441–450 of 504 posts
Can't wait for short haul flights to be banned and to travel 14 hours in a train so we reduce carbon emissions. But I'm happy that rich guys can have fun and advance "space exploration".
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I don't know why this is being downvoted since it makes total sense to me. It's not a good thing that the mega rich have an absurd amount of power over society, but it's a fact for the foreseeable future. There is precedent for people becoming much more conscientious about the planet after returning from space, so it's certainly possible that billionaires playing with rockets will have some positive second order effe…
It is indeed a phenomenon that others have experienced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
"It's small, I want to own the others" might be the Bezos response.
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The publicity aspect would deter some, but it would attract others. By the time even 20 people have gone up, it won't be newsworthy, and then it will just be like buying a yacht. There are about 1.5 million people in the US worth $10 million or more, which is about where you need to be to comfortably afford this type of thing now, and another 10 million or so single digit millionaires, many of whom would take a signi…
The economics are just silly. 4 passengers at $250k each is only $1M in revenue per flight. Between fuel costs, rocket costs (even assuming 10x reuses per rocket, you'd need to build the rocket for significantly under $10M to have a chance at profitability, could you imagine building a rocket for under 10M?), engineer and employee salaries and benefits, advertising, liability, etc. Add in the fact that you have a ver…
I think the timing of the launch isn't coincidental - iirc, the investigation into the HLS decision is going to be done in early August, and it undoubtedly looks better for BO's case to have had a successful launch with humans onboard one of their rockets.
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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…
I assume his future rockets can launch space telescopes, although they have spent 7 years not getting their engines to work.
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…
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.
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> 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
And like all things, the price will go down. Not as fast as I'd like for these specific crafts, but they seemed like a good target at the time their development began.
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When I was growing up the only people who had a chance to go where these four people went were trained for years by a nation-state. It was incredibly dangerous and it was only those who the government approved who might make the trip. I just saw four pretty regular people - including one I believe subbed in at the last minute - take a trip and it cost a fraction of what it used to. The high price tag means it’s still…
But there has been space tourism since the 00's. For the right amount of money anyone could ride a Soyuz rocket.
Obviously 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…
straight up, no. they're using your tax dollars because they aren't taxed
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But what’s the actual purpose? Space tourism I get. But beyond that I’m struggling to see the uses of normal people having access to space travel. By comparison people having access to air travel has clear benefits.
Our planet will only last so long until the Sun becomes a Red Giant. At that point we will need to venture to at least the outer planets, if not beyond the solar system if we want to continue as a species. Even in smaller time frames, I read somewhere that one of Bezos' plans is to move manufacturing into space. And if/when we do get colonies on other planets and moons, some people would want to live there.
In, what, five billion years? I’m not sure we need Bezos to be focusing all his money on that timeframe.
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Well to be fair, they don't compete with Walmart. Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year, and that was during the height of a pandemic, which naturally steered people towards more online orders, something you think would tip the scales in Amazon's favor.
> Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year, Eh... that's not really true, it's about 1.45x the revenue, not 2x. And that's not the whole picture. Revenue for 2020: Walmart: $559 billion Amazon: $386 billion Operating income for 2020: Walmart: $20.6 billion Amazon: $22.9 billion Net Income (business/total) for 2020: Walmart: $15.2/14.9 billion Amazon: $22.1/21.3 billion
a. Amazon solves brick and mortar b. Walmart solves online sales.
Given the way things are going with Amazon essentially throwing in the towel with counterfeit reviews and products, I would put my money on Walmart eating Amazon's lunch this decade.
Don't forget political influence as well. Walmart has a large fraction of congress on bankroll.