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Blue Origin first human flight

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Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#81

Post by 5555624 »

marshallbananas wrote: post #8

This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. They got about two minutes of zero G and came down immediately. You can experience that for much longer with a regular plane, for much less money. It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.

> It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.

So, Alan Shepard would not be the first American in space? Gus Grissom's first flight wouldn't count, either? I'm all for making a distinction between space tourists and astronauts; but, I don't know if orbiting the Earth is the distinction. (Yes, I know Shepard and Grissom orbited the Earth on subsequent space flights; but,those first flights have to count for something.)

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#82

Post by trey-jones »

I'm not interested in the semantics of outer space or the competition to see who can meet the terms of one of those arbitrary definitions first. More than one corporate/government entity making progress in rocketry and space-faring technology is a good thing for humanity.

I'm thinking that there should be plenty of incentive here for billionaires: it's conceivable that whoever gets there (where? I don't know) first will be running the show in 50 or 100 or 500 years. There are worse bets for establishing your legacy.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#83

Post by ethanbond »

eevilspock wrote: post #73
ethanbond wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Space exploration" is lending way, way too much credence to this. These two flights were ~60mi altitude. The ISS, for reference, is at 250mi. We've launched people there more than a hundred times, never mind having to put it there in the first place. The moon, which we landed and recovered people from in 1969, is 240,000mi away. This is a hobby project, which is totally fine in that it's their money to spend, and it…

> it's their money to spend Not everyone agrees.

Sure. I myself am not entirely bought into this position, but it is in fact the position of "our society." Figure we have to start by not calling these people explorers before making our way to questioning whether such extreme accumulation of wealth is optimal in the first place.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#84

Post by throwaway0a5e »

drcongo wrote: post #65
_fat_santa wrote: post #22

Seems that between Musk, Bezos and Branson, we have in essence restarted a space race but this time it's billionaires in the private sector versus governments. Some will surely say that they have better things to spend their money on (Bezos for sure) but I gave to say it's still mindblowing. I would imagine if you're one of those guys, you've basically have enough money to solve any problem, so these guys it seems ar…

It takes a special kind of awful person to think that this is the hard problem they should solve with their billions.

"They should stop wasting money sending those ships around Africa"

-Some dude in the 1400s

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#85

Post by themgt »

gameswithgo wrote: post #57
iso1631 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mentioning Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin in the same breath as SpaceX seems disingenuous. It's like comparing an horse+cart with a modern car. Maybe Electron and Virgin Orbit are in the race, but these hop 100km (or 80!) up and about 5 miles downrange are nowhere near the same league.

Understanding the difference between orbital and suborbital space flight need not cause one to be cynical and negative about things. Especially since blue origin has a design that can scale up quickly, as SpaceX did with falcon 1 to 9

Falcon 1 put a payload into orbit though, so it's really not the same. Falcon 9's first flight was less than 2 years after Falcon 1 made it to orbit.

For myriad reasons Blue can't just "scale up quickly" in any meaningful way from NS to New Glenn, hence why it's going to take them 8+ years between the first NS and first NG launches. Being realistic about this is not cynical and negative.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#86

Post by flareback »

eevilspock wrote: post #73
ethanbond wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Space exploration" is lending way, way too much credence to this. These two flights were ~60mi altitude. The ISS, for reference, is at 250mi. We've launched people there more than a hundred times, never mind having to put it there in the first place. The moon, which we landed and recovered people from in 1969, is 240,000mi away. This is a hobby project, which is totally fine in that it's their money to spend, and it…

> it's their money to spend Not everyone agrees.

Can you expand on this? I've never looked into who is financing this project. I've always assumed it was just Bezos' own money he was using.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#87

Post by tester34 »

marshallbananas wrote: post #8

This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. They got about two minutes of zero G and came down immediately. You can experience that for much longer with a regular plane, for much less money. It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.

wasn't it just a few years ago considered as being ahead of everybody in space industry?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#88

Post by Chris2048 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #22

Seems that between Musk, Bezos and Branson, we have in essence restarted a space race but this time it's billionaires in the private sector versus governments. Some will surely say that they have better things to spend their money on (Bezos for sure) but I gave to say it's still mindblowing. I would imagine if you're one of those guys, you've basically have enough money to solve any problem, so these guys it seems ar…

I hear those complaints, but aside from a snarky "then spend your own money on then", they fail mention:

- anyone can spend money on things, if enough sub-billionaires spend money on something the same amount can be raised - there's no reason a billionaire needs to do it. On the other hand, large focused projects like this are arguably harder to crowdfund from a management perspective.

- The governments is richer than Musk. Taxation brings in more money, and is a much fairer way to contribute to these problems.

- the government is more empowered to deal with social issues. There are some things a private corp/citizen cannot do, at least without government approval anyway. The issues being tackled here are mainly engineering, that is "free" to solve. The items that they would "better" to fix are highly political, with a heavy side of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

- throwing money at something can make it worse. A pipedream has no metrics that could prove this, so they can always be optimistic. When a "clothe the poor" drive kills local tailoring businesses, for example.

- Billionaires pay taxes, usually more than most (generally, though they have more leverage to bargain for lower taxes. unfair? sure, but that's global free trade gets you). What remains is income - why should they fix the problems government could, but won't?

- A major component of this is envy/belittling effort (Musk looks too happy in PR pics, so he's "playing around") or belittling the goal (spaceflight is useless) - i.e. grievance from the ignorant. There are a bajillion "useless" pastimes and occupations relative to some rando's pet social cause, yet billionaires are easy individual targets when everyone is equally to blame - at least Musk probably works hard.

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