Why Do Men Pay Millions for Extreme Adventures?

HINT: It explains why no women were aboard the Titan disaster

SUMMER 2023

WHY WAS I fixated on this fact?

Partly it’s because I have a voyeuristic interest in how the richest people in the world choose to spend their unlimited resources of money. If it felt like absolutely nothing to you to pay $250,000 to see the Titanic, or $26 million to travel to space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket, would you do it?

The answer seems to be “yes” if you are a man and generally “no” if you are a woman. And “yes,” especially, by a very specific type of wealthy man.

So, for example, when you scroll through the lists of every paying customer who has flown with Blue Origin since its first flight in July, 2021, an interesting algorithm emerges: The typical passenger is a male entrepreneur and/or CEO, often in the tech or venture capital world. Most of the many fewer female passengers appear not to have splashed out for their own tickets: they either worked for Bezos (Audrey Powers, vice president of mission and flight operations) or were connected to the space industry (Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard). Only one wife has accompanied her husband to date: Sharon Hagle, married to the wealthy Florida developer Mark; she runs an educational non-profit focused on elementary school children and science. Adventurer Vanessa O’Brien — the first woman ever to complete the "explorers' extreme trifecta," according to a Blue Origin mission description — appears to be the only woman in this otherwise unique male category, although it is not known if she paid herself for the flight.

Missing among the passenger rolls? Names of top female billionaires. The women counterparts of these thrill-seeking male entrepreneurs appear to have no interest in shooting themselves into space or sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Ninety-six of this exclusive class are self-made — among them, Rafaela Aponte-Diamant, a shipping tycoon, and Kim Kardashian West. Despite the reality show gold in such an adventure for the Kardashians, Kim seems to prefer to keep her well-heeled feet firmly on the red carpet.

So what is it about extreme tourism that appeals to a certain type of self-made wealthy man? Obviously they are natural risk-takers. How else would they have come to earn so much money? There is, of course, the enduring male drive to conquer new frontiers, without which our species would have never ventured out of Africa. Could anything have expressed this better than the distinctly phallic design of Bezos’ rocket?

I’m sure, too, there is the appeal of bragging-rights to your billionaire bros. Any rich schmo can take villas in the South of France or see the world by private plane and yacht. When you can afford to go anywhere and do anything, the ante keeps going up and up. Figuring out the next hot island in Greece or cool restaurant in Barcelona ceases to be enough.

Before he died aboard the Titan, British billionaire Hamish Harding had already flown into space with Blue Origin. Harding had visited the South Pole several times, including when he and others broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of the earth ( via both North and South poles in a private Gulfstream jet in 46 hours, 40 minutes). Harding broke two more Guinness World Records when he descended in a two-man submarine to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, 36,000 feet below sea level. On that trip, Harding and his co-pilot, Victor Vescovo (a private equity investor and fellow adventurer) set the world records for greatest distance covered at full ocean depth and greatest time spent at full ocean depth. The prospect of the Titan expedition, by contrast, must have seemed to a man of Harding’s experience no more dangerous than a Carnival cruise.

But I think the most profound appeal of extreme tourism to these men goes beyond conquering new frontiers, beyond the search for novel experiences. It’s a desire to conquer mortality itself. Proving you can survive again and again performing extreme  feats of daring reassures the survivor of his own  invincibility. The Titan “mission” was to be another notch in these men’s Orion’s belts.

Yet, in perhaps one of the most poignant aspects of that doomed voyage, the sad truth is that visiting the Titanic, like all the other extreme excursions, was supposed to be not really so risky after all. Despite the “death waivers” and the militaristic uniforms with the “crew’s’” names stitched above breast pockets, virtually all of these ventures simply amount to a billionaire’s version of the “I Survived Splash Mountain” t-shirt. Participants do not undergo  months of arduous  training in advance. They don’t even have to be in particularly good shape! They just buy their ticket, show up at the correct place on time, and perform their feats in a machine built, tested, and piloted by someone else. Call it no-risk invincibility.

Until the ride broke. That was the shocker: Who would have guessed Stockton Rush — Princeton graduate, McDonnell Douglas flight test engineer, a wealthy descendant of two signers of the Declaration of Independence — would have sent people to the bottom of the ocean in something as shoddy as a county fair Tilt-a-Whirl? Rush turned out to be nothing more than a high-end carny, down to the pressured sales tactics he used on would-be passengers, the last minute offers of discounts, and the blind eye he turned to dire safety warnings. Squealers were bad for profits.

In the end, the Titan passengers paid the unexpected price of the ultimate price. No wonder their female equivalents devote themselves to less extreme pursuits. I’m not saying women are wiser — just that it’s more in our nature to be the ones standing by with gauze bandages and sterile pads, rather than those jumping out of trees wearing beanie propellers. 

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Editor’s Note: If you are an admirer of Smith’s coverage of the monarchy, you can subscribe to her “Royals Extra” newsletter here on Substack. She features historical facts, gossip and tidbits, and her own commentary on royal events.

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That’s it from me for the rest of the summer, dear readers! I’m hoping to have a finished draft of a sequel to my first novel, Amanda Bright @Home, by the time we return in September. More on that to come! I hope all of you are able to find some relaxing moments and enjoy great times in the coming weeks. Thank you , as always, for subscribing!