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Blue Origin first human flight

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Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#301

Post by notJim »

bob1029 wrote: post #176
detritus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Out of all of these space-faring corporations, SpaceX has orders of magnitude more aerospace infrastructure and assets to work with. Their entire ethos since inception was getting humanity to Mars, not sending a handful of wealthy people into suborbital trajectories. Elon/SpaceX have certainly participated in a lot of PR throughout, but it always seemed to be along an engineering axis, not some feel-good emotional ax…

Not sure a tiny island that’s 6-7’ above sea level is such a genius investment these days.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#302

Post by senko »

ezconnect wrote: post #261
daveslash wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looked like they were going about 15-16mph when they hit the ground. That looked a bit rough as well. They seem to have done fine, but I can't imagine that it was comfortable.

I watch it and slowed the clip and it seems there's a rocket boost just before touchdown, if the seats have shock absorbers they probably felt little of the touch down.

They mentioned on the stream the capsule has cushions that deploy at around 6ft. I couldn't see them on the video feed but they might be underneath the capsule.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#303

Post by [deleted] »

enraged_camel wrote: post #121
selykg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as unlikeable. Right? I don't get the guy's appeal. Yes, SpaceX and Tesla are doing neat things and I love that. But Musk is literally the last person I want to hear from, or about. Despite all the cool stuff Tesla is doing, he really makes me not want to buy anything from Tesla ever just because he's associated with it. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I really can't stand the…

>> I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as unlikeable. I had long suspected that he's on the spectrum, and earlier this year he came out and openly talked about his Asperger's diagnosis. That's not to say that excuses his terrible treatment of other people, but it sure explains it.

[deleted]

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#304

Post by wombatpm »

mongol wrote: post #197
Ottolay wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underwhelming part is that it took so long. The first private manned suborbital flight occurred in 2004 with SpaceShipOne. It is 17 years later at this point and only now do we have paying customers for sub-orbital flight.

Yes. What made it take this long?

Virgin Galactic had an accident the killed its test pilot a few years back. Had to build new spaceshiptwo

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#305

Post by eco »

JshWright wrote: post #45
runawaybottle wrote: post #21

I’m more impressed that Bezos took the ideas that worked from Spacex and successfully copied it.

Blue Origin actually predates SpaceX. They have been working in parallel on related ideas, so I don't think it's fair to say they "copied" SpaceX. SpaceX is definitely a lot further down the road, and what Blue Origin is doing currently is much easier. The energies involved in suborbital flights are much lower, and the fact that the rocket has a thrust-to-weight ratio low enough that it can hover makes the landing pr…

I still can't wrap my head around how little Blue Origin has accomplished in 21 years despite having an earlier start than SpaceX and with Bezos injecting a billion or so into it every year.

SpaceX launches people and cargo to the ISS, just completed the first shell of a nearly worldwide satellite internet network using reused boosters many of which approaching 10 flights, and is a few months out from test launching a fully reusable rocket with twice the thrust of the Saturn V using a novel-full flow staged combustion rocket engine of their own design.

And now Blue Origin is seemingly dragging down ULA with them because of the constantly delays of the BE-4 engine ULA selected for Vulcan.

I just don't understand how Bezos can find this progress acceptable. I want Blue Origin to succeed. Having SpaceX as the only US launch provider is not the future we want.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#306

Post by alexashka »

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…

> they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance.

We've had tourism that blows all these attempts into irrelevance, for thousands of years.

Take 5 grams.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#307

Post by zip1234 »

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…

The US government spends Bezos' net worth every 2 weeks and doesn't have their own functioning human space launch system at the moment.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#308

Post by thepasswordis »

notJim wrote: post #301
bob1029 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all of these space-faring corporations, SpaceX has orders of magnitude more aerospace infrastructure and assets to work with. Their entire ethos since inception was getting humanity to Mars, not sending a handful of wealthy people into suborbital trajectories. Elon/SpaceX have certainly participated in a lot of PR throughout, but it always seemed to be along an engineering axis, not some feel-good emotional ax…

Not sure a tiny island that’s 6-7’ above sea level is such a genius investment these days.

Do you think the ocean is going to rise SEVEN FEET?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#309

Post by sangnoir »

selykg wrote: post #50
basisword wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as unlikeable. Why does it matter who does it though? It’s a great achievement and could lead to great things. I’d much rather people like Bezos were spending money on this than mansions, supercars, and other crap that doesn’t benefit anyone.

> I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as unlikeable. Right? I don't get the guy's appeal. Yes, SpaceX and Tesla are doing neat things and I love that. But Musk is literally the last person I want to hear from, or about. Despite all the cool stuff Tesla is doing, he really makes me not want to buy anything from Tesla ever just because he's associated with it. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I really can't stand the…

> I don't get the guy's appeal.

I suspect there's a level of vicariousness for some fans, some shade of "He's a nerd like me - it could have been me if I caught a lucky break. Hell, I can still be something like him if I found/get RSUs in a rocketship SaaS startup and have multiple recurring successes after that". Elon seems to have settled into that "friendly, relatable neighborhood billionaire who memes-and-does-crypto just like you" persona

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#310

Post by rtkwe »

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.

I think it's pretty underwhelming and then is further diminished because it feels so much like Bezos and Branson just spending their obscene amounts of money to notch a win in this billionaire one upmanship game. First there was Bezos's Blue Origin crowing about their early launch and land success vs SpaceX like they were in a similar league of difficulty. Then with this you have Virgin Galactic coming out of seeming corporate catatonia so Brandon could rush out this first ahead of Bezos. I hadn't heard anything about SpaceShip One for what feels like years before this stunt.

Also yeah they do also just barely make it to what the US had somewhat arbitrarily defined as space in the case of Branson's company.

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