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The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

newyorker.com

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Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#11

Post by mc32 »

bigtones wrote: post #2

Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.

There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry!

It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed getting out, shuts the door and it goes back up the ramp.

It's all fakery.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#12

Post by krapp »

ragnot wrote: post #4
bigtones wrote: post #2

Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.

As much as I hate to admit it, "ego" has driven so much innovation in space that it was probably inevitable that something like this would happen.

The egos of the rich fuel the engine of civilization, and the blood of the poor grease its wheels.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#13

Post by dboreham »

mc32 wrote: post #11
bigtones wrote: post #2

Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.

There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry! It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed get…

Also those shows where they view three houses, then buy one, all in the same week : in reality the producers find someone who has just bought a house, then they make the show using that house and two other random houses, and lo and behold they find a house they like!

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#14

Post by ncallaway »

s5300 wrote: post #10

Wow. Despite his ever growing amount of haters, Musk & Co. do really seem to be placing safety fairly high up on their priority list, if not at the top where Musk says it is. Branson... does not particularly seem to be doing so. I'm unaware if he's ever repeatedly claimed safety is Virgins top priority though. Wonder how things go down in Bezos land.

I think Blue Origin has appeared from the outside to be pretty safety focused.

Blue Origin had 15 successful unmanned test flights of the New Shepard program before launching Jeff and the other astronauts.

That's a very extensive test launch regime to conduct of a rocket.

Of course Blue Origin is very closed off (especially compared to SpaceX), so it's harder to gauge how much internal weight they put on safety.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#15

Post by HPsquared »

krapp wrote: post #12
ragnot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hate to admit it, "ego" has driven so much innovation in space that it was probably inevitable that something like this would happen.

The egos of the rich fuel the engine of civilization, and the blood of the poor grease its wheels.

I think it's a bigger category: the egos of the powerful. The rich are a subset.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#16

Post by dchest »

mc32 wrote: post #11
bigtones wrote: post #2

Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.

There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry! It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed get…

Biking to the spaceport was in the promotional video released a few days before the flight (where they announced "astronauts"), obviously it couldn't be filmed on the flight day.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#17

Post by belter »

mc32 wrote: post #11
bigtones wrote: post #2

Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.

There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry! It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed get…

That was not the only fakery :-)

At correct time: https://youtu.be/H6EbDCxotdg?t=488

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#19

Post by ElFitz »

s5300 wrote: post #10

Wow. Despite his ever growing amount of haters, Musk & Co. do really seem to be placing safety fairly high up on their priority list, if not at the top where Musk says it is. Branson... does not particularly seem to be doing so. I'm unaware if he's ever repeatedly claimed safety is Virgins top priority though. Wonder how things go down in Bezos land.

A funny thought.

Given - how easy it supposedly would be to find someone to bribe with the inheritance one would get from someone like Bezos and Branson, - how many people work on getting these rockets into space and those men back - how complex and fragile rockets are - how dangerous the whole endeavour is commonly believed to be - that they both came back alive

Can we assume that all these murder mystery tv shows and movies have lied to us all along?

Unless falling victim to convoluted plots to murder rich relatives for the inheritance only happens to the rich but not the ultra-rich?

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#20

Post by BitwiseFool »

Let's hope Elon Musk gets cold feet and doesn't fly on that ship. SpaceShipTwo is a pretty atrocious design, safety-wise, compared to what you can accomplish with a capsule and vertical rocket for suborbital spaceflight.

https://www.space.com/elon-musk-will-fly-on-virgin-galactic

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