I'll tell ya...whenever I look at that spaceship...
Just to make it official, they should have two circular blast deflectors, on opposite sides of the gantry.
Blue Origin first human flight
231–240 of 504 posts
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#232I 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.
And how about Christa McAuliffe? She was a career school teacher who had the opportunity to fly on the Challenger. But she was also titled an astronaut.
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 firs…
Maybe you were just told they counted as going into space because otherwise the first American to orbit earth only did so a full 10 months after Gagarin, which looks worse than saying “oh we launched an American into space less than a month after the Russians did”.
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Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#234I 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.
And how about Christa McAuliffe? She was a career school teacher who had the opportunity to fly on the Challenger. But she was also titled an astronaut.
Christa was trained and fully qualified for her role.
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like a throw towards the edge of orbit. It's nowhere near orbit. Orbit is about 10km of delta-v, then there's the reentry problem. Reaching the Karman line is about 2km of delta-v.
Walk before you run. I very much doubt Blue Origin intends to freeze rocket development after this launch. Blue Origin now has a successful manned flight under their belt, and a revenue stream. While it might surprise some here, Amazon started by selling just books... It feels like similar attitude comments on that would have been "They'll never compete with Walmart. Real retail stores sell all kinds of things."
> Walk before you run.
Walking is a precursor to running, though.
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's current spacecraft are dead-ends. They can't ever go to orbit. New Glenn can, but it's vaporware thus far; if it sees a development schedule like New Shepard's there'll be a SpaceX Mars base before it manages its first hop.
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#236I 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.
Shuttleworth and Tito underwent a year of training, including 7 months at Star City. They also conducted scientific experiments while on the station. They are formally considered Spaceflight Participants by Roscosmos, the FAA and NASA. They weren't considered Cosmonauts or Astronauts, but that seems to be solely due to their non-professional status rather than their training or operational duties.
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#237This 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…
The best part is that while these two billionaires do their 'space hop', Elon is laughing the whole time and probably texted Jeff Bezos asking 'Hey have you seen my car? NVM, sorry, you probably were not close enough to see it.'
Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to the obvious feud with Jeff Bezos, I know he is friends with Richard.
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#238I 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.
And how about Christa McAuliffe? She was a career school teacher who had the opportunity to fly on the Challenger. But she was also titled an astronaut.
She trained for that mission for a year, and planned to conduct experiments and teach lessons from space. I don’t make the rules, but it seems to me she did a fair bit more than touristing.
Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#239Really clean launch! I think this was the first time a reusable rocket was landed with humans onboard? It must’ve fell 100k feet at the end in less than a minute which must’ve been nuts.
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Re: Blue Origin first human flight
#240Obviously everybody (Branson/Bezos) is entitled to spend their cash in whatever way they want. But, if they are making a spectacle of it, publicise it and promote it like some big achievement, then those people should be prepared to take some criticism. And in my opinion, I see the last two launches as indeed amusement rides for billionaires and a strong argument for better taxation policies. In contrary, what Musk d…
> I see the last two launches as indeed amusement rides for billionaires I see this take a lot, and I strongly disagree. These launches are marketing events for their space tourism businesses! The billionaire CEOs go up to prove they personally trust the tech is safe. If they won't go, who else would? Now they can start selling trips to paying customers, and hopefully build genuinely sustainable space tourism busines…
> These launches are marketing events for their space tourism businesses!
Okay, so these launches aren't amusement rides for billionaires, they are marketing stunts to advertise amusement rides for other billionaires? Hard to see the difference tbh