Saturday Night Live returned to Saturday Night Live this weekend, and it took aim at the bizarre billionaire space tourism race that has been taking place over the past few weeks. Owen Wilson, the guest host, played Jeff Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon. He was featured in a sketch about Star Trek: Ego Quest. It is about the adventures of the SS New Shepard, its crew of random weirdos and their mission to fly around space in a ship that looks a penis.
The real Bezos was a pilot who traveled to the edge space using a Blue Origins New Shepard rocket. He was joined by his brother Mark (played by Wilsons brother Luke), Wally Funk (82 years old), and Oliver Daemen, a high school student from Holland. Virgin Galactic CEO Richard Branson beat Bezos by a few days when he flew aboard the SpaceShipTwo spaceplane of his company. SpaceX sent its first private citizen crew into space earlier in the month, but Elon Musk was not there.
After exchanging some bro greetings and exchanging standard bro greetings, Branson (Alex Moffatt) challenges Bezos in the sketch to become a member of a race. They then fly in a purple mood lighting-equipped ship to challenge him to be a pilot. In this flight, the voiceover calls a "midlife crisis of cosmic proportions," in which they crash into the international space station. But there's danger around every corner. Bezos' ship suddenly is being bombarded by photon torpedoes, and yes, it's Elon Musk (Mikey day, doing a spot on impression of Musks speaking style).
Musk tells Bezos that space is too small for one weird white billionaire.
Musk and Bezos have never had much humor about each other's space ambitions. Musk said that you cannot sue your own way to the moon in an interview last week, while talking about Blue Origin and Bezos. Amazon responded by sending The Verge a PDF listing of all SpaceX lawsuits, 13 pages long.
SNL's sketch made one final jab at Bezos. Kenan Thompson, an Amazon employee beams aboard Bezos ship in order to deliver a package. Before he beams out, he asks for the bathroom.
Wilson-asBezos gives him a plastic container.
Below is the complete sketch of SNL's billionaire Star Trek.
