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

Post by relativ575 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #95

sterlind wrote: post #78

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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…

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #128

xoa wrote: post #112

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> They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the first to land vertically. That's not nothing. Sorry, but the McDonnell Douglas DC-X did the rocket straight up & down vertical landing in 1993. New Shepard frankly wasn't particularly different. It went higher and longer sure, but for orbital rocketry the challenge isn't height so much as speed and everything that comes with that. The Falcon 9 flight 20 at th…

> silly little PR stunt The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. What Bezos actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned flight of a totally new rocket design. It was a massive display of faith in his engineering team. Musk didn't do that. Branson didn't do that - and earlier test pilots of his craft died. As for the BO rocket being totally automated, that was the original intent of the Mercury missions,…

Post by zhdc1 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #20

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #5

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Slow and steady wins the race. I'm not counting them out, Bezos is so immensely wealthy that if he wants Blue Origin to succeed then it will succeed.

That is like saying that the meek shall inherit the earth - or what is left of it when the bold have taken all they wanted. Slow and steady is just that, slow. There is a place for it, e.g. when refining an established practice like mining or internal combustion engines. Commercial space exploration is a place where rapid advances can be made by visionary explorers, only once you can buy an off-the-shelf space miniva…

Post by B4CKlash » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #62

B4CKlash wrote: post #50

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This is an incredibly small minded perspective. Difficult challenges require new technologies, new processes and new ways of thinking. More specifically, technologies developed through the race to land on the moon (and space flight generally) are integral to almost every aspect of 'your' life and define what most of us consider human flourishing. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#:~:t..…

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?

Post by T-A » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #19

babesh wrote: post #15

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The US won’t allow that for now because of external competition from China and Russia. That would result in the US losing the current Space Race. EDIT: Probably India as well If SpaceX were Russian, Indian, or Chinese, the US would shit its pants.

There is no "current space race" as far as the US is concerned. Americans put a man on the moon fifty years ago, and no one is worried that China or Russia are going to "gain the high ground" and nuke Washington from orbit. No one cares.