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Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

arstechnica.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#91

Post by xgbi »

justahuman74 wrote: post #88
starik36 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the first to land vertically. That's not nothing. BE-4 has been delayed, true, but if it were looking like a failure, ULA would have dropped them a long time ago. I think 2022 will clear up lots of things for everyone. SLS, BE-4, New Glenn, etc... Till then there is no sense of dooming anything.

Blue's landing is not in the same league as SpaceX's orbital re-entry landing

> *near-orbital re-entry

The first stage is far from orbital velocities when it reaches MECO and starts down, even though I strongly agree with you: SpaceX is in an entire other league.

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#92

Post by zamadatix »

dillondoyle wrote: post #66
mastrsushi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more to do with lack of social engagement. It's not difficult to figure out how to refresh your accounts comment page.

Maybe selfishly some clout at play too? I don't think sub comments add to profile upvote scores.

I think they count, never really checked specifically though and the karma system isn't exactly spelled out in detail anywhere. I'm pretty sure your downvotes to the parent and children of a comment you make don't count though - or at least I read that a few times while looking into the site initially.

I bumped your comment up, if you want to find out I should be able to un-up it once you check your current number... if I remember to refresh my comment history ;).

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#95

Post by tsimionescu »

sterlind wrote: post #78
tayo42 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies are just trying to shoot rockets further then each other. They're not science pr research companies. We're not learning more about space and the universe thanks to the them. What spin off tech have we gotten from them?

Starlink? But these companies (well, at least SpaceX) have their focus on making orbit cheap and sustainable, and pushing towards Mars colonization and asteroid mining. Those are engineering and logistics problems more than science problems, but I think they're very important.

Those are all ways to squander the Earth's limited resources while sounding forward thinking. Colonizing Mars will likely never happen, there is simply no upside: huge challenges, with no interesting resources. The Earth has plenty of space, we're limited by resources, and there are no interesting resources on Mars. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we'll have a colony outside the solar system before a colony on Mars.

Asteroid mining is more plausible, but still extremely unlikely given our current technology. There are massive hurdles, and few things that would massively improve life on Earth - it's much more interesting from a profit perspective than a future of humanity perspective.

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#96

Post by tsimionescu »

marcinzm wrote: post #77
pmoriarty wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SpaceX is a functioning business that actually launches things into space at a lower cost than competitors." This might actually lead to a greatly increased risk of creating an impenetrable field of space junk if the thousands more satellites that SpaceX launches collide in to one another. If that happens expect SpaceX supporters to start singing a different tune.

SpaceX is launching its own internet satellites into low orbit so their satellites will only burn up in a decade without boosting. If your argument is "don't progress or change in any way because something bad might happen" then I suspect you'll find few takers on this site.

Collisions in LEO launch debris in all orbits, they are not limited to LEO. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX will turn out to be the reason we won't be able to explore space at all for a few hundred years.

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#97

Post by kiba »

krapp wrote: post #10
pmoriarty wrote: post #7

Why can't they cooperate instead of compete? It's not like they don't already have all the money they'd ever need or could use, and wouldn't the world be better off if they worked together than against each other?

[flagged]

Elon Musk gave Jeff Bezos advice on building rockets, which Bezos flatly rejected. He also hoped that Bezos work on Blue Origin or otherwise Bezos will die before he gets anywhere.

Of course, Musk also mocks Blue Origin.

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#98

Post by hobofan »

Kinrany wrote: post #72
inglor_cz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be better if C, Java and Rust were integrated into a single überlanguage with one central committee to drive further development? From a layman's perspective, an idea like that would make superficial sense; they are all programming languages, after all. From a programmer's perspective, that would be a nightmare. I think the companies are so far apart that extensive technical cooperation would slow them both…

> Would it be better if C, Java and Rust were integrated into a single überlanguage with one central committee to drive further development? Yes! They need different runtimes, but there's a lot of infractructure they could have been reusing. It's a shame we have a couple dozen language silos that have to reinvent everything.

You mean like Rust (and Zig initially) building on top of LLVM? Or like the dozen languages that coexist on top of the JVM?

Rarely does a new language build everything from scratch, and the parts they build new are often progress.

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#99

Post by Arrath »

meepmorp wrote: post #80
elif wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget orbit, SpaceX has paid for it's ISS contract about 3x in savings over Soyuz. Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now.

> Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now. You're not optimizing for the same outcomes as Congress. NASA is a jobs agency.

A 'jobs agency' that has produced a whole lot of technical advancements, maybe.

Re: Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX

#100

Post by [deleted] »

xgbi wrote: post #91
justahuman74 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue's landing is not in the same league as SpaceX's orbital re-entry landing

> *near-orbital re-entry The first stage is far from orbital velocities when it reaches MECO and starts down, even though I strongly agree with you: SpaceX is in an entire other league.

[deleted]
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