Justin Bieber Is Going into Space

It was inevitable. Space, the Cold War battle ground where engineering, daring, and at times sheer will power combined to land men to the Moon, has become a playground for celebrities. They are, after all, among the few who can actually afford a ticket on the private enterprises that offer the trip. And the latest to book a suborbital flight with Virgin Galactic is Justin Bieber.

Bieber is far from the first celebrity to announce plans to leave the Earth. Virgin has already enticed more than 500 celebs; Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and most recently Leonardo DiCaprio, who auctioned off the other seats on his future flight to raise money for charity.

That’s all well and good. But something about Bieber going into space just doesn’t sit well. Not only is he, as a fellow Canadian, a national embarrassment, the 19-year-old pop star has a pretty good track record for being a jerk. He’s got so much damage control to do on Earth that instead of alienating himself to the rest of humanity by leaving the planet, he should probably stay put and do some good. Earn that ride into space.

Since Bieber came on the music scene in 2009, he’s gained as much press for his antics than for his accomplishments. Sure, he’s won tons of awards for some reason. But he’s also been pulled over numerous times for reckless driving, he’s spat on paparazzi, he apparently drives around his gated community on a Segway smoking joints. He’s banned anyone that goes to his parties from talking about it; there’s a $5 million lawsuit awaiting anyone that tweets a picture of the proceedings.

But that’s all run of the mill insane celebrity behavior, right? What isn’t “normal” is that Bieber adopted a weeks-old capuchin monkey in March of this year then unceremoniously abandoned it in Germany two months later. (The monkey has since been moved to a zoo where it will be properly cared for).

When he visited Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, he came away hoping that had she lived today she would be a Belieber. No thoughts on the Holocaust or human tragedy, just his confidence that all 14-year-olds ever should fall under his spell. He’s previously gone on record as saying he’s firmly against abortion, even in the case of rape. An interesting stand to take at just 17.

But Virgin’s CEO and founder Richard Branson doesn’t seem bothered by his newest customer’s controversial fame. The mogul tweeted the other day: “Great to hear @justinbieber & @scooterbraun are latest @virgingalactic future astronauts. Congrats, see you up there!”

It’s sort of a harsh reminder that the landscape of spaceflight is changing quickly. Space tourism and private flights for the rich and powerful are poised to become more and more common in the future. But hopefully NASA’s next generation Orion spacecraft and the various commercial vehicles—SpaceX’s Dragon along with the NASA contracted vehicles from Boeing and Sierra Nevada—will reach operational stages before long and bring some level of past glory back into the business of spaceflight. Because with the likes of Bieber going into space, standards for space travelers are far lower than they used to be.

Justin Bieber gets to go to space. Jerk.