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Comment by khazhoux | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this narrative. Does Musk now own the private pursuit of space travel? Was he the one who kickstarted X Prize or SpaceshipOne 20 years ago?

Somehow Musk is a hero for SpaceX but Bezos is a wannabe for Blue Origin? Makes no sense.

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Bezos and Blue Origin have been trying longer than Musk and Spacex but BO still hasn't even gotten to orbit. Of course they are wannabe's. What else would you call them? They wannabe as successful as SpaceX but they are nowhere close on any useful metric.

SpaceX doesn't own space, of course not. But BO isn't even a serious player yet despite 21 years of effort. SpaceX got to orbit on the fourth flight attempt, after 7 years of effort. Despite Bezos' protests to the contrary, it isn't even a contest.

Plenty to not like about Musk, but SpaceX is enormously successful.

Wannabe's is pretty harsh for a group of people that started first and achieved their goals second.

Wannabe's never do the thing. They don't seriously try to do it. I have no reason to defend bezos but people made a serious effort there and they would not be wannabes even if they failed

I'm a wannabe for launching weather balloons and model rockets with my kids from the comfort and security of my well paying public sector job

I appreciate your point. Upon reading my post, I should have limited the term wannabe to Bezos in regards to building a space company. I should never have faulted hard working engineers making a serious effort to accomplish something noble. The fault, as always, is most likely with management.

However, I do not agree with your definition of wannabe. You can seriously try to do something and still be a wannabe. Bezos has seriously tried to do this, but I don't think he can cope with the notion that while he is enormously successful (by many metrics) at Amazon, he may not be the right person to lead a space company.

Webster's definition of wannabe 1 : a person who wants or aspires to be someone or something else or who tries to look or act like someone else 2 : something (such as a company, city, or product) intended to rival another of its kind that has been successful

One aspect is that SpaceX actually succeeded in getting to space (orbit is what counts for the purposes of doing something useful in space or going any further in space, suborbital hops for tourists might technically check the box but is a dead-end) and Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin did not, despite starting earlier, making them at least in part actual "wannabe's" who have the desire to do what SpaceX does, but are not able to (at least for now).

> Was he the one who kickstarted X Prize or SpaceshipOne 20 years ago?

SpaceshipOne's design was a stroke of genius for the purpose of winning a narrowly defined contest. It is, however, a deadend when it comes to the pursuit of space travel: it can't even reach the Kármán line, let alone do any space travel (which requires orbital speeds at the very least), because it doesn't scale up.

My take is that both Musk and Bezos are megalomaniacs. However, Musk at least _appears_ to genuinely care about space travel and it's implications for the future of humanity.

For Bezos, it's just a dick measuring contest (and apparently influences his phallic rocket ship designs).

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