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Blue Origin first human flight

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Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#411

Post by nimithryn »

afavour wrote: post #344
arriu wrote: post #40

Comments in this thread complaining that the rich get to do whatever they want are forgetting that the wright brothers (and others) enabled flight for all of us even though most people during that time could only dream about it. It might not happen for you and I, but let's think about the bigger picture.

I want to be excited but I keep coming back to confusion over what the actual purpose of this will be. Flight has very clear benefits: getting you from A to B way faster than was ever possible before. With space flight there is no B to go to. You go up, you come down. If these companies were making breakthroughs in making space long term habitable I’d be excited. But I’m yet to see that.

I see these launches as early stepping stones to really profitable space industries. Asteroid mining, space manufacturing (like Varda: https://varda.com/), space hotels. You have to walk before you can run.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#412

Post by cjlars »

davidw wrote: post #211

As the owner of several western hats, I'm curious about Jeff Bezos' hat. What's the story behind it? It does not fit him well. He obviously has the money to have whatever kind of crafted, perfectly styled hat he wants. Maybe something from his family?

Having spent time supporting these sorts of live / PR events, there's a non-zero chance that this was brought in last minute by an underling.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#414

Post by solidasparagus »

_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 believe Bezos has been obsessed with space since before he even started Amazon. Apparently he even talked about this dream during his high school graduation.

I always thought that Amazon was just the way to make his space dream possible.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#416

Post by ranman »

nimithryn wrote: post #407
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.

The US was behind the USSR at the beginning of the last space race. Jeff Bezos is an extremely smart and talented guy, and is now focusing a lot more of his time on Blue Origin. I wouldn't count them out.

Blue Origin technically started before SpaceX and has an increasing delta in accomplishments... They're easily a decade plus behind and SpaceX doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Bezos is smart and talented... but it's hard to overcome a lead like that.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#417

Post by colordrops »

awrence wrote: post #409
samstave wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed, order room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show, etc. 10k in space will get you what? --- Random thought: If they were able to get enough water into space such that one could swim through a sphere of water in a weightless environment, what would the sensation of being encapsulated in water while weightless feel like (clearly needing scuba or some other air co…

Random reply: Or you can stay here on earth, go scuba diving and experience the exact same weightlessness... :)

It's not the same - that's buoyancy, not weightlessness. Gravity still exerts force on your body and internal organs, and you feel orientation, i.e. up and down. It's a very different feeling.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#418

Post by daveslash »

jb775 wrote: post #299
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.

Bezos mentioned there's a pocket of air that forms a cushion underneath just before it hits, slowing it to 1 mph at impact. The older woman said she didn't even feel it.

Interesting. As other said, there were retro-rockets that fired. I guess I was just assuming the retro-rockets would be more pronounced - like the gentle landing that the rocket motors perform. Good to know that this wasn't as jarring as it looked.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#419

Post by yumraj »

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 don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions

You know that NASA and other countries have been flying rockets and sending people and things to space before SpaceX, yes?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#420

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #120
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…

That's the dream; affordable space tourism for the masses. If Starship manages to hit the price and performance targets Musk has set for it (~$2 million/launch[1], max of 1000 passengers[2]) you could get a ticket to orbit for around $2000. Throw in some extra for profit margin, a stay at an orbital space hotel, and a few additional expenses, and it might well be possible to take a vacation in space for less than $10…

1000 passengers, really? Just imagine the possible loss of life if something goes wrong. We are still counting 100 successful launches in a row as an unprecedented success - whereas in commercial airplane flights airlines with less than 1 incident per 5000000 flights are considered 'poor safety record'.
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