Blue Origin first human flight
blueorigin.com
blueorigin.com
It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.
If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.
Then they'd just need to get environmentally-friendly methane production going and we can all be a bit happier.
If Starship manages to hit the price and performance targets Musk has set for it (~$2 million/launch[1], max of 1000 passengers[2]) you could get a ticket to orbit for around $2000. Throw in some extra for profit margin, a stay at an orbital space hotel, and a few additional expenses, and it might well be possible to take a vacation in space for less than $10k.
I really hope that happens within my lifetime; it'd be amazing to experience.
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/06/elon-musk-says-spacexs-sta...
[2]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1144004310503530496
10k in space will get you what?
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Random thought:
If they were able to get enough water into space such that one could swim through a sphere of water in a weightless environment, what would the sensation of being encapsulated in water while weightless feel like (clearly needing scuba or some other air connection..)
The construction of a massive space port in one of the more desolate places in America is a pretty damn good starting point. Doesn't take a magician to round that out with an airport, hotels, convention centers, restaurants, etc. I believe there is already an uptick in real estate on South Padre Island and talks about some bridge to better connect the island.
I haven't done the math, but it seems like Starship is potentially an incredibly cheap heavy lift rocket even in total or partial expendable modes, e.g if SpaceX fails to realize their full reusability goals. At this point, I think BO and others are only falling further behind.
"Launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, slightly earlier than the original announcement of the fourth quarter of this year. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for three days, flying in an orbit at the same inclination as the International Space Station — 51.6 degrees — but in an orbit as high as 540 kilometers, more than 100 kilometers above the station."
In 2000, Dennis Tito paid $20M for 11,400 minutes in space or about $1750/minute ($2765 in 2021 dollars). The Branson and Bezos models 20 years later are much more expensive per minute and are so short there is no real time to absorb the experience.
My version would have blackjack and hookers, obviously.
I absolutely dont care about Bezos or Branson being able to do these stunts - SpaceX already docked with the IIS ffs.
It's like McClaren winning the Gran Prix, and then Toyota and Ford showing that their CEOs can finish a few laps in Monaco.
I would say some would but keep in mind that a few other things have to come together.
a) Willing to take the risk (non trivial example I would not do this no chance)
b) Your family/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend has to buy into the risk even if it's just you going into the orbit.
c) Potential negative publicity as in 'look how they are spending their money' since early adopters would most likely be publicized in some way.
d) Guilt maybe spending millions for a trivial short ride vs. other things you can spend money on.
Keep in mind with 'd' other things are considered more acceptable and have social proof. This seems (to me anyway) the ultimate extravagance and I am wondering if there is the classic difference between what people say they would do if given the chance and what they would actually do.
i suspect the market will be less corporate leaders and more the family of corporate leaders (and saudi royals)
Now, the US military, on the other hand? Starship as a somewhat-disposable space truck makes a lot of sense. Then it comes down to how cheaply SpaceX can manufacture the things.
A ballistic point-to-point tragectory is an orbit which intersects the surface.
We've had tourism that blows all these attempts into irrelevance, for thousands of years.
Take 5 grams.
Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to the obvious feud with Jeff Bezos, I know he is friends with Richard.
So, Alan Shepard would not be the first American in space? Gus Grissom's first flight wouldn't count, either? I'm all for making a distinction between space tourists and astronauts; but, I don't know if orbiting the Earth is the distinction. (Yes, I know Shepard and Grissom orbited the Earth on subsequent space flights; but,those first flights have to count for something.)
Saying that someone has to orbit the Earth or do something while in space in order to be an astronaut seems like changing the definition. That would mean Shepard wouldn't become an astronaut for another 10 years. (Of course, then he would be in a very select group of astronauts, because he had walked on the moon.)
These are both neat but the billionaire pissing contest nature of it really cheapens it. Blue Origin originally rushed out and crowed about 'beating' SpaceX in (I think) launch and land reusability and now Branson rushing out to beat Bezos to barely cross into space. I'd honestly thought the whole Virgin Galactic thing had been quietly canned years ago because nothing was happening till there was this little race.
The booster landing looks pretty amazing. The capsule landing went without a problem. The deceleration when the braking chutes deployed looks a bit fast, from 205mph to 150mph in couple seconds. Must be hard on the body.
Edit: Ok, in the post-flight briefing, they mentioned that they didn't anticipate the 5G deceleration on descent and it was pretty hard. Must be when the braking chute was deployed.
Retrorockets fire immediately prior to impact to cushion the blow, but it's still a hard jolt.
The acceleration on New Shepard is much lower and even the max acceleration experienced during landing should be in the same ballpark of <2 g but only once and for a very brief period of time only compared to the vomit comet.
This could be a factor for some people.
I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super underwhelming.
I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending money the way they want. I splurge on things sometimes as well. Unlike a lot of modern social media, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about being wealthy.
If someone has an argument about what these specific people did that was specifically immoral to achieve their wealth, then they should call that out specifically and suggest a systemic change.
I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
And I say all this even not being a fan of the way Bezos has sometimes falsely claimed credit for “firsts” that were not really firsts, like when they landed a rocket (propulsive landing) while pretending that SpaceX had not done so in a much more challenging way already.
maybe it's the fact that a small school's population of people own 60% of all wealth on earth that gives these vanity shows of wealth a bad taste in their mouths.
To rephrase: I felt that the entire flight was a bit underwhelming, and that it felt more like an amusement park ride (with a very expensive ticket price) than an actual spaceflight with astronauts, even though it was communicated that way.
Why?
Is it ok if I deride people who molest their own kids? I mean, it's how they choose to spend their time, who am I to judge right?
The way society works is by deciding collectively what's ok, and that's decided based on people's tastes.
My tastes are that no small group of people should have power over large groups of people without their ongoing consent. Any system that isn't like that is garbage and anyone interested in power over other people is human garbage.
Today's society is wage slavery in developed countries, colonialism and barbarism everywhere else - it is garbage and anyone with a modicum of power doing anything but attempting to change the status quo is clueless or human garbage.
Why would wage slaves not resent their masters, or people colonized, not resent colonialists? Anything but deep resentment and derision is surprising, frankly.
It's nowhere near orbit. Orbit is about 10km of delta-v, then there's the reentry problem.
Reaching the Karman line is about 2km of delta-v.
I very much doubt Blue Origin intends to freeze rocket development after this launch.
Blue Origin now has a successful manned flight under their belt, and a revenue stream.
While it might surprise some here, Amazon started by selling just books...
It feels like similar attitude comments on that would have been "They'll never compete with Walmart. Real retail stores sell all kinds of things."
You don't need to go all the way around to have a story. Low earth orbit is apparently around 84 minutes per revolution. There's a lot of space in the middle for ballistic orbits of 5-15 minutes, right?
We got in a rocket in Texas and had a light dinner on a yacht off Morocco 90 minutes later.
The first private manned suborbital flight occurred in 2004 with SpaceShipOne. It is 17 years later at this point and only now do we have paying customers for sub-orbital flight.
The gap between the Wright Brothers' first flight and Apollo 11 was about 66 years. (I realize aircraft and spacecraft are not very similar).
I think almost everyone interested in space flight back then would be pretty disappointed by the slow pace of development since Apollo, until things picked up recently.
I also suspect the pool of people willing to pony up $250k+ for a few minutes barely in space is going to be pretty shallow. I'd sign up in a heartbeat for a space hotel trip in that price range though, so here's hoping Axiom Space delivers (and gets the price range below the current projection of tens of millions).
The person who won that seat didn't actually end up going on the first flight (will go on a later one). Some 18 year old with a dad who runs a hedge fund went. How much he paid was not disclosed.
Also, SpaceX knows how to put on a show. In comparison this felt like an amateur video. (not to diminish the mission itself, just how it was filmed).
Also yeah they do also just barely make it to what the US had somewhat arbitrarily defined as space in the case of Branson's company.
Blue Origin landed their booster 23 Nov 2015. SpaceX landed their first booster 21 Dec 2015.
It really is apples and oranges until BO or VG gets to orbit. Rocket Lab is likely much closer to orbital booster re-use than BO or VG are.
Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and landing horizontally was also done in 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
However, i'm glad BlueOrigin did this and had a successful launch/landing. It certainly helps inspire others and is good for the industry as a whole.
Given Bezo's bank account, you don't think you could put together a team to get a rocket into space?
Let's be realistic, no one person built this or any other rocket. Apart from Money, and perhaps short/bald man complex, Bezo contributed little overall. Yet all of the media has been about Bezos going into space.
When Richard Branson came along to steal his thunder with the SpaceShipTwo launch just before him, Bezo showed his colors by dismissing the achievement as not "real space". I have doubt Bezos is still salty about it and planning to get back at him.
IMO, none of these billionaires should be celebrated for these achievements. We should be celebrating the people who put them there but those individuals receive almost no mention.
It reminds me of what might happen on a tourist experience in Bali, where they have you hold a big spear and take a photo for Instagram as if you were a tribal hunter. I would take the Blue Origin flight if it was free, but I would wish they would treat me honestly: as a random schlub who knows how to sit in a seat and smile.
Max altitude of about 100km? Alan Eustance managed half that with a balloon, and then he jumped out of his capsule like Master Chief and fell back to Earth.
They're planning to build a moon rover in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Three rivers, some department stores, a couple abandoned steel mills, more bridges than they can afford to maintain, and a mission control center.
I'm generally in favor of more people being involved in space technology and space travel; I still consider it a long-term existential need. But about this, it's just, kinda... Step it up or step out, Bezos.
It is nice to live in an era where this accomplishment feels mundane, though.
So much negativity in this whole topic, IMO due to Bezos's involvement.
Space is hard technically, politically, financially, so the more entrants in the space race the better. Every space program, government or private, has started off small and built on what they learn.
... but since we live in the era where multiple agencies have already done that, it's possible Bezos's dollars would be better spent on combined efforts with one of the front-runners to do something more ambitious than yet another capsule to high-altitude ballistic flight.
You know that NASA and other countries have been flying rockets and sending people and things to space before SpaceX, yes?
Translation: 'Other private companies building their own rockets and going into space is 'not good enough' unless it is by SpaceX' and doesn't count.
To SpaceX fanatics and downvoters: I'm sure you are deep fanatics of SpaceX but surely you have the funds and deep pockets to join Musk and friends on a space mission together right now? If not, just continue to watch livestreams of others going into space then.
It should not be just down to ONE company. Commercial space flight is going to get allot cheaper with the existence of more competitors and that should be welcomed. Even SpaceX welcomes this and so should you.
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'.
The excitement and noise over suborbital flight is good, but in terms of achievement, Blue origin has yet to deliver on their major promises. I have confidence they will get there, but credit where credit is due, Spacex is getting it done.
Maybe Electron and Virgin Orbit are in the race, but these hop 100km (or 80!) up and about 5 miles downrange are nowhere near the same league.
Especially since blue origin has a design that can scale up quickly, as SpaceX did with falcon 1 to 9
For myriad reasons Blue can't just "scale up quickly" in any meaningful way from NS to New Glenn, hence why it's going to take them 8+ years between the first NS and first NG launches. Being realistic about this is not cynical and negative.
Bezos is smart and talented... but it's hard to overcome a lead like that.
Sure, he studied electrical engineering in the 80s, but I don't think that's going to help Blue Origin catch up with it's main competitor.
https://twitter.com/Charly923407591/status/14162863209561210...
Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project -> ????? -> normal people
(some steps omitted for brevity)
Even in smaller time frames, I read somewhere that one of Bezos' plans is to move manufacturing into space.
And if/when we do get colonies on other planets and moons, some people would want to live there.
I am also sure that you could do cool sports events on the moon or a big space station.
The wealthy early adopters provide the capital to refine and scale up the industry to make it practical and affordable for less wealthy late adopters.
Virgin Galactic is an expensive carnival ride and has nothing close to orbital capability.
For those that don't know: getting to orbit (let alone beyond) requires way more delta-V (energy) than getting past the Karman line. The German V-2 is (I think) the first vehicle to do that, but it was nowhere even near orbit capable. The first photo from space was done by the USA with a captured and modified V-2.
With government-sponsored exploration, you at least ended up with public research and development that resulted in spinoffs that are useful on land. With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret.
Also, when it comes to 'hard problems', physics is pretty predictable. Humanity has all kinds of social problems, which I'd argue are harder than these tech problems. For example, we'd have the capacity to eliminate hunger if it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that.
Hunger is basically a non-issue in all developed nations. See all the gray and purple nations on this map. In the US, for example, deaths from malnutrition are ~,1% of all deaths annually. Any money the billionaires might put into it would be better spent on traffic safety, reducing cardiovascular diseases, or researching cancer, and those are all by several orders of magnitude. https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrit...
Also, aid sent to the countries that do have hunger problems (like much of sub-Saharan Africa) has simply crashed their agricultural economy, making the issue even worse. Local farmers can't really compete with free, after all.
And you (the public) pay for it. With the Musk's of the world paying, the gov has more money for social causes.
If the public can't consistently support these kind of projects without constantly threatening their budgets, maybe they are better in the hands of private benefactors that value them.
> it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that
How can they help? There's enough money to eliminate hunger and keep billionaires. Hunger isn't just about who has money, it's about who could have money and maintain it.
Much of what is developed is in the public domain. Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove out.
The satellite of industries that develops to support space flight is also not affected by whether the fights they're supporting are private vs government, and neither are the skills developed by the engineers working these projects.
Private also has one distinct advantage: it can be self-sustaining, in being managed by an owner with a strong stake in the venture as a business unit.
- 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 than Musk. Taxation brings in more money, and is a much fairer way to contribute to these problems.
- the government is more empowered to deal with social issues. There are some things a private corp/citizen cannot do, at least without government approval anyway. The issues being tackled here are mainly engineering, that is "free" to solve. The items that they would "better" to fix are highly political, with a heavy side of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
- throwing money at something can make it worse. A pipedream has no metrics that could prove this, so they can always be optimistic. When a "clothe the poor" drive kills local tailoring businesses, for example.
- Billionaires pay taxes, usually more than most (generally, though they have more leverage to bargain for lower taxes. unfair? sure, but that's global free trade gets you). What remains is income - why should they fix the problems government could, but won't?
- A major component of this is envy/belittling effort (Musk looks too happy in PR pics, so he's "playing around") or belittling the goal (spaceflight is useless) - i.e. grievance from the ignorant. There are a bajillion "useless" pastimes and occupations relative to some rando's pet social cause, yet billionaires are easy individual targets when everyone is equally to blame - at least Musk probably works hard.
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.
I always thought that Amazon was just the way to make his space dream possible.
But are they "hard" problems to solve? Most of the projects Gates takes on have already been solved in the developed world. He's primarily trying to distribute those successes to the developing world.
In any case, we can have both: rich people building the tech of tomorrow, and rich people trying to apply existing tech to the underserved. Both are good; both have utility.
Jeff Bezos' company has contributed significantly to the problem, I get his plan is to manufacture things in space, but who is that really designed to benefit.
The real hard thing to do would be to invest his personal billions into the issue, today.
Theses newcomers have drawn in attention and effort and are trying to reframe space as a business being funded by revenue - which has trade offs but in general is a positive development. The really challenging work without the glamor is still being down by the scientists and research agencies with the government. I do tip my hats to the accomplishments of all three of the new comer organizations. I just dispute that the narrative that they are driving the future. I think they are complementary.
To be clear - they don't have enough money to "solve" space exploration - it takes deeper capital than they have - though they are bringing a new business model to potentially stretch their capital deployments.
Privatization helps because NASA cannot afford failures today, but private companies can. And since space is a new and risky frontier, failures will happen. That's why I believe that privatization is a good thing overall
Hasn't Branson essentially cashed out of Virgin Galactic for a huge payday? Even his flight was just a stunt to sell 500 million in stock.
These two flights were ~60mi altitude. The ISS, for reference, is at 250mi. We've launched people there more than a hundred times, never mind having to put it there in the first place. The moon, which we landed and recovered people from in 1969, is 240,000mi away.
This is a hobby project, which is totally fine in that it's their money to spend, and it's kind of neat that we can generate enough wealth that private individuals could even imagine doing this, but let's not dress it up as more than that.
Edit: Musk/SpaceX is definitely in a different category. That actually seems to be shooting for space exploration, which is pretty neat, though I still think there are earthly priorities that we'd see much higher ROI from.
Not everyone agrees.
(Posted by many others, but this is what made the front page)
Update 1: Successful booster touchdown (admittedly, they probably had a lot larger fuel budget than orbital launches)
Update 2: Successful touchdown of capsule
Congrats to Blue Origin for success in tossing people through space!
That booster isn't capable of orbital launches.
I see this take a lot, and I strongly disagree.
These launches are marketing events for their space tourism businesses! The billionaire CEOs go up to prove they personally trust the tech is safe. If they won't go, who else would?
Now they can start selling trips to paying customers, and hopefully build genuinely sustainable space tourism businesses. The fairly minimal experience of these short jumps will be improved gradually, and that future is impossible to predict, as it is completely novel territory.
Okay, so these launches aren't amusement rides for billionaires, they are marketing stunts to advertise amusement rides for other billionaires? Hard to see the difference tbh
And like all things, the price will go down. Not as fast as I'd like for these specific crafts, but they seemed like a good target at the time their development began.
Democratization of space FTW!
straight up, no. they're using your tax dollars because they aren't taxed
How would different taxation policies prevent Bezos from spending a very modest share of his wealth on what he wants to do? He has $204 billion. What he has done with Blue Origin can be replicated for 1-3% of that.
Is the plan to take 99% of the Bezos fortune through government confiscation and forced sales of Amazon stock? I ask because only a small number of nations have ever behaved with that level of brutality toward private wealth, all were - without exception - totalitarian genocide machines with zero human rights. How about we not keep repeating the mistakes of the past.
Even Scandinavia - the region that arguably created the highest standard of living in world history - would never dare to behave that way toward private wealth (Scandinavia is overflowing with billionaires and adores private wealth). Nor would Germany or France.
What's the premise then, no fun if you're rich? Which board of comrades is going to be responsible for dictating who gets to do what? Are we abolishing the bourgeois, 20th century style? I think I've read this story before. There's only one way to prevent someone like Bezos from doing Blue Origin, only one approach politically that can be utilized to accomplish that (skeptics will argue there are utopian approaches to mass property confiscation that are humane; there aren't, once you uncork that genie, extreme violence and genocide always follow).
So if you've got $N wealth, you're not allowed to own a boat. If you've got over $1 million you're not allowed to fly in a plane for fun or convenience, nor may you experiment with creating new types of planes.
Perhaps if you've got over $250,000 you may not experiment with new types of technology period. That includes software and hardware. No fun for you. I say so. I have decided to draw the line there and my Socialist board of comrades will enforce it. I have no interest in only restricting the fun Bezos is allowed to have, it should be taken to its logical conclusion, so everybody gets to enjoy how the system will really work in the end.
We can tax billionaires so that they pay their fair share for the public resources they use without it going full gulag.
I had to catch myself as, at first, I was thinking “10 minutes? That’s it? And in space for a lot less than that?”. Quickly reminded myself that in the history of the world hardly anyone has gone where they have gone - 10 minutes isn’t much, but if I could I would.
Is it though? I don't see how.
I just saw four pretty regular people - including one I believe subbed in at the last minute - take a trip and it cost a fraction of what it used to. The high price tag means it’s still nowhere near accessible to most people as flying in a plane or taking a train, but it’s a lot more accessible than it was when I was a kid, and by the time my kids are adults it is likely to be more than just a pipe dream.
I still remember what it was like to catch a plane for the first time and how I would count the number of trips I would take on a plane because it was just so outside my normal experience. Maybe one of my kids will have a chance to feel the same way about flying to space.
If these companies were making breakthroughs in making space long term habitable I’d be excited. But I’m yet to see that.
That not the case. Suborbital space flight of the model BO or Virgin do is, but that simply not generally true.
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...
I'm curious if it's a hat that means something to him for some reason.
I could understand if they did it for Wally Funk, as she actually did the training back in the day, but the rest?
When rich people were allowed in the ISS they were called "tourists", which is befitting.
In "The Right Stuff", there is discussion on this topic, initially trapeeze artists were thought to be the ideal personnel for the space program due to the high dynamic forces they routinely experience. Another opinion being considered was to use death row prisoners. Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view.
I suspect that decision making process was dramatized in The Right Stuff. Test pilots make sense for several reasons: they already understand aeronautical concepts, are used to g-forces, have experience with state of the art machines, have a high risk tolerance, and are already familiar with following orders.
They were trained (not as well trained as NASA astronauts, but still trained well enough for such a short mission)
They were equipped with whatever equipments they needed for this flight.
They were deployed by a human spaceflight program.
So by definition, shouldn't they classify as "astronauts"?
I think w0de0 got to the heart of the matter (elsewhere in this thread) with their comment about astronauts being associated with public service. That rings true for me as to the source of the insult.
This is all about poking at Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic cleared 80km, which is the height that earns you astronaut wings in the USA. Blue Origin clears the Kármán line (100km), which is the internationally recognized standard for human spaceflight. So they're digging in hard on, "Jeff Bezos has been to space, Richard Branson hasn't," in an effort to imply that Virgin Galactic's flight from earlier this month doesn't count, theirs is the real first.
noun a person who is trained to travel in a spacecraft.
They were trained, and they traveled in a spacecraft.
This is such a historical moment and this is what people are focusing on?
What difference does it really make to you or to anyone? Who the hell really cares?
And this is the top comment here. Come on people. Enjoy things for a change.
I leave all of that aside, and agree with you on egalitarian and emotional grounds. The term in America rightly has implications of public service - of deserving the fantastically unique opportunity of exploring space on behalf of all Americans by virtue of intelligence, diligence, and impeccable ethics. Topically, this might be compared to Olympians: though all extreme athletes perform extraordinary feats, Olympians carry an extra responsibility to represent us as a nation. So too with people called "astronauts."
Whether or not one agrees with this understanding, I believe it is the practical understanding underlying your (and my) insult at the use of this term.
When you reach a certain threshold of wealth, you get access to an unbelievably efficient PR machine and you can become basically whatever the hell you want and rewrite reality to suit your imagination. Hell, you'll even get people to believe it and ruthlessly defend your reality.
There will be some shakeup in the is there clearly is a different between the type of astronaut that is trained to do experiments in space and repair a space station, and somebody who just sits in his seat and lets the space-craft fly.
I'm thinking that there should be plenty of incentive here for billionaires: it's conceivable that whoever gets there (where? I don't know) first will be running the show in 50 or 100 or 500 years. There are worse bets for establishing your legacy.
Why does it matter who does it though? It’s a great achievement and could lead to great things. I’d much rather people like Bezos were spending money on this than mansions, supercars, and other crap that doesn’t benefit anyone.
Right? I don't get the guy's appeal. Yes, SpaceX and Tesla are doing neat things and I love that. But Musk is literally the last person I want to hear from, or about. Despite all the cool stuff Tesla is doing, he really makes me not want to buy anything from Tesla ever just because he's associated with it. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I really can't stand the guy.
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure "sluggish" is an adverb I would use to describe space launches.
It's not even clear to me that that is their objective.
These sub-orbital flights are not interesting - scientifically nor engineeringly.
Though as far as I know, the Crew Dragon vehicle has been new every launch, with re-used Dragons being used for future missions. I don't know if this was the first flight of that particular New Shepard Crew Capsule though.
So many ways that this could have been an ego / company boosting event and it was not.
Branson, take note.
Always check the fine print.
Private people, even if billionaires for now, starting to pop into space as a routine occurrence looks to me like very early days of aviation, and we all know the explosive development after that.
Cool experience for the first few people, but once everyone has been there, it is just a vomit comet to nowhere for the price of a car -- sort of like the world's most uncomfortable cruise ship.
As an FYI: the Concorde wasn't actually all that nice inside -- food was excellent, but unless you really needed the extra 3-4 hours, first class conventional was a much nicer trip.
New Shepard can kind of be thought of as a prototype of the second stage to their new (bigger) rocket, New Glenn.
Blue Origin is a serious company and New Shepard is greatly overly engineered for joyrides. That's because the goal of Blue Origin and New Shepard is bigger than just space tourism.
Can this sub-orbital model scale in such a way to have, say, 60 minutes of weightlessness? Or is the "straight up, straight down" model such that sub-orbital flight has a cap at 4?
Practically speaking, if you have enough thrust and delta-v to achieve a suborbital flight of more than a few tens of minutes, you also have the ability to reach orbit, so why bother?
Just to make it official, they should have two circular blast deflectors, on opposite sides of the gantry.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27894728.
So I have no qualms about having "engineer" in my job title, even if I still view myself as a programmer (I'm still not accustomed to having "senior" in my job title even though I've been a programmer longer than some of the readers of this comment have been alive).
Edit: That being said, depending on who I am talking to it ranges from "I do computers" to "I am a computer programmer", and very rarely use "engineer" unless I am referring to my actual degree (BSCpE).
The B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science are actually amongst those degrees that allow you to call yourself an engineer. If I remember correctly, my diploma specifically says "This diploma permits you to use the job title 'engineer'." (loosely translated).
Of course, the legal definitions are unrelated to whether or not it's sensible to use that title. Honestly, I think it depends on the kind of programming you're doing. If you're designing new systems, for example, it seems to fit.
Granted in my job it's so strict/refined... tech designs, unit/visual regression testing/QA/TA that sort of thing... it's not like I can just write code on the fly/release it out there without it going through the tests and several people.
I'm definitely not the caliber of a developer that thinks of tasks in Log N or something. Least path algos and what not I'm a typical dev and I'm alright with that ultimately I am a tinkerer and end goal is FIRE.
Are you using math to plan capacities and growth rates?
Do you push your services to 1000k+ QPS of sustained traffic to see how it handles or falls over?
Are you developing DR scenarios and training people and performing live exercises? Designing systems to fail open or closed appropriately, to gracefully handle missing dependencies, not cause a thundering herd upon restart, etc.?
Are you performing security analysis, STRIDE, etc.?
Is your data model active-active, have redundantly striped caching, and use vector clock consolidation, consensus?
This skill set is software engineering. It's not configuring a Drupal or Wordpress install.
Don't downplay it.
Great , but now can you guys do something about reducing human suffering due to climate change? Like potentially developing technologies for sucking off CO2 and other harmful gases off our atmosphere? Or how about cancer cure or anti aging or something that helps humanity?
It's named after Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut to fly in space.
SpaceX is definitely a lot further down the road, and what Blue Origin is doing currently is much easier. The energies involved in suborbital flights are much lower, and the fact that the rocket has a thrust-to-weight ratio low enough that it can hover makes the landing process a lot simpler.
Obviously an orbital class booster is a different challenge than a suborbital booster, but the idea that Blue is copying SpaceX is just wrong.
Four dingbats going for a 10min joyride in a mobile lounge strapped onto a dick-shaped rocket.
Still, I'm all for billionaires pursuing daft dreams like this rather than just buying big yachts like Larry Ellison, or not much of anything like Bill Gates. At least Bezos is putting on a mildly entertaining show for us to watch.
So if the mafia did it, it'd be fine because government didn't pay for it? I'm not saying that Bezos is a mafioso, but this is a false dichotomy. There are also good reasons to think that all "legal" businesses aren't legit and with litttle political oversight, maybe the profit of giant companies like Amazon shouldn't be deemed 100% deserved.
This comment is related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27893518