosphere. Nonetheless, if he really wants to show how humanity can benefit from his travels beyond Earth, he should offer one-way flights to select individuals – and by that I mean particularly obnoxious and dangerous public figures. Send them to a distant space station where these permanently missing can live far from the rest of us.

There are many worthy candidates for this program, of course, but my selection for the first one-sided team would be Fox News blabbermouth Tucker Carlson; the Republican Senate leader and human roadblock Mitch McConnell; House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who has to go before he’s about to hold the speaker’s hammer; and, of course, the avatar of America’s worst impulses, Donald Trump.

Say goodbye to those four, and the odds would be dramatically improved for successfully dealing with climate change, the pandemic, voting rights, poverty, hunger, and a host of other challenges.

So, Mr. Bezos, what do you say? Want to help save the planet and save democracy? Start distributing those one-way tickets.

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