For all our sakes, let’s hope Jeff Bezos’s space trip is just a midlife crisis | Gaby Hinsliff

The flight by the Amazon boss could mark the unchecked commercial exploitation of the ultimate virgin environment

One very small step for mankind, one giant ego trip for Jeff Bezos. The world's richest man ejaculated himself into space this week, in what was not quite the first suborbital tourist flight - Richard Branson beat him up there - but definitely the fastest. Everybody who's been up into space, they say that it changes them," Bezos said earnestly, of a trip that lasted roughly the time it takes to hard boil an egg.

If you say so, Jeff. But it looked very much like the intergalactic equivalent of one of those cruises where a vast herd is disgorged ashore for a brief, bewildered trample over the nearest landmark before being rounded up and whisked away to the next port. Sure, you've been to Venice, technically. But which one was Venice, again?