Bill Gates, when asked what he thought of billionaires investing in space travel, said he was more obsessed with eradicating diseases on Earth.
"I became obsessed with things like Malaria, HIV, and wanted to get rid of those diseases. I might bore people talking about diseases on various occasions. (Going) to space? There's a lot of work we have to do on this Earth," he said. Bill Gates.
This was conveyed by Bill Gates while talking on the talk show The Late Late Show hosted by James Corden, talking about the climate crisis.
As seen on the YouTube channel The Late Late Show, Corden opened the conversation by thanking Bill Gates for being one of the billionaires who didn't "escape" into space.
During the remainder of the interview, Bill Gates repeatedly called for everyone to be optimistic, and asked to work together to tackle the crisis caused by climate change.
Corden's question to Bill Gates seems to refer to the recent space flights of billionaires Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin founder Richard Branson last July.
Another billionaire, Jared Issacman, also leads a mission to space called Inspiration4. This mission is billed as the world's first space flight by an ordinary citizen.
The flight used a Dragon capsule and a SpaceX rocket built by another billionaire, Elon Musk. Indeed, the contribution of space exploration missions is appreciated. But at the same time, space travel has also drawn criticism.
Earlier this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his opening speech at the UN general assembly, discussed the gap between rich and poor, one of which was alluding to how contrasting when billionaires travel into space, there are millions of hungry people on Earth.
Both Bezos and Musk have defended themselves, but have also acknowledged the criticism leveled against them. Bezos says what his critics say is mostly true and says that humans should start thinking about both Earth and space exploration.
"We have to do both. We have a lot of problems on Earth, and we need to solve them. But we also need to look to the future, we always do it as a species and as a civilization," he was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Meanwhile, Musk, who has so far not gone into space, said humans should put the most of their resources into solving problems on Earth.
"Probably about 99% (resources) plus our economy, should be dedicated to solving problems on earth. But I think maybe about 1%, or less than 1%, can be applied to prolong life beyond Earth," he said.
