Did you ever think of our historic astronaut corps as the epitome of egalitarianism?

To be sure, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Buzz Aldrin, and the guys—they were all guys—who first went into space and then to the moon were also all white. On the other hand, though, they weren’t selected on the basis of income or wealth, and as career Air Force pilots, they didn’t really have a lot of either. Moreover, particularly due to President Kennedy’s vow that America would place a man on the moon by the end of the ’60s, they symbolized something national: America’s productive and technological supremacy, and the skills of its workforce. Like all the armed services, the Air Force and the space program were a mix of white-collar, blue-collar, and no-discernible-collar work and workers. Being an astronaut required skills that, collar-wise, were both blue and white. The talents that took the flag to the moon were cross-class.

Gone are the days. Today, our privatized space ventures symbolize the nation only in that they reflect our descent into plutocracy. It’s Bezos versus Musk versus Branson. Rooting interest in this contest is, well, limited, and I’d guess among most Americans, nonexistent, if not actually hostile to them all. Where going into space once symbolized national and cross-class prowess, a manifestation of an unprecedented industrial powerhouse that drew on and rewarded the work of scientists, engineers, and unionized aerospace workers, today going into space is based, like the larger economy, on individual wealth. It’s a game for billionaires. And the descent from Neil Armstrong and Gus Grissom to Bezos and Musk is a pretty fair synecdoche for the descent of the United States—white and male still flying high, but moving from a nation that prized and rewarded a wide range of skills and work to one that prizes and rewards only wealth.

The rich now own outer space. And you say you don’t want a revolution?