41–50 of 216 posts
An Elon / Jeff space willy-waving contest about who gets to be Space Bro Alpha seems like a net win for humanity
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American Oligarchs are certainly up to more interesting things than Russian ones at the moment!
Is that the new/modern definition of oligarch, or how oligarch is used in US? I dont see how Jeff or Elon are oligarchs in the sense of russian oligarchs.
I was a bit shocked how Jeff Bezos looked in the video [0] in which he invited his brother to go with him. He does not look healthy, even a bit bloated. Does anyone know if he is having health issues? [0] https://www.instagram.com/p/CP0MSOqnYEo/
I was a bit shocked how Jeff Bezos looked in the video [0] in which he invited his brother to go with him. He does not look healthy, even a bit bloated. Does anyone know if he is having health issues? [0] https://www.instagram.com/p/CP0MSOqnYEo/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#/media/File:Jeff_Be...
Doesn't really look that different?
I am somewhat uneducated on the topic but is space tourism a good idea? It is a flight to nowhere which surely has a hefty carbon cost. Doesn't it also add pollutants high up in the atmosphere? As exciting as it is to experience space I could imagine the environment cost is far from ideal.
Regular tourism is far worse.
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The Blue Origin "tourist rocket"[1] uses hydrogen as a fuel and oxygen as an oxidizer, so there are no direct emissions or pollutants. In general you are of course right. The top 1% will slightly increase their already large carbon footprint by a small amount. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Shepard
How many emissions and pollutants came from refining the hydrogen and oxygen though?
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Regular tourism is far worse.
Regular tourism is bad, but rocket tourism is a new kind of bad because it puts pollutants in the upper atmosphere and we really don't know what the effects of that will be. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-air-poll...
I mean it would look bad if he wasn't aboard, wouldn't it? "Pay lots of money for my space ride [that I'm not going to actually go on myself]"
I don't know, does it look bad for Elon Musk to not go on SpaceX private flights? I would say it doesn't change much.
Similarly Branson would be expected to have a go on his space tourism thing once it opens up to the public.
I am somewhat uneducated on the topic but is space tourism a good idea? It is a flight to nowhere which surely has a hefty carbon cost. Doesn't it also add pollutants high up in the atmosphere? As exciting as it is to experience space I could imagine the environment cost is far from ideal.
Generally it drives practical use cases, has a clear revenue model (which is really, really important to keep any complex financial and technical project honest) and drives popular demand for "space" in general. Having rich and famous tweeting orbital and translunar updates would do more for image of space travel than 50 years of science fiction and state advertising combined.
For example, low gravity has lots of well documented side effects. Even though short term microgravity is not too bad, having a constant stream of rich people travel there will create more demand for space medicine, which will probably drive innovation to improve the lot of all space travelers long term.
Launching stuff to orbit will have a carbon cost. And it should be tallied. But it's a cost we have to pay ANYWAY to become an interstellar species.
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They have done many successful flights. They just don’t have the marketing skills of someone like a Spacex.
BO has completed 15 test flights over 6 years of a platform that bears little comparison with SpaceX's achievements. Each BO test I've watched has been very well presented and seemingly marketed - it's just that at this point, frankly, what they're doing is of less interest than that what SpaceX has accomplished.
The rationale for getting into the game seemed more like, "Well, this space thing seems like an emerging market, and we can't be a true monopoly unless we have a tentacle in it, too."
