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Blue Origin first human flight

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Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#181

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#183

Post by xor99 »

Did I miss it or was there no in capsule cameras for this one? I thought the Branson space flight had a little more drama to it because of the scenes from the cockpit and passenger area.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#185

Post by croes »

nautilius wrote: post #170
mdorazio wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crew members have defined roles and responsibilities, and are important to the success of a mission beyond having paid to be there. The alternative is more apt here, I think: passengers.

I take it you're not a big fan of Gagarin, the first human in space, then. What was his importance beyond 'being there'?

That why they called him an cosmonaut instead of astronaut. SCNR

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#186

Post by zajio1am »

Clewza313 wrote: post #44
Darmody wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it was pretty exciting after watching what Virgin Galactic did the other day.

Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though. Sticking a capsule on top of a rocket and bringing it down with parachutes has been done since the 1960s, and SpaceX beat them to landing the launcher as well.

> Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though.

Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and landing horizontally was also done in 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#187

Post by croes »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #135
mendigou wrote: post #128

I found it annoying, even a bit insulting, that they kept referring to the people in the capsule as "astronauts". I could understand if they did it for Wally Funk, as she actually did the training back in the day, but the rest? When rich people were allowed in the ISS they were called "tourists", which is befitting.

"An astronaut (from the Greek "astron" (ἄστρον), meaning "star", and "nautes" (ναύτης), meaning "sailor") is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft." They were trained (not as well trained as NASA astronauts, but still trained well enough for such a short mission) They were equipped with whatever equipments they needed for thi…

To finish you wiki quote:

"Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists and tourists."

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#188

Post by double0jimb0 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #59
thereddaikon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Blue Origin is currently in the same league as SpaceX. One is making money putting payloads in orbit, actively disrupting the industry and developing new hardware. They other has a sub orbital rocket that is only good for joy rides and otherwise is a lot of talk and little results. Rocket Lab is a more substantial player in the space industry right now than Blue Origin is. Maybe some day they will get o…

Space tourism will be noteworthy insofar as it will normalize more and more of the public to space travel, which in turn normalize the acceptance of the expenditure required.

Consider if "space tourism" ends up having no product market fit. There is no data currently that it is a viable business. Sure, there are a bunch of pre-orders, and owners of companies now making maiden voyages, but that's it.

A couple vaporized high profile customers will have a massive chilling effect on the industry.

I think Musk's "we are going to Mars, people will die" is the most sober/realistic take. This messaging will do a much better job eliciting a customer base that understands the product and that will lead to sustainable industry someday.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#189

Post by sebzim4500 »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
_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 don't see a race. I see one company that does space travel and two dilettantes, who may or may not one day actually do something useful.

There is a race, but the competitors are China and SpaceX.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#190

Post by gvb »

detritus wrote: post #112
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.

The thing that amuses me is that if SpaceX can make Starship and the Heavy booster work, they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance. If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling. Then they'd ju…

There is a SpaceX private Crew Dragon mission scheduled: https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-announces-crew-for-privat...

"Launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, slightly earlier than the original announcement of the fourth quarter of this year. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for three days, flying in an orbit at the same inclination as the International Space Station — 51.6 degrees — but in an orbit as high as 540 kilometers, more than 100 kilometers above the station."

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