WATCH: MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle Cracks Up as Guest Roasts Bezos Space Mission

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday defended rich people who go to space, one day after Blue Origin’s first and successful human space flight that included its founder, Jeff Bezos, and three other people.

On Stephanie Ruhle Reports, New York University Stern School of Business professor Scott Galloway decried space tourism as making “absolutely no sense” and being “dangerous” and “expensive” as “the market is very small.”

Galloway acknowledged that “there’s some private-public benefit here” as “NASA and the Pentagon now have additional bidders for people to put things in space.”

However, said Galloway, “But more than anything, I think it kind of reflects a shift in our values. The total budget of NASA is $22 billion. Jeff Bezos has added $100 billion to his wealth in the last ten years and has paid a tax rate of around 1 percent.”

“So essentially we have decided to elect leaders who have said we don’t want to fund NASA, we want to find people who do amazing things here on Earth and make them responsible for taking us to the next frontier. I quite frankly have never seen anything that so many people tuned into that had so much disdain for it,” he continued. “And I realize I sound cynical and I’m sitting on the shores of Spain being cynical. But I don’t know, this feels uncomfortable to me. I’d be curious to get your thoughts given that you were actually there.”

In response, Ruhle defended the Blue Origin mission.

“I mean, I guess I kind of feel like disdain, why? Who cares? It’s Jeff Bezos’s money. If really, really rich people want to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars for their vanity trips to outer space, what do I care? It’s more business,” she said.

Ruhle then said that the Texas town of Van Horn, where the flight launched and landed, “could certainly use a lot more business.”

“That town I was in in rural Texas, they could certainly use a lot more business. Go burn your money, rich people. I don’t care,” she said. “And if it means that business does a whole lot of research and development that then helps our government, have at it.”

Galloway replied that Ruhle made “fair points,” but said that he admires what happened in the past for space travel.

“I’m nostalgic. So the youngest person in space was Sally Ride and this was the daughter of a minister who got a Ph.D. in physics and applied to NASA and was just an inspiring person. And now the youngest person in space is the 18-year-old son of a Dutch billionaire,” he said, referring to Oliver Daemen, the son of Dutch private equity firm CEO Joes Daemen, who paid for his son to accompany Bezos and his brother, Mark Bezos, and Wally Funk, who became the oldest person to travel to space at the age of 82 after being denied the opportunity to go to space 60 years ago because of her gender.

Galloway incorrectly stated that Ride was the youngest person to go to space. While Ride was the youngest American to do so at age 32, in addition to being the first American female, the title of youngest in space, before Daemen, was Gherman Titov at age 25 in 1961. Galloway also incorrectly referred to Joes Daemen as a billionaire when he is reported to be a millionaire.

Galloway expressed admiration for Mae Jemison, who was the first black woman to go to space.

“This is an individual born in Alabama, master’s in chemical engineering, got a medical doctors degree, used that degree to go to Liberia, applied to NASA twice,” he said. “I miss the days of Sally and Mae. Not sending up private equity kids.”

Ruhle interjected when Galloway said “not sending up private equity kids” with “Okay, Scott, but yes! Yes, me, too.”

“And that’s why Mae Jemison is honored and on our television all day and I’ve never said the name of that 18-year-old kid and I never will again,” Ruhle said passionately. “So who cares what those rich people do? Don’t we need to find a way to get them excited about a race to solve climate change? Not just get them excited about little boys and their big rockets? They want to burn their money, do it.”

Galloway replied, “But they’re not only burning their money, they’re burning our attention. I just find it kind of strange and a little bit weird that we seem to be obsessed over a rocket going up nearly to the Karman Line and then floating down, when 50 years ago we sent three brave people 250,000 miles, tried to land them on something rotating at several thousand miles per hour and then get them home safely, and we’re trying to position this as for all mankind.” The Karman Line is the internationally recognized boundary where space begins, 62 miles above Earth’s mean sea level.

“I think it would have been a lot cheaper if Mr. Bezos had taken a canary yellow tea top Corvette and crash into a hair plugs clinic,” he continued, causing Ruhle to crack up. “I apologize for sounding very cynical here. I don’t understand what the achievement was.”

Ruhle ended the segment by saying, “Not necessarily an achievement, but it was an extraordinary thing from a science perspective. Let’s give NASA a whole lot more money and have the government do it.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.