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Blue Origin first human flight

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Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#281

Post by mLuby »

shadowgovt wrote: post #260
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's frustrating, because I'd like to get excited, but relative to even the regular things going on in aerospace this isn't interesting. Interesting enough, I guess. Guy went up and down. There are six people going around and around right now on the ISS and a second station is coming into orbit. He never left Earth? CNSA has a rover on the moon, and NASA has several rovers, some satellites, a helicopter, and a Will.i…

> Step it up or step out, Bezos.

So much negativity in this whole topic, IMO due to Bezos's involvement.

Space is hard technically, politically, financially, so the more entrants in the space race the better. Every space program, government or private, has started off small and built on what they learn.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#282

Post by detritus »

kiba wrote: post #149
detritus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must admit, that's the usage scenario for Starship that I don't particularly see much benefit in. I may well be short-sighted, but given how far away from cities the launch centres for these things would need to be, it strikes me that traditional travel infrastructure suffices. Now, the US military, on the other hand? Starship as a somewhat-disposable space truck makes a lot of sense. Then it comes down to how chea…

I am more concerned about nuclear war as a result of mistaken identity since it's the same technology used to launch ICBMs.

Not sure why you were downvoted - for sure, we have alert systems these days so that test ICBMs and rocket launches aren't misinterpreted by foreign actors, and we would in any future where there were tens, hundreds, thousands of launches a day - but as-equally, it would be a lot easier to mask nefarious intentions in such traffic.

Irrespective of nukes, I shudder to imagine what the impact of an out of control de-orbiting Starship would do at ballistic reentry over a populace... .

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#283

Post by tawan »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #268
tawan wrote: post #191

Lot of people in this thread are arguing that wealthy people can spend money on what ever they want. I think it’s important to distinguish whether the money they spend on personal joy rides has been taxed as private income or written off as business expense. Does anyone have information on whether Bezos‘ investments into Blue Origin has been taxed previously as personal income when he presumably liquidated Amazon sto…

>I think it’s important to distinguish whether the money they spend on personal joy rides has been taxed as private income or written off as business expense. So if the mafia did it, it'd be fine because government didn't pay for it? I'm not saying that Bezos is a mafioso, but this is a false dichotomy. There are also good reasons to think that all "legal" businesses aren't legit and with litttle political oversight,…

I think you misinterpreted my comment (probably my bad, Im not an English native). What I meant is: It is important to make sure that the profits of stocks sold need to be taxed properly, and only the after tax amount that’s left over can be spend on, some may say frivolous, space adventures. Especially when it is often reported that billionaires dont pay hardly any taxes, since their wealth grew „only in equity“. But then suddenly they find themselves on a pretty expensive space vacation.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#284

Post by shadowgovt »

mLuby wrote: post #281
shadowgovt wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's frustrating, because I'd like to get excited, but relative to even the regular things going on in aerospace this isn't interesting. Interesting enough, I guess. Guy went up and down. There are six people going around and around right now on the ISS and a second station is coming into orbit. He never left Earth? CNSA has a rover on the moon, and NASA has several rovers, some satellites, a helicopter, and a Will.i…

> Step it up or step out, Bezos. So much negativity in this whole topic, IMO due to Bezos's involvement. Space is hard technically, politically, financially, so the more entrants in the space race the better. Every space program, government or private, has started off small and built on what they learn.

Absolutely true.

... but since we live in the era where multiple agencies have already done that, it's possible Bezos's dollars would be better spent on combined efforts with one of the front-runners to do something more ambitious than yet another capsule to high-altitude ballistic flight.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#285

Post by HideousKojima »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #60
_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…

The question every time space exploration comes up is whether the money and effort is better spent in space or on more terrestrial problems. With government-sponsored exploration, you at least ended up with public research and development that resulted in spinoffs that are useful on land. With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret. Also, when it comes to 'hard problem…

>For example, we'd have the capacity to eliminate hunger if it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that.

Hunger is basically a non-issue in all developed nations. See all the gray and purple nations on this map. In the US, for example, deaths from malnutrition are ~,1% of all deaths annually. Any money the billionaires might put into it would be better spent on traffic safety, reducing cardiovascular diseases, or researching cancer, and those are all by several orders of magnitude. https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrit...

Also, aid sent to the countries that do have hunger problems (like much of sub-Saharan Africa) has simply crashed their agricultural economy, making the issue even worse. Local farmers can't really compete with free, after all.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#286

Post by GiorgioG »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #267
mavhc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is you only get rich by taking money for other people's work. But as long as everyone also pays to clean up the pollution they cause, not terrible.

Jeff Bezos could vaccinate the entire world against Covid without changing his lifestyle even slightly. He could hire the smartest people in the world to work on breakthrough propulsion, SETI, blue sky physics, and computing research. The money would barely be a rounding error in his wealth. He could fund the greatest space observatories in history, fund game changing contributions to cancer research, genomics, and o…

> It's debatable if it's evil. But it's certainly lacking ambition and boring.

He's the richest man on earth - who started one of the biggest and most successful companies on the planet, I'd say he had plenty of ambition. Excuse him for having a little fun. "He could do this, that and the other thing." Well thank you for telling him what he should/could do with his money. You know what, why don't you go start a company with a 1.8T market cap, and you can do all these noble things. All you need is some ambition to do something less boring, right?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#287

Post by maverick-iceman »

BurningFrog wrote: post #129
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're seeing the very first steps of a long race.

That's right. Up until we have 100,000 people living in space we are just winging it.

Winner of the race will be the dominant company in said community of 100,000 or the most socially influential person.

Bezos, Musk and Branson won't be alive to see that, so they are shooting for George Washington type influence, the one reserved for the founder, the guy who was at the beginning of it all and gets remembered .

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#288

Post by verdverm »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #267
mavhc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is you only get rich by taking money for other people's work. But as long as everyone also pays to clean up the pollution they cause, not terrible.

Jeff Bezos could vaccinate the entire world against Covid without changing his lifestyle even slightly. He could hire the smartest people in the world to work on breakthrough propulsion, SETI, blue sky physics, and computing research. The money would barely be a rounding error in his wealth. He could fund the greatest space observatories in history, fund game changing contributions to cancer research, genomics, and o…

Did you ever notice the Amazon "smile" is also a penis?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#289

Post by eco »

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 9 was a direct extension of Falcon 1. New Glenn shares almost nothing in common with New Shepard. They don't even use the same fuel or engine.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#290

Post by dragonwriter »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #267
mavhc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is you only get rich by taking money for other people's work. But as long as everyone also pays to clean up the pollution they cause, not terrible.

Jeff Bezos could vaccinate the entire world against Covid without changing his lifestyle even slightly. He could hire the smartest people in the world to work on breakthrough propulsion, SETI, blue sky physics, and computing research. The money would barely be a rounding error in his wealth. He could fund the greatest space observatories in history, fund game changing contributions to cancer research, genomics, and o…

> But it's certainly lacking ambition.

Its not; the ambition is commercial ambition (which given Bezos shouldn't be surprising), but its certainly present.

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