Petition Seeks To Prevent Space-Bound Jeff Bezos From Returning To Earth: What You Need To Know

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is poised to become the first billionaire to fly in a spaceflight when he takes off on July 20 in a historic flight via his Blue Origin space company. Alas, tens of thousands of people have signed a petition seeking to prevent Bezos from returning to Earth.

Lost In Space: A Change.org petition titled “Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth” is seeking to keep Bezos in permanent intergalactic exile.

“Billionaires should not exist ... on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there,” said the petition’s preamble. The petition has a goal of 50,000 signatures and has already attracted more than 41,000 signatories as of Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.

The petition is vague regarding which entity is supposed to prevent a Bezos return to Earth, nor does it cite any legal precedent of barring an American from his country — or his planet, for that matter — solely because of an XXL-sized bank account. Bezos’ spaceflight is slated to take off and land in Texas.

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Go Away, Jeff: Bezos has recently become a magnet for wacky petition drives. Earlier this month, another Change.org petition sought to encourage the e-commerce tycoon to buy and eat Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Mona Lisa.”

On Twitter Inc TWTR, this latest petition drive has generated an expected wave of social media smart-aleck comments.

Twitter user Una Dunphy gave her consent to the petition, tweeting, "Possibly the best thing I have read about this fella, ever!"

The Twitter user Rootn Tuesdan highlighted Bezos’ alleged autocratic style of leadership by sarcastically tweeting, "In space, no one can hear you complain that your employees' bathroom breaks are too long."

Another Twitter user who goes by the handle B€@C0n decided to pack the technoking of Tesla Inc TSLA into this outer space punishment, tweeting, “I hope @elonmusk also gets to board the space ship, so he could be dropped on the Extraterrestrial alien planet from which he accidentally came to Earth globe americas. #space @JeffBezos #alienboy.”

And Twitter denizen Nick Coleman planted a seed for another bit of Change.org tomfoolery, tweeting, “Petition to force Jeff Bezos to become Batman.”

Strangely, no one on Twitter pondered the possibility of Bezos accidentally zooming in on a one-way trip across the universe. Hey, it happened to Josie and the Pussycats:

(Photo of Jeff Bezos by Daniel Oberhaus / Flickr Creative Commons.)