Do you have to be a billionaire to ride a rocket to space? No, but it helps.

Yesterday, Jeff Bezos — the founder and CEO of Amazon, and, not incidentally, Blue Origin — took a ride into space along with three other people inside the capsule of a New Shepard rocket.

It was a suborbital flight, which means they essentially went straight up and then back down, reaching a height of over 107 km above Earth’s surface. That is higher than the generally accepted altitude of 80 km (50 miles) marking the edge of space, making the four passengers officially astronauts.

Much has b...