Blue Origin first human flight • Hacker News Board

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#471

Post by courtf » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #88

_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 hear those complaints, but aside from a snarky "then spend your own money on then", they fail mention: - anyone can spend money on things, if enough sub-billionaires spend money on something the same amount can be raised - there's no reason a billionaire needs to do it. On the other hand, large focused projects like this are arguably harder to crowdfund from a management perspective. - The governments is richer tha…

It's not really about the individual billionaires, that's missing the forest for the trees. That individuals can afford glamor rides to the edge of space in personal rockets is merely a symptom of gross inequality that has many more downsides than upsides.

Life expectancy is dropping, climate change is accelerating and while we can't solely blame any individual billionaire, they have as a group profited astronomically [:)] from the collapse of our institutions and middle classes, and from the wholesale destruction of livelihoods during the pandemic.

The government is more corrupt, more attuned to the needs of the rich than ever, so you don't need to wonder why the government has failed to attend to the needs of the majority. The same class of people currently culminating in rockets launches toward space have been directing the flows of tax dollars for decades.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#472

Post by aerovistae » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #410

aerovistae wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, struggling to channel dang here. How to respond constructively. Probably the best thing to do is flag and ignore, but I can't pass this up. If people are interested in going somewhere, who are you to denigrate their ambitions? What is wrong with dreaming of orbiting the planet? How does that dream fall short? Is it a weak dream for a midwestern child, landlocked a thousand miles in every direction, to want to…

it's an entirely appropriate dream for a child. for a society with enormous intractable problems such as global warming, income inequality, and fascism, it's pretty lame.

It's lame to dream of space until utopia is achieved? Until life is perfect, NASA should be shut down? Do all 7.5b people on earth need to dream of solving the same problems? Is eliminating diversity of dreams constructive? If your teenage daughter told you she wanted to go to school to be an astronaut, would you tell her that was lame?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#473

Post by sys_64738 » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

The video of them weightless showed them all crammed into a very small space. Surprised somebody never got a foot in the head from another. Feels like a lawsuit is waiting so who would have jurisdiction here?

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#474

Post by _moof » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

samstave wrote: post #422

colordrops wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why I was asking! What would the difference in sensation be for one who is submerged on earth, versus one who is encapsulated in a floating sphere of water...

There’s no buoyancy without weight so it wouldn’t feel like anything until you moved. Then you’d have the same drag forces you would on Earth. It’s unlikely the sphere would stay together very long with nothing to hold it together.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#475

Post by _moof » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #231

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.

Seriously. When I think of the hundreds if not thousands of people who had to say, “yes, let’s build it this way,” the mind boggles.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#476

Post by ericd » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #410

aerovistae wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, struggling to channel dang here. How to respond constructively. Probably the best thing to do is flag and ignore, but I can't pass this up. If people are interested in going somewhere, who are you to denigrate their ambitions? What is wrong with dreaming of orbiting the planet? How does that dream fall short? Is it a weak dream for a midwestern child, landlocked a thousand miles in every direction, to want to…

it's an entirely appropriate dream for a child. for a society with enormous intractable problems such as global warming, income inequality, and fascism, it's pretty lame.

Well, I’d say that few things are likely to really drive home to people how insignificant the little power struggles we spend so much of our life obsessing about as going up into space and looking down on everything, and then looking out into the infinite void.

If it makes everyone who can afford to go more circumspect about that, I think it’ll have been completely worth it, even ignoring all the useful stuff that’ll come out of it.

Also, off topic, but thanks very much for all the things you make, they’re wonderful.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#477

Post by Meandering » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

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.

Firstly, I'm against corporate welfare and I don't care how people spend their money. But, damn... the people who ushered powered flight into the realm of possibility? That is a ridiculous analogy.

SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are incorporating scientific advancements and modern engineering into an industry that has been making orbital flights for over 50 years. We are not going from horses to cars... We are going from a 1920 Cadillac to a 2021 Toyota. Maybe it's a childhood dream and they have lofty goals to guide humanity into space... or it's a lucrative long-term investment... or a little of both. But, the technology has been there, we've had an active presence in space, and the modern space race will not provide us a huge leap in technology like we saw from the cold war. [1]

Space tourism isn't going to move society forward. The "big picture" benefit of space tourism is reducing the cost of payloads which will continue to drop for NASA and telecommunication demand anyway. Space tourism will not substantially improve the quality of life for humanity, it will not provide breakthrough technology (outside of things like human life support systems), and it will not significantly enrich our collective culture. The median quality of life will not benefit from space activities until they bring us some cheap platinum and other precious materials.

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer... I just hate the romanization of this whole thing.

[1] https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.net/original_images/infogr...

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#478

Post by croes » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #326

croes wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment there are only infrequent rocket launches, if the numbers go up because of space tourism the damage becomes greater, especially if space tourism reaches the price level parent was talking about.

Airplanes are pretty common and don't account for much of the overall pollution. According to the EPA, transport accounts for 29% of total emissions, and of that, only 10% are airplanes. On the other hand 75% comes from cars and trucks. If rockets became commonplace, they would most like replace leisure travel on airplanes and would eliminate car traffic once you arrive at your destination. The CO2 emission of the cu…

Have you considered the secondary effects from higher altitude? Planes have less emissions per passenger and kilometer than cars but the advantage is completely cancelled by secondary effects because of the high altitude.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566

And rockets need special start locations to reduce the amount of fuel to reach the desired altitude, additionally the landing places must be way outside of your flight location, so you need extra transportation to your destination too.

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#479

Post by samstave » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

_moof wrote: post #474

samstave wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I was asking! What would the difference in sensation be for one who is submerged on earth, versus one who is encapsulated in a floating sphere of water...

There’s no buoyancy without weight so it wouldn’t feel like anything until you moved. Then you’d have the same drag forces you would on Earth. It’s unlikely the sphere would stay together very long with nothing to hold it together.

SCUBAG

Is what we need to invent then...

Re: Blue Origin first human flight

#480

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 21, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #461

dang wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads into tedious flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think its more like that the parent comment ultimately 'invited' (and started) this so-called flamewar you are accusing me of. Dismissing the achievements of a certain project to only bring up somebody else's one and promote this clear bias is how flamewars start. I'm only just putting out the fires and celebrating the achievements of every other company competing and launching their rockets into 'space'.

Whatever the objection you have to the GP comment, you took a huge step (several huge steps) further into flamewar with your reply. Not cool; please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you repeatedly about this in the past. Would you please do a better job of sticking to the site guidelines? I don't want to ban you but some of these cases are pretty clear-cut.