Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos have made NASA an ATM machine: Bernie Sanders lambasts billionaires

US Senator of Vermont Bernie Sanders addressed the advancing space race and slammed billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for fuelling it. In his opinion piece published in The Guardian, Sanders stated that the privatisation of space exploration makes him worried and even accused the billionaire of using NASA as an ATM machine. "I am concerned that NASA has become little more than an ATM machine to fuel a space race not between the US and other countries, but between the two wealthiest men in America- Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos", the Senator wrote. 

Sanders also underscored the combined wealth of the duo- approximately $450 billion and asserted that the goal of space exploration must be the benefit of people rather than making rich people even richer. He had shared a piece over a report by Morgan Stanley which revealed that Musk's aerospace company might make him the world's first trillionaire. On Bezos, Sanders questioned if the entrepreneur, who is worth $170 billion (as per Forbes real-time data), should receive a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout while 6,00,000 Americans wander homeless. 

Sanders rips into commercial space exploration

Sanders has been relentlessly vocal about criticising the world's richest men and their alleged tax evasion. In a tweet posted earlier this week, the Senator put out some data revealing that if an American paid $1 federal income tax, it was still more than what Bezos paid in 2007 and 2011 and Musk's tax payment in 2018. Last year, when Sanders again poked the 'extremely wealthy' to 'pay their share', Musk trolled him on Twitter saying, "I keep forgetting you're alive".

In his recent salvos, the 80-year-old tore into commercial space travel as well and questioned if the rich should hone their hobby of space tours. He mentioned the latest commercial mission, Axiom-1 which was backed by NASA and SpaceX, and cost $55 million for three of the four astronauts to reach the International Space Station. "The good news is that if you are a billionaire tired of vacationing in the Caribbean, there are some exciting travel opportunities for you. The bad news is that American taxpayers are subsidizing some of that trip", Sanders wrote. 

On April 9, the office of Sanders shared a clip of his address, wherein he was heard saying that he is concerned about the ongoing space race between Musk's SpaceX and Bezos' Blue Origin. "If we are able to accomplish the extraordinary goal of sending a person to Mars, I want the flag that will be flying on that planet to be the flag of the United States of America, not the flag of SpaceX or Blue Origin", he had stated.