81–90 of 236 posts
If this is a lander what will they use to deliver the lander to lunar orbit? I'll admit I don't follow this sort of news very closely, but it seems quite exciting.
They'll launch this paper lander on their paper rocket (New Glenn). Nothing exciting here because there's no hardware being built yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much. President Trump wants to put a man on the moon before he's out of office (assuming he gets re-elected and makes it to 2024). Mike Pence obsequiously tells NASA to make it so. Amazon wants more sweet federal contracting money, and prepares to bid for that contract. I wish Bezos, Allen, Musk, etc. weren't burning their piles of cash to see who could be first to shoot other people at the moon, but such is t…
> I wish Bezos, Allen, Musk, etc. weren't burning their piles of cash Allen did many things with his pile of cash (though none that I know of directly involved moon trips), but no longer: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/paul-allen-microsoft-spacesh...
Allen doesn't seem to have been going for the moon (yet), but I wish the billionaires would not spend their hoards on private rocket companies. It's a bit gross that the article you linked calls them "philanthropists" for doing it. Andrew Carnegie was a real bastard, but he funded many wonderful small-town libraries, which remain valuable community centers over 100 years later. Bill Gates took his shot at world domination, but is now using his money to solve real-world problem like malaria.
It's their money, so they can do what they want with it, but rocket companies are pure vanity. Real, cost-effective philanthropy would mean improving the perfectly acceptable planet we live on, not trying to terraform Mars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine that's the end goal but I have a hard time believing we will be there in just a few years. Time will tell.
A big part of astronaut training is knowing how to fly the craft and knowing what to do if something breaks. If the machine is automatically controlled and reliable, you don't need as much training. (Maybe they'll send a trained person or two along with the tourists?)
Astronauts train for years before going to space. Do these space tourism companies pretend that anyone with enough cash can do it?
I'm all for anything that gets us back to the Moon, but this clearly feels underwhelming versus Starship. It'd also be good if they got to orbit prior to marketing these grand plans. Gradatim Ferociter indeed.
Rovers are incredibly underwhelming compared to what was done 50 years ago. Starship will get us back there, but anything short of a base where people can stay a while will not really be new.
There's a bunch of small companies pursuing expendable lunar landers of similar capabilities. I worry Blue Origin will just crowd them out.
A reusable upper stage or reusable lander (or both) would be more interesting and more important. Bezos is/was the richest man and Blue origin is given roughly a billion dollars of capital every year, and a relatively modest expendable lunar lander is their big announcement? And even that they may have difficulty executing on in a timely manner.
I don't think Blue Origin can't do this. I just think it's far too modest of a goal for a company with free rein over a billion dollars in additional annual capital.
...and I'm also skeptical of mass drivers (of the typical type) and lunar mining. Plenty of shade thrown at Mars, but Mars has vastly more resources.
Additionally, the architecture of the lander is disappointing. A crasher stage (ala the Surveyor spacecraft which used a kick stage for deorbiting) for most of descent would be far more efficient. It'd allow a much smaller and cheaper descent stage and much lower to the ground, making egress much easier.
Except when I was an undergrad, it was all about going to Mars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably their New Glenn rocket
They've got New Armstrong pencilled in after New Glenn for taking people to the Moon. I suppose after that would be New Sagan
I'd perhaps have New Young after New Armstrong.
This whole mini-site looks like an extremely audacious undergrad aerospace engineering group project. Except when I was an undergrad, it was all about going to Mars .