Get These Rich People Off the Moon
Texas start-up Intuitive Machines has achieved the first moon landing by a private firm. It’s dumping rich people’s detritus on the lunar surface — a grim sign of how the superrich plan to plant their flag beyond our own planet.
Main engine control computer designer for Intuitive Machines Dan Harrison cheers with fellow employees moments after they became the first commercial company to softly land on the Moon on February 22, 2024, in Houston, Texas. (Raquel Natalicchio / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Amid tears of joy at their Houston control room, the Texas start-up Intuitive Machines successfully landed on the moon. Their uncrewed lander, known as Odysseus, hitched a ride on a SpaceX rocket last week, touching down near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. After many failed attempts by various private outfits, Intuitive Machines is the first private company to plant a free-market flag on the moon.
In the weeks leading up to launch, the company’s shares rocketed more than 300 percent. “We’ve never witnessed a publicly traded company go through a moon landing attempt” a financial analyst told CNBC. “My family took the day off from school,” one Twitter/X user tweeted. “We are going to remember where we were and who we were with on this day in history.”
As well as lots of expensive thing-a-me-scopes, the company dropped off Jeff Koon’s prized marbles. The collection known as Moon Phases are a set of 125 one-inch balls representing the eight phases of the moon in different colors and are associated with various dead rich people. “But how can I buy an expensive marble when it’s on the moon?,” I hear you cry. Well, each of Koon’s marbles corresponds to an non-fungible token (NFT) — a crypto art token sold as an entry on a blockchain. You don’t actually ever get to have one.
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