[HN Gopher] Blue Origin first human flight
___________________________________________________________________
Blue Origin first human flight
Author : squarefoot
Score : 205 points
Date : 2021-07-20 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.blueorigin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.blueorigin.com)
| sega_sai wrote:
| Obviously everybody (Branson/Bezos) is entitled to spend their
| cash in whatever way they want. But, if they are making a
| spectacle of it, publicise it and promote it like some big
| achievement, then those people should be prepared to take some
| criticism. And in my opinion, I see the last two launches as
| indeed amusement rides for billionaires and a strong argument for
| better taxation policies. In contrary, what Musk does with SpaceX
| ( and I'm not a fan of Musk as a person), can be classified as
| technological development as he actually sends satellites,
| deliveries to ISS.
| animalgonzales wrote:
| > Obviously everybody (Branson/Bezos) is entitled to spend
| their cash in whatever way they want.
|
| straight up, no. they're using your tax dollars because they
| aren't taxed
| thehappypm wrote:
| Most billionaires build mansions and buy islands and offshore
| their money. Bezos and Branson are doing R&D. Bill Gates does
| philanthropy. There's a spectrum of wastefulness, and I
| wholeheartedly applaud billionaires doing R&D that our
| governments seem to have lost interest in.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _I see the last two launches as indeed amusement rides for
| billionaires_
|
| 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.
| thethethethe wrote:
| > These launches are marketing events for their space tourism
| businesses!
|
| 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
| meepmorp wrote:
| No need to be snide. Prices will drop hundreds of thousands
| of dollars in just a few years, well within the means of
| many millionaires.
|
| Democratization of space FTW!
| thethethethe wrote:
| Poe's law is strong in this one
| pavon wrote:
| These rides are being sold for a few hundred thousand
| dollars. Before New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo, the only
| private tourists to space paid tens of millions. That is a
| huge decrease in price! Now any millionaire can afford it,
| and it is just within reach of an upper middle class person
| willing to save for a significant part of their life. Some
| people couldn't care less about this, but others have
| dreamed of flying into space ever since Yuri Gagarin, and
| it is finally a reality.
|
| 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.
| adventured wrote:
| > And in my opinion, I see the last two launches as indeed
| amusement rides for billionaires and a strong argument for
| better taxation policies.
|
| 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.
| shakezula wrote:
| It's really funny how you translated "better taxation" into
| literally "totalitarian genocide machine" and then typed up a
| thoroughly straw-manned paragraph about hypothetical
| questions that no one is promoting or suggesting. It's
| completely disingenuous that you bring up all these arbitrary
| lines in the sand about wealth when no one is suggesting that
| obviously ridiculous approach.
|
| We can tax billionaires so that they pay their fair share for
| the public resources they use without it going full gulag.
| soheil wrote:
| Doesn't T-10 usually indicate seconds not minutes?
| weavie wrote:
| Are Amazon employees allowed toilet breaks yet?
| davidw wrote:
| As the owner of several western hats, I'm curious about Jeff
| Bezos' hat. What's the story behind it? It does not fit him well.
| He obviously has the money to have whatever kind of crafted,
| perfectly styled hat he wants. Maybe something from his family?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Iirc this is in Texas so local affectation probably?
| davidw wrote:
| He's spent time on ranches, so probably knows how they're
| supposed to fit; this one's practically resting on his ears.
|
| I'm curious if it's a hat that means something to him for
| some reason.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That sounds basically like what I'm saying: He owns a ranch
| and occasionally spends time there because part of the
| reason the rich often have these ranch properties is to
| cosplay part of the independent west/cowboy dream. He
| probably rarely wears one and basically only does so when
| he's on this ranch as part of the aesthetic.
| cjlars wrote:
| Having spent time supporting these sorts of live / PR events,
| there's a non-zero chance that this was brought in last minute
| by an underling.
| adminscoffee wrote:
| my gf has given me more space than this and she's pretty clingy.
| jk
| galgot wrote:
| Obscene in every sense of the word.
| trey-jones wrote:
| I'm not interested in the semantics of outer space or the
| competition to see who can meet the terms of one of those
| arbitrary definitions first. More than one corporate/government
| entity making progress in rocketry and space-faring technology is
| a good thing for humanity.
|
| 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.
| sschueller wrote:
| What I found interesting is that the vehicle that drove them to
| the launchpad was a Rivian SUV. The direct competitor to the
| Tesla Model X.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yup. There are layers upon layers of messaging here. This is a
| handful of very rich people throwing shade at each other. In
| the past they used paintings and architecture to send coded
| insults. Now they use thier toy rockets.
| jansan wrote:
| They should have driven there with four Rimac Nevera, one car
| per astronaut. Now THAT would have sent a message.
| nickik wrote:
| NASA uses Model X to transport astronauts to the launch tower.
| And Amazon invested in Rivian so Bezos wants to feature that.
| machtesh wrote:
| Amazon/Jeff Bezos are investors in Rivian. They're developing
| electric delivery vehicles for Amazon.
| antihero wrote:
| Perhaps soon the richest capitalist on the planet will catch up
| with 1960s communists :)
| xor99 wrote:
| Did I miss it or was there no in capsule cameras for this one? I
| thought the Branson space flight had a little more drama to it
| because of the scenes from the cockpit and passenger area.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I don't think they showed any. There's a chance it just doesn't
| have the extra mass available for a strong HD downlink. The
| Virgin Galactic flight had them but the feed was lost so it was
| all recorded and shown later. I imagine there was some camera
| rolling in there.
| mygoodaccount wrote:
| I feel the same way when software developers call themselves
| engineers.
| echelon wrote:
| Does your work involve research, measurement, planning,
| architecture, review, and instrumentation?
|
| 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.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I generally agree with you, but we don't have a better term,
| and it's not _completely_ wrong. I think you have to consider
| it as something of a homonym. The people who drive trains are
| also called "engineers", after all, though their job has
| nothing to do with engineering in either the software-
| engineering sense or the civil/mechanical/electrical
| engineering sense.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| What if we have engineering degrees? That change anything?
|
| 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).
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Yeah that one I struggle with too. I don't have a
| degree/can't call myself an engineer but my contract/pay is
| for Sr. SWE which I also don't consider myself a Sr. so
| idk... Generally go with SWD.
|
| 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.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| In Germany, and presumably many other countries, "engineer"
| is a job title that requires a certain degree. As in, you
| need to have such and such degree if you want to advertise
| yourself as an engineer.
|
| 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.
| guerrilla wrote:
| If you had a biology degree and were a mailman, would you
| call your profession 'biologist'? No. That's absurd, as is
| calling people who write JavaScript, most of whom don't even
| have computer science degrees, engineers. It's nothing but
| grandiosity and ignorance of what engineering is.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27894728.
| mavhc wrote:
| If your software can kill people you'd better be an engineer
| dhosek wrote:
| In certain industries, the titles often have little to do with
| the work. In banking, it seems, everyone is a vice president (I
| had a moment of panic when I had a job offer from a bank as a
| programmer and the offer said that I would be hired as a vice
| president). In publishing, everyone is an editor. The title
| managing editor generally has no editorial duties--it's largely
| dealing with the administrative/business duties of the
| publication(s). But since it's mostly English majors working in
| publishing, it makes them feel better to have editor in their
| job title.
|
| 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).
| airstrike wrote:
| Interestingly, in banking one gets promoted from Vice
| President to Director which is the exact opposite as anywhere
| else...
| liketochill wrote:
| Certainly some software is engineered! Maybe the software in
| space ships is a good example where it was written with an
| engineering process, tested, and then worked "first try". Of
| course a lot of software these days is morally bankrupt and
| never finished.
| adammunich wrote:
| https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gilscottheron/whiteyonthemoo...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Link to the direct feed: https://youtu.be/watch?v=tMHhXzpwupU
|
| (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!
| JshWright wrote:
| > (admittedly, they probably had a lot larger fuel budget than
| orbital launches)
|
| That booster isn't capable of orbital launches.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I meant it's a helluva lot easier to have plenty of landing
| fuel when you're tossing a capsule up, vs trying to insert an
| actual payload into orbit.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Not directly relevant: what's annoying are the fake live
| streams. Then there are blatant crypto scams on top lol ugh.
| dole wrote:
| Youtube's homepage reminds me of the television broadcasts in
| Idiocracy. Just another fulfilled prophecy.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| You know what's annoying is they barely show you content
| that you subscribe to. I find the "recently uploaded"
| filter is more helpful in terms of finding something
| interesting to watch.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's not what they want the front page to be, it's the
| stuff you might like page. They have an actual page for
| your subscriptions if that's what you want to see.. I was
| always confuse in the beginning about all the creators
| and viewers saying they weren't seeing uploads till I
| realized people just weren't using the subscription tab.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Oh... TIL wow man I've been on YT for years
| rtkwe wrote:
| Sometimes it feels like there may have been something
| missing from the Subscriptions page too but I'm never
| sure if I just didn't see it because I'm subscribed a lot
| of places, but during the height of videos about "YouTube
| hiding my videos from you my subscribers" I wasn't
| missing any (that I noticed at least I suppose).
| paganel wrote:
| I would have expected an ambulance to be at the landing/crash
| site just in case, for the moment I can only see pickup trucks.
| JshWright wrote:
| There are certainly rescue vehicles staged nearby. The
| potential landing area is actually pretty large (since it's
| coming down under parachutes and will be pushed by the wind),
| so it wouldn't be possible to preposition them exactly where
| the capsule is going to land. The rescue vehicles would have
| been rolled if they were needed.
| arriu wrote:
| Comments in this thread complaining that the rich get to do
| whatever they want are forgetting that the wright brothers (and
| others) enabled flight for all of us even though most people
| during that time could only dream about it. It might not happen
| for you and I, but let's think about the bigger picture.
| AmazonPacker wrote:
| > enabled flight for all of us even though most people during
| that time could only dream about it
|
| My dream in life is to be able to urinate when I need to. If I
| ever achieve that dream, my next dream is that Bezos's joy ride
| to the lower atmosphere might trickle down and enable joy rides
| to the lower atmosphere for all.
| bombela wrote:
| Here; let me fullfil your dream with a single word: diapers.
| afavour wrote:
| I want to be excited but I keep coming back to confusion over
| what the actual purpose of this will be. Flight has very clear
| benefits: getting you from A to B way faster than was ever
| possible before. With space flight there is no B to go to. You
| go up, you come down.
|
| If these companies were making breakthroughs in making space
| long term habitable I'd be excited. But I'm yet to see that.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Actually, point to point travel on earth is something virgin
| galactic is targeting. If you can go to the edge of space you
| can travel at ludicrous speeds.
| nimithryn wrote:
| I see these launches as early stepping stones to really
| profitable space industries. Asteroid mining, space
| manufacturing (like Varda: https://varda.com/), space hotels.
| You have to walk before you can run.
| FredFS456 wrote:
| Wright brothers were certainly not dirt poor, but they weren't
| barons either. They were only able to build their planes
| because of their experience building other mechanical things.
| arriu wrote:
| Let me clarify, my point is neither about their wealth or
| expertise. I'm simply pointing out that this could be a
| similar point in time for future commercial travel; focusing
| on their wealth is beside the point. Or it could fizzle
| out...
| rtkwe wrote:
| IDK Virgin Galactic seemed to be virtually dead for a
| decade or so until there was a chance to one up Bezos I
| wouldn't be surprised to see these continue to barely
| operate after this big push.
| mulmen wrote:
| So it is your belief that Virgin Galactic did nothing for
| a decade and then made a working spacecraft in the course
| of a few months but you don't find this amazing?
| rtkwe wrote:
| They didn't, I know they weren't actually doing nothing
| that whole time but it's been almost 3 years since
| SpaceShipTwo's first 'space'flight and there was very
| little happening. SS2 first flew way back in 2010, it's
| all just moving very slowly until there's a chance for a
| PR opportunity and I'm not so convinced it won't
| immediately go back to doing 1-2 test flights a year for
| a while again after this.
| mulmen wrote:
| I guess I don't get your point.
|
| Is it that Branson should be moving faster? Taking more
| risks? Even after a test pilot was killed?
|
| Why should they go faster? Because SpaceX does? Why
| should everyone copy SpaceX?
|
| Should they do more frequent PR and show incremental
| developments/achievements? How is that any less of a PR
| stunt than shooting the CEO into space?
|
| Why are we impressed by SpaceX PR (they don't have to
| invest so much in coverage) but not by anything else?
| ok2938 wrote:
| Whitey on the moon [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwkXZ0SmTs
| crb wrote:
| Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin offer you ~4 minutes of
| weightlessness.
|
| 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?
| codezero wrote:
| low-earth orbit is around 90 minutes per orbit, so 60 minutes
| may be possible but I think it would require odd re-entry or a
| distant recovery that wouldn't be economical, probably at that
| length they'd just go into orbit.
| teraflop wrote:
| A "suborbital" trajectory is just an orbit that intersects
| Earth's surface, and in theory you can make it whatever size
| and duration you want. I suppose the limit would be when your
| apogee becomes high enough to be near or beyond Earth's
| gravitational sphere of influence, which would happen for
| orbital periods on the order of months.
|
| 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?
| nodesocket wrote:
| And seems the HN people's socialist party downvoted and flagged
| this story off the front page.
| rvz wrote:
| Unsurprisingly.
|
| They only want to see SpaceX and ONLY SpaceX blasting Dogecoin
| onto the moon next year. That's why and without any other
| competitor existing.
|
| Also I assume you watched Blue Origin's flight today. Given
| that it was not a SpaceX flight, perhaps you found this one
| beyond woeful regardless of engineering effort and what usually
| happens in tech news or HN? [0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27801640
| tawan wrote:
| Lot of people in this thread are arguing that wealthy people can
| spend money on what ever they want. I think it's important to
| distinguish whether the money they spend on personal joy rides
| has been taxed as private income or written off as business
| expense. Does anyone have information on whether Bezos'
| investments into Blue Origin has been taxed previously as
| personal income when he presumably liquidated Amazon stock?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >I think it's important to distinguish whether the money they
| spend on personal joy rides has been taxed as private income or
| written off as business expense.
|
| 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
| tawan wrote:
| I think you misinterpreted my comment (probably my bad, Im
| not an English native). What I meant is: It is important to
| make sure that the profits of stocks sold need to be taxed
| properly, and only the after tax amount that's left over can
| be spend on, some may say frivolous, space adventures.
| Especially when it is often reported that billionaires dont
| pay hardly any taxes, since their wealth grew ,,only in
| equity". But then suddenly they find themselves on a pretty
| expensive space vacation.
| Tepix wrote:
| These suborbitals flights to space require 20% of the velocity
| and 2-3% of the energy of an orbital flight.
| gitpusher wrote:
| Bezos in that spacesuit and cowboy hat ...completely made my
| morning LOL.
| madjam002 wrote:
| Incredible, congrats to the crew and team who have worked on
| this!
| mns wrote:
| Can't wait for short haul flights to be banned and to travel 14
| hours in a train so we reduce carbon emissions. But I'm happy
| that rich guys can have fun and advance "space exploration".
| Me1000 wrote:
| New Shepard burns liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the byproduct of
| which is just water vapor.
| acover wrote:
| SpaceX's starship uses methane which can be synthesized from
| CO2 and water - allowing it to be carbon neutral for a cost.
| JshWright wrote:
| It will be a while before synthesizing CH4 is "carbon
| neutral". Sure, you could set up a massive solar farm and
| pump it out, but that solar farm would be way more effective
| offsetting other power production methods on the grid at
| large.
| trhway wrote:
| a privately developed powerful reliable human rated rocket engine
| and a vertical booster landing - that were big deal just 10 years
| ago. Today - nah. That's called real progress, and i think we
| should be happy that it is happening.
|
| 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.
| gbronner wrote:
| How long before people record it and post it on social media?
|
| 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.
| la6471 wrote:
| Memo to Bezos/Brandon/Musk:
|
| 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?
| thehappypm wrote:
| I wouldn't lump Musk in here. Musk is divisive as hell but his
| companies are hardly wasteful. Tesla is leading the car
| industry towards an oil-free future and also has a healthy
| solar panel division. SpaceX is opening up space exploration.
| Even things like the Boring Company and Hyperloop are aiming to
| make human life better.
| whitepaint wrote:
| Why don't you work on these as well?
| tsuraan wrote:
| Maybe a $100MM X-Prize for carbon removal?
|
| https://www.xprize.org/prizes/elonmusk
| f00zz wrote:
| https://thesolutionsproject.org/bezos-earth-fund/
| underseacables wrote:
| How's the petition coming along for Bezos to not return to earth?
| [deleted]
| okareaman wrote:
| I think the end game for Bezos and Branson is space hotels, which
| benefits no one except themselves and their investors.
| avalanche123 wrote:
| What a mind blowing achievement. Wow!
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I'd like to have gone for the ride, but it was rather
| underwhelming, and slightly absurd, from the spectator POV.
|
| 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.
| mrlinx wrote:
| > not much of anything like Bill Gates you kidding?
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I meant non-philanthropic stuff. What billionaires choose to
| splurge their money on.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'll tell ya...whenever I look at that spaceship...
|
| Just to make it official, they should have two circular blast
| deflectors, on opposite sides of the gantry.
| mr_sturd wrote:
| I saw a related picture from Austin Powers on the front page of
| Reddit, this afternoon.
| Axsuul wrote:
| Really clean launch! I think this was the first time a reusable
| rocket was landed with humans onboard? It must've fell 100k feet
| at the end in less than a minute which must've been nuts.
| rtkwe wrote:
| No it's basically the same as the SpaceX CrewDragon flights
| where the capsule parachutes down and the booster lands
| separately except the capsule doesn't go to orbit.
| [deleted]
| peshooo wrote:
| The capsule with the humans separated from the rocket a little
| bit before they hit the 100km attitude mark. Then it landed
| with parachutes.
| maxnoe wrote:
| The capsule and booster seperated and the capsule landed with
| parachutes
| someperson wrote:
| No, Dragon and the Falcon 9 launch crew to the ISS and both are
| "land" (well, splashdown for Dragon).
|
| 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.
| marshallbananas wrote:
| This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've
| seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not
| that big of a deal. They got about two minutes of zero G and came
| down immediately. You can experience that for much longer with a
| regular plane, for much less money.
|
| It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into
| orbit around Earth.
| zackbloom wrote:
| If you listen to the stream there's a moment when they ask each
| astronaut for a mock-serious 'status update'. At least one
| forgets to even respond. It feels like cosplay, like a tourist
| experience where you are pretending to be an astronaut despite
| having no responsibilities and little training. I would
| struggle to not feel embarrassment at pretending to be
| something I am not, and at the knowledge they are stroking my
| ego purely for my ego's benefit on the back of the very well
| earned reputation of real astronauts.
|
| 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.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| One point: that was no "mock status update call", it was
| control checking if people were back in and strapped to their
| seats again. The wording arguably was a bit too much fluff
| ("Astronaut Bezos", yeah, right)
| ww520 wrote:
| Getting rocket working correctly is never easy. Just like in IT
| when things work smoothly, it doesn't look amazing but it takes
| a tremendous amount of work to get things work correctly and
| seemingly smooth. A smooth operation is always amazing.
|
| 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.
| daveslash wrote:
| It looked like they were going about 15-16mph when they hit
| the ground. That looked a bit rough as well. They seem to
| have done fine, but I can't imagine that it was comfortable.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's roughly the speed of a Soyuz landing, which has been
| described as a "low speed car crash".
|
| Retrorockets fire immediately prior to impact to cushion
| the blow, but it's still a hard jolt.
| jb775 wrote:
| Bezos mentioned there's a pocket of air that forms a
| cushion underneath just before it hits, slowing it to 1 mph
| at impact. The older woman said she didn't even feel it.
| ezconnect wrote:
| I watch it and slowed the clip and it seems there's a
| rocket boost just before touchdown, if the seats have shock
| absorbers they probably felt little of the touch down.
| senko wrote:
| They mentioned on the stream the capsule has cushions
| that deploy at around 6ft. I couldn't see them on the
| video feed but they might be underneath the capsule.
| jstsch wrote:
| Agreed. This really felt like an amusement park ride for rich
| people. Like a throw towards the edge of orbit.
|
| I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but
| compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super
| underwhelming.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > Like a throw towards the edge of orbit.
|
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| What are the delta V's for a ballistic trajectory taking
| off in Texas an landing off the coast of Morocco? France?
| Western Australia? Hawaii?
|
| 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.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Walk before you run.
|
| 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. "
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Walk before you run.
|
| Walking is a precursor to running, though.
|
| Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's current spacecraft are
| dead-ends. They can't ever go to orbit. New Glenn can,
| but it's vaporware thus far; if it sees a development
| schedule like New Shepard's there'll be a SpaceX Mars
| base before it manages its first hop.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Well to be fair, they don't compete with Walmart. Walmart
| almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year, and that was
| during the height of a pandemic, which naturally steered
| people towards more online orders, something you think
| would tip the scales in Amazon's favor.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| have you _seen_ walmart.com? their online store rivals
| amazon easily.
| dolmen wrote:
| Walmart.com ships only in the US. Not in Europe, Asia.
|
| While Amazon has stores for all regions of the world that
| count.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year,
|
| Eh... that's not really true, it's about 1.45x the
| revenue, not 2x. And that's not the whole picture.
|
| Revenue for 2020: Walmart: $559 billion
| Amazon: $386 billion
|
| Operating income for 2020: Walmart:
| $20.6 billion Amazon: $22.9 billion
|
| Net Income (business/total) for 2020:
| Walmart: $15.2/14.9 billion Amazon:
| $22.1/21.3 billion
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Which one seems more likely to you:
|
| a. Amazon solves brick and mortar b. Walmart solves
| online sales.
|
| Given the way things are going with Amazon essentially
| throwing in the towel with counterfeit reviews and
| products, I would put my money on Walmart eating Amazon's
| lunch this decade.
|
| Don't forget political influence as well. Walmart has a
| large fraction of congress on bankroll.
| kiba wrote:
| Blue Origin don't need a revenue stream. They need Jeff
| Bezo to light fire under their ass.
|
| As a company that started a year before SpaceX and funded
| by the richest man in the world, the company should have
| no problem with being aggressive.
|
| Yes, walk before you run. SpaceX did this too, but their
| leadership has a sense of urgency. Blue Origin don't.
| iso1631 wrote:
| 20 yeas from founding to a suborbital demo flight, 15
| years of development for the rocket itself. New Shephard
| will never make orbit, it's a dead end.
|
| New Glenn would be great if it existed. As it stands it's
| likely to be eclipsed by Starship. B.O. are going to have
| to change into a whole new gear if they want to compete.
| I have far more confidence in rocketlab scaling upwards
| from electron than in Blue Origin scaling anywhere.
| DennisP wrote:
| I mostly agree but BO does at least plan a variant of the
| New Shephard engine for New Glenn's upper stage.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I agree that there's no scientific or engineering achievement
| here and that this ride is essentially joyriding.
|
| 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.
| jstsch wrote:
| Sorry, I meant 'rich people' as a neutral term, I do not
| attach any value to it or intend to deride someone for
| their wealth. I think that in general people should do as
| they want, as long as they don't harm others.
|
| 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.
| a3n wrote:
| Wearing out the bodies and dignity of Amazon floor workers.
| natch wrote:
| It's remarkable that such a mature, sane, and rational
| perspective has been downvoted at the time of this writing
| to the point of being dead. Like anyone I am alarmed by
| over-the-top displays of wealth but that's not really all
| this was. There is a lot more going on here. Blue Origin
| needs a lot more test flights as they ramp up and increase
| their capabilities. They also need demonstration flights to
| hep increase confidence about their services. And it
| totally makes sense to allow some people with the resources
| to help subsidize the effort, while having some fun and
| enlarging their perspective. I think this experience was
| super meaningful for everyone involved, and we shouldn't
| try to denigrate it. Sad to see HN not taking a more open
| minded view here, as evidenced by your post being hn-dead.
|
| 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.
| nemetroid wrote:
| I don't think the comment deserves downvoting, but I
| cannot agree that this characterization - dismissing
| those who disagree as mindless and juvenile - is mature.
|
| > I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more
| than juvenile hate.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more
| than juvenile hate.
|
| 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.
| alexashka wrote:
| > I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending
| money the way they want.
|
| 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.
| mavhc wrote:
| Problem is you only get rich by taking money for other
| people's work.
|
| But as long as everyone also pays to clean up the pollution
| they cause, not terrible.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Jeff Bezos could vaccinate the entire world against Covid
| without changing his lifestyle even slightly.
|
| He could hire the smartest people in the world to work on
| breakthrough propulsion, SETI, blue sky physics, and
| computing research. The money would barely be a rounding
| error in his wealth.
|
| He could fund the greatest space observatories in
| history, fund game changing contributions to cancer
| research, genomics, and other experimental medicine, and
| set up international STEM education programs.
|
| Instead he builds a toy rocket that looks like a penis
| and goes on a 2 minute joyride to the edge of space. And
| something something space hotels, maybe.
|
| It's debatable if it's evil. But it's certainly lacking
| ambition and _boring_.
| DennisP wrote:
| In fairness to Blue Origin, they're attempting a pretty
| large orbital rocket too. They've just been a lot slower
| about it than SpaceX.
|
| As for Bezos, he also started the $10 billion Earth Fund
| to support climate change solutions. He could do a lot
| more, but he can't do it all at once; most of his wealth
| is in Amazon stock, and if he sold it all at once then it
| wouldn't be worth $200B anymore.
| mavhc wrote:
| He funds an actual rocket, that looks like a rocket. Not
| like that was his entire plan though, it's step 1.
|
| I assume his future rockets can launch space telescopes,
| although they have spent 7 years not getting their
| engines to work.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > It's debatable if it's evil. But it's certainly lacking
| ambition and boring.
|
| He's the richest man on earth - who started one of the
| biggest and most successful companies on the planet, I'd
| say he had plenty of ambition. Excuse him for having a
| little fun. "He could do this, that and the other thing."
| Well thank you for telling him what he should/could do
| with his money. You know what, why don't you go start a
| company with a 1.8T market cap, and you can do all these
| noble things. All you need is some ambition to do
| something less boring, right?
| zaaakk wrote:
| You have no moral compass. Your only guidance for what is
| right is money. If he has the money to do it then it is
| justified. There is something missing in your brain and
| that is why you will eagerly simp for a billionaire.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| > simp
|
| This has rapidly become my least favorite neologism.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| If he has the money to do something that won't hurt
| anyone, then it is justified IMO. I'm not rich, and I
| can't fathom what it's like to be a billionaire, but I
| can tell you what I don't like: people sticking their
| nose in my private business and deciding what is morally
| correct for me.
| zip1234 wrote:
| The US government spends Bezos' net worth every 2 weeks
| and doesn't have their own functioning human space launch
| system at the moment.
| verdverm wrote:
| Did you ever notice the Amazon "smile" is also a penis?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But it's certainly lacking ambition.
|
| Its not; the ambition is commercial ambition (which given
| Bezos shouldn't be surprising), but its certainly
| present.
| 5555624 wrote:
| > It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into
| orbit around Earth.
|
| 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.)
| rtkwe wrote:
| Personally I think there's a difference when the thing is
| completely new like when the space race first launched and
| now when it's decades on and we have continuously occupied
| the ISS for just over two decades. I might take one of these
| suborbital hops for fun but mostly because I have doubts
| it'll be reasonable to do a full orbit in my lifetime.
|
| 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.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Maybe you were just told they counted as going into space
| because otherwise the first American to orbit earth only did
| so a full 10 months after Gagarin, which looks worse than
| saying "oh we launched an American into space less than a
| month after the Russians did".
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Huh, I remember learning Yuri Gagarin as the first person
| to space. I don't think I even remember learning/reading
| about Alan Shepard.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's
| just not that big of a deal.
|
| 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).
| jpgvm wrote:
| To be fair SpaceX also has had practice, go back and watch
| some earlier launches and they have the same amateur vibe.
| [deleted]
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I was kinda disappointed that the whole thing was just one
| shaky camera shot, no in-vehicle cameras on Bezos' face
| getting squished from G-forces or anything =(
| purple_ferret wrote:
| it was a sales pitch
| Darmody wrote:
| To me it was pretty exciting after watching what Virgin
| Galactic did the other day.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the
| spaceplane though. Sticking a capsule on top of a rocket and
| bringing it down with parachutes has been done since the
| 1960s, and SpaceX beat them to landing the launcher as well.
| ja27 wrote:
| SpaceX only "beat" them to a landing if you're disregarding
| suborbital flights.
|
| 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.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Precisely. Landing a booster is difficult but creating or
| orbital class rocket is an order of magnitude more
| difficult. SpaceX just did the hard part first.
| Tossrock wrote:
| Blue Origin only "beat" SpaceX if you allow BO's test
| flight and disallow SpaceX's - SpaceX was landing their
| Grasshopper prototype as early as 2012.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with
| the spaceplane though.
|
| Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and
| landing horizontally was also done in 1960s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Agree re: being underwhelmed, but in fairness, your typical
| "vomit comet" parabola flight only gets you about 25 seconds of
| weightlessness at a time. Although you can repeat this several
| dozen times per flight pretty easily.
| FredFS456 wrote:
| 25-30 seconds, with https://www.gozerog.com/ offering 15
| parabolas totalling 6.5-7.5 minutes for $7500+tax. Much
| better total zero-gee time at much cheaper rates. Of course,
| you don't get the view above the atmosphere...
| jcims wrote:
| I don't think it's the weightlessness as much as it is the
| view. That's the part that i would like.
| sprkwd wrote:
| And that's how you make a one take music video:
| https://youtu.be/LWGJA9i18Co
| qayxc wrote:
| And you are ignoring the 1.8 g part after each parabola - the
| zero g don't come for free.
|
| 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.
| rvz wrote:
| > It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into
| orbit around Earth.
|
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into tedious flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rvz wrote:
| I think its more like that the parent comment ultimately _'
| invited'_ (and started) this so-called flamewar you are
| accusing me of.
|
| 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'.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The Russian v. USA space race's important milestones included
| putting satellites, animals and people into orbit. It wasn't
| just merely launching them to the edge of spacs.
| soperj wrote:
| The USSR didn't even bother with suborbital flights.
| There's a reason that there's only 3 flights to suborbital
| ranges that are considered manned spaceflight.
| altcognito wrote:
| It's kinda funny to see even the SpaceX fans miss a broader
| point. SpaceX could probably sell orbital trips on Falcon on
| the regular but they are out of reach of most nearly everyone
| except the US government whom needs manned flight for
| staffing the space station (thank goodness or we'd never get
| space progress)
|
| 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.
| DuskStar wrote:
| SpaceX actually IS selling flights to tourists. First and
| second flights are scheduled for later this year IIRC.
| yumraj wrote:
| > I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more
| complicated missions
|
| You know that NASA and other countries have been flying rockets
| and sending people and things to space before SpaceX, yes?
| pantulis wrote:
| Yet this is what, with all their power, billionaries can
| achieve today. While private innovation is welcome, space
| exploration needs even deeper pockets so it is government
| territory.
| tester34 wrote:
| wasn't it just a few years ago considered as being ahead of
| everybody in space industry?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Im very happy for Wally Funk
| LoungeFlyZ wrote:
| So happy! A proper injustice revisited.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah I expected an orbit too. But it was their first manned
| mission, so I think it makes sense that it was a simpler thing.
| But it shouldn't have been such big news. It only was because
| there was a billionaire on board, and that's really dumb.
| yreg wrote:
| It was news because it was the first manned flight of a
| private launch provider. That doesn't happen often and it is
| an important milestone.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I dunno, that's "news" to be sure; certainly space nerds
| should care a lot, but they played the entire flight on
| _The Today Show_ (I watched it). They did not play the
| entirety of the first manned SpaceX flight, which was a
| much bigger deal because (I 'm pretty sure?) it was the
| first private manned launch. I'm not saying this flight
| wasn't news, I'm saying it wasn't _mainstream_ news, except
| that it happened to have Jeff Bezos on it, and he 's a
| celebrity because he's a billionaire. And that's a lame
| reason for it to be mainstream news, in my view. I don't
| love the celebrity billionaire stuff.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Part of the reason for that is that Blue Origin's flight
| was about 12 minutes in total, while SpaceX's first
| manned mission was closer to six months.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Fair.
| detritus wrote:
| The thing that amuses me is that if SpaceX can make Starship
| and the Heavy booster work, they could actually come up with a
| tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson
| and Bezos into irrelevance.
|
| 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.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Out of all of these space-faring corporations, SpaceX has
| orders of magnitude more aerospace infrastructure and assets
| to work with. Their entire ethos since inception was getting
| humanity to Mars, not sending a handful of wealthy people
| into suborbital trajectories. Elon/SpaceX have certainly
| participated in a lot of PR throughout, but it always seemed
| to be along an engineering axis, not some feel-good emotional
| axis (although many were moved by witnessing double booster
| landings regardless).
|
| 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.
| notJim wrote:
| Not sure a tiny island that's 6-7' above sea level is such
| a genius investment these days.
| nickik wrote:
| By far small enough that you could easily protect it if
| need be.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Do you think the ocean is going to rise SEVEN FEET?
| Pixelbrick wrote:
| Obligatory XKCD
|
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| eloff wrote:
| Yes. Much more, even by very conservative estimates.
|
| Just probably not in our lifetimes. The maximum sea level
| rise will be hundreds, even thousands of years from now.
| In the absolute worst case scenario where all the ice
| melted, sea level would rise 230 feet. If we did nothing
| at all about climate change and kept burning fossil fuels
| until we ran out, that's actually a likely outcome. It
| has happened in the past when the earth was much warmer.
| It won't happen to us, because we're taking action. The
| final sea level rise would depend how we do with actively
| removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as it will keep rising
| long after we stop using fossil fuels.
|
| 7 feet by the end of this century is not impossible, but
| not in the conservative estimate. So far we've been
| tracking the aggressive estimates, not conservative ones.
| DougBTX wrote:
| Maybe!
|
| > A number of later studies have concluded that a global
| sea level rise of 200 to 270 cm (6.6 to 8.9 ft) this
| century is "physically plausible".[8][2][9]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
| bob1029 wrote:
| The construction of most buildings along these coastal
| regions is expressly considering these kinds of concerns.
| Storm surge during a hurricane is an excellent facsimile
| for this scenario and encourages compensation on the
| engineering side. I haven't been down to South Padre
| Island in a long time to confirm, but I know for a fact
| that no beachfront property in Galveston has a meaningful
| first floor layout. Every one of these homes is
| constructed with the expectation that the first floor
| _will_ flood, so everything important starts on the 2nd
| floor and up. Ground floor is typically just parking
| /storage/stairs/elevator.
|
| I don't think any place on earth is a good spot to build
| when playing with geologic timescales.
| caconym_ wrote:
| BO has plenty of funding, and lofty ambitions far beyond
| New Shepard, but they just haven't made much progress
| toward achieving them.
|
| 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.
| darknavi wrote:
| It's worth noting that BO is much less open (pretty much
| the other end of the spectrum as SpaceX) about its
| progress.
|
| We aren't really sure exactly how far along a lot of
| their projects are other than "not really close".
| mulmen wrote:
| You mean like
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America?
| agloeregrets wrote:
| The best part is that while these two billionaires do their
| 'space hop', Elon is laughing the whole time and probably
| texted Jeff Bezos asking 'Hey have you seen my car? NVM,
| sorry, you probably were not close enough to see it.'
|
| Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to the obvious feud with
| Jeff Bezos, I know he is friends with Richard.
| simonh wrote:
| He was actually at the Virgin Galactic launch and is good
| friends with Richard Branson. He was having fun, but not
| for the reason you suggest.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| I'm mostly referring to Jeff, who he has an extremely
| public feud with.
| pie420 wrote:
| No he doesnt
| martyvis wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Elon thinks Jeff's Blue Origin is
| impotent in delivering the technology needed to progress
| the return to the Moon https://twitter.com/kchangnyt/stat
| us/1386787651412451329?s=1...
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| https://www.whereisroadster.com
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Yeah, the sub-orbital is a harder sell. When you are the only
| one or one of a few, the benefit/cost is perceived to be
| higher. After a dozen or so of these flights much of the
| cachet will be gone. Can they (Bezos/Branson) bring the cost
| down fast enough to transition to a sustainable model?
|
| 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.
| samstave wrote:
| Honestly, I wish Branson and Bezos would have just put
| their dicks back in their pants and just fully got behind
| spaceX
|
| 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.
| lttlrck wrote:
| Doesn't blindly ceding to the industry leaders ultimately
| result in stagnation?
|
| The VG and BO launches were both underwhelming for me -
| but it's still exciting to see the different engineering
| approaches, it's like hedging a bet, and I am sure each
| of them will pay dividends - one way or another.
| samstave wrote:
| Jeasus fn christ HN users are so FN pedantic...
|
| Sure innovation IS good -- but in this case - we have
| LITERALLY THREE people on the planet attempting this
| endeavor, and I just think its a waste of duplicate
| resources in this case. AT THIS TIME
|
| If its so fucking important that we come to be multi-
| planetary as Musk believes, then these guys (who honestly
| arent going to be around forever, unless they are off-
| planeting organs and blood-boys (Hey peter thiel), should
| be focusing the initial endeavor to figuring out the
| reusable launch vehicles, fuels, lifting, getting
| materials to space... etc.
|
| I just fundamentally disagree with JB and RB - I think
| they are ego driven and musk is vision driven. There is a
| difference.
|
| Get to the point of understanding the human race as a
| single race and not a market competition without the
| vision.... fuck space capitalism.
| [deleted]
| simpleguitar wrote:
| I think a lot of people might be willing to pay for 4 days
| in orbit for $2M.
|
| My version would have blackjack and hookers, obviously.
| gvb wrote:
| There is a SpaceX private Crew Dragon mission scheduled:
| https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-announces-crew-for-
| privat...
|
| "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."
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can also land on the other side of the planet within... I
| want to say an hour?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Ballistic free path is 45 minutes. A single LEO is 90
| minutes, no place on Earth is more than a half-orbit
| distant.
|
| A ballistic point-to-point tragectory is an orbit which
| intersects the surface.
| detritus wrote:
| I must admit, that's the usage scenario for Starship that I
| don't particularly see much benefit in. I may well be
| short-sighted, but given how far away from cities the
| launch centres for these things would need to be, it
| strikes me that traditional travel infrastructure suffices.
|
| 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.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah I don't think it makes much sense, at least not for
| a long time. Odds of a plane crashing are on the order of
| 1 in 10^7. On the other hand, it was a major
| accomplishment that the Falcon 9 was able to perform 100
| successful missions in a row. Rockets have to be safer by
| many orders of magnitude before they move from the realm
| of thrill seeking to commercial travel.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If I'm paying for a space tourism joyride, I would
| _definitely_ be extra thrilled if we took off from
| California and landed in Fiji within the hour.
|
| Presumably, since I'm stinking rich to begin with, I'd
| have a fancy resort booked there for the next week.
|
| I agree it's not a replacement for commercial jet
| flights.
| pie420 wrote:
| You make the mistake of assuming the uber-rich want to
| get to Fiji as soon as possible, when in reality they
| would rather spend the 8 hrs in their private Gulfstream
| in a cocaine fueled orgy while the pilot does barrel
| rolls and loops. Flying is one of the few times that the
| Uber rich can really disconnect and be alone and relax,
| why would they want to get to Fiji in an hour in a super
| stressful flight?
| dolmen wrote:
| Well, this raises the cost of capsule reuse because of
| transport back to the launch point.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Why not also have a launch facility at fiji? You could
| even book a return trip.
| sneak wrote:
| I imagine the geopolitical efforts involved in
| coordinating to allow passenger ICBM launches at major
| cities in the industrialized west is on the same order of
| the effort involved in designing and building starship
| itself.
| kiba wrote:
| I am more concerned about nuclear war as a result of
| mistaken identity since it's the same technology used to
| launch ICBMs.
| detritus wrote:
| Not sure why you were downvoted - for sure, we have alert
| systems these days so that test ICBMs and rocket launches
| aren't misinterpreted by foreign actors, and we would in
| any future where there were tens, hundreds, thousands of
| launches a day - but as-equally, it would be a lot easier
| to mask nefarious intentions in such traffic.
|
| Irrespective of nukes, I shudder to imagine what the
| impact of an out of control de-orbiting Starship would do
| at ballistic reentry over a populace... .
| alexashka wrote:
| > they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that
| would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into
| irrelevance.
|
| We've _had_ tourism that blows all these attempts into
| irrelevance, for thousands of years.
|
| Take 5 grams.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That's the dream; affordable space tourism for the masses.
|
| 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
| mesozoic wrote:
| Cheaper and safer to just drop some acid.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| 1000 passengers, really? Just imagine the possible loss of
| life if something goes wrong. We are still counting 100
| successful launches in a row as an unprecedented success -
| whereas in commercial airplane flights airlines with less
| than 1 incident per 5000000 flights are considered 'poor
| safety record'.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| There aren't many rocket designs in use right now that
| have had more than 100 flights _total_. It's hard to
| properly evaluate the safety of a system when it only
| gets tested once a month.
|
| As the cost of spaceflight comes down and launch
| frequency goes up, I suspect we'll start seeing reusable
| launch systems emerge that have had thousands of launches
| across dozens of rockets. Once that happens I think
| spaceflight's safety record will improve significantly.
| samstave wrote:
| But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed, order
| room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show, etc.
|
| 10k in space will get you what?
|
| ---
|
| 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..)
| [deleted]
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >go golfing
|
| lol you would have to pay me to go golfing
| samstave wrote:
| Retarded response... you know what I meant. Go to the pub
| and wait for this to all blow over.
| awrence wrote:
| Random reply:
|
| Or you can stay here on earth, go scuba diving and
| experience the exact same weightlessness... :)
| colordrops wrote:
| It's not the same - that's buoyancy, not weightlessness.
| Gravity still exerts force on your body and internal
| organs, and you feel orientation, i.e. up and down. It's
| a very different feeling.
| samstave wrote:
| That's why I was asking!
|
| What would the difference in sensation be for one who is
| submerged on earth, versus one who is encapsulated in a
| floating sphere of water...
| bdjk68hsk wrote:
| > But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed,
| order room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show,
| etc.
|
| And what if you've already done all that?
|
| Private jets (well, fractional ownership) gets boring
| after a few years.
| croes wrote:
| Good place to watch the decay of the human species because
| of climate change. Space tourism will accelerate it.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Or perhaps, the passengers will be galvanized by the
| experience and end up taking environmental issues more
| seriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
|
| The carbon emissions of Starship already pale in
| comparison to the reforms we need to pass, but lack the
| political will to do so.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| The idea that we have a system that mints billionaires
| with outsized power, who we then must shoot into space in
| order to help them gain sufficient perspective to not
| want to see the planet destroyed makes me think of Rube
| Goldberg.
| pope_meat wrote:
| We're in the part of the Rude Goldberg machine where
| every single domino that falls is triggering a new
| biblical plague.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| That can be had cheaper with a dose of LSD
| croes wrote:
| At the moment there are only infrequent rocket launches,
| if the numbers go up because of space tourism the damage
| becomes greater, especially if space tourism reaches the
| price level parent was talking about.
| jedberg wrote:
| Airplanes are pretty common and don't account for much of
| the overall pollution. According to the EPA, transport
| accounts for 29% of total emissions, and of that, only
| 10% are airplanes. On the other hand 75% comes from cars
| and trucks.
|
| If rockets became commonplace, they would most like
| replace leisure travel on airplanes and would eliminate
| car traffic once you arrive at your destination. The CO2
| emission of the current SpaceX rockets is about the same
| as one full plane across the Atlantic. So if you could
| take 300 people in one launch, you'd probably take those
| 300 people away from an airplane flight and it would
| actually be better for the planet.
| mulmen wrote:
| How do rockets eliminate car traffic at the destination?
| Every proposal for rocket transport I have seen basically
| puts an airport outside of town, so the traffic is a
| wash, no?
| jedberg wrote:
| When I arrive in space I don't need a car to get around,
| and even if I did, the pollution wouldn't affect the
| Earth. :)
| mulmen wrote:
| Ohh, ha! I thought you meant replacing flights directly
| to Earth destinations. So instead of taking a 787 from
| Seattle to Taipei I would take a Starship.
|
| Yes, there are environmental benefits to putting the
| actual destination in space, I hadn't really considered
| that.
| jimbilly22 wrote:
| this argument is used to justify literally every climate
| hypocrisy, from pro skiers to billionaires on down
|
| "i do X high-carbon thing to bring awareness to the
| plebs"
| rurp wrote:
| So your argument is that anyone concerned about the
| planet should kill themselves, as that will do the most
| to directly minimize their climate impact?
|
| It seems obvious to me that climate activists can use
| leverage, like anyone else. In other words it's perfectly
| reasonable to produce a small amount of carbon in pursuit
| of making the sweeping changes necessary. Climate change
| isn't going to be solved by parts of the population
| choosing to fly a little less often.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| I hope people have better dreams. That is my dream.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I actually think space tourism for the rich is very
| important.
|
| We are entering an age of global techno oligarchy
|
| I want my masters to see the earth from space. Get a feel
| for the stakes, see the delicate ribbon of air, the
| vastness of space.
|
| See it as the rare jewel we spent a short time on, and
| the obligation to treat it well
| rurp wrote:
| I don't know why this is being downvoted since it makes
| total sense to me. It's not a _good_ thing that the mega
| rich have an absurd amount of power over society, but it
| 's a fact for the foreseeable future. There is precedent
| for people becoming much more conscientious about the
| planet after returning from space, so it's certainly
| possible that billionaires playing with rockets will have
| some positive second order effects.
| peatmoss wrote:
| It is indeed a phenomenon that others have experienced.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Most of the folks who've been up so far are military and
| science oriented folks; there's a bit of an existing
| tendency to think in that direction. I'm not sure the
| personality required to become a billionaire is
| necessarily going to result in the same feelings looking
| at Earth from orbit.
|
| "It's small, I want to own the others" might be the Bezos
| response.
| peatmoss wrote:
| Perhaps, but I think that's speculation based in
| cynicism. By the same reasoning, wouldn't a military
| person look down and say, "I want to subjugate the others
| by force?"
|
| I'm more inclined to believe that there is something
| intrinsically profound in seeing all the known life in
| the universe in one field of view. I also am inclined to
| believe that billionaires are just the world's most
| wealth-atypical people, not the world's most neuro-
| atypical people, and thus would respond in the typical
| way to the overview.
|
| But maybe that's an optimism bias on my part.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are indications psychopathy is substantially more
| common in CEOs than the general population. https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace
|
| I'm inclined to consider the Neil Armstrongs of the world
| more service-oriented than subjugation-oriented, as a
| general impression of their careers as astronauts.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| i hope people quit being insufferable downers
| RobRivera wrote:
| where's the steering committee for quality of dreams? I
| am still waiting on feedback for my dream of a loving
| family and no more nightmares.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Oh man, struggling to channel dang here. How to respond
| constructively. Probably the best thing to do is flag and
| ignore, but I can't pass this up.
|
| If people are interested in going somewhere, who are you
| to denigrate their ambitions? What is wrong with dreaming
| of orbiting the planet? How does that dream fall short?
| Is it a weak dream for a midwestern child, landlocked a
| thousand miles in every direction, to want to see the
| ocean? Is it a weak dream for a city child, blocked by
| light pollution, to want to see the stars?
|
| What kind of comment is this? What does it even mean to
| have a "better" dream?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Oxfam's Deepak Xavier vented about the billionaire-
| hobbies issue early this week.
|
| https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-
| blast-s...
| [deleted]
| colordrops wrote:
| Everyone is required to fix the worlds problems before
| doing anything else. At least that is how the thinking
| goes, which is absurd in most cases. Though there is some
| nuance here considering Bezos' absolute detestable
| behavior climbing on the backs of abused workers to get
| to this point.
|
| It's an old story, as expressed by Dr. Seuss in his story
| Yertle the Turtle:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other
| _St...
| unfunco wrote:
| Maybe Jeffrey Bezos will return a changed man and give
| his warehouse staff proper piss bottles instead of used
| drinking water bottles.
| zzzeek wrote:
| it's an entirely appropriate dream for a child. for a
| society with enormous intractable problems such as global
| warming, income inequality, and fascism, it's pretty
| lame.
| RIMR wrote:
| For real, people straight up fetishize the experience of
| "going to space", but the reality is that you're crammed
| in stinky tin can for a while, and eat preserved food.
|
| The real magic of human spaceflight for me is the science
| that is done up there. Sending a bunch of untrained rich
| people into space for the fun of it is not especially
| inspiring. The idea of getting crammed like sardines into
| a giant rocket so I can experience this with the masses
| is just not a great dream.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Space is inspiring to a lot of people because it
| represents both the the peak of human achievement, and
| humanity's future. Space is the final frontier; the next
| logical step in humankind's unending quest to explore the
| universe.
|
| For me personally? I just want to mess around in 0G for a
| day or two. That seems like it'd be a rather unique
| experience; well worth a few thousand bucks and a couple
| hours packed shoulder to shoulder in a ship with a
| thousand other people.
| mam3 wrote:
| If you cant dream beyond what you eat and the distance
| you can go in each direction its totally fine but dont
| impose it to other people
| gist wrote:
| > rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the
| business case a lot more compelling.
|
| 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.
| dolmen wrote:
| Keep in mind that the fortune of those millionaires might
| collapse if they die in the adventure. Or insurance cost
| might might make the trip much more expensive than just the
| ticket.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| How many amateurs pay a lot of money to be able to say they
| went to the top of mount Everest, which is probably a lot
| more risky?
| gist wrote:
| Good point but a bit different. People view climbing
| Everest as an achievement as opposed to going up in a
| rocket which even though you need to prepare seems less
| daunting and a different type of risk.
|
| Not that it matters but I wonder which of these buys more
| social capital?
| bronco21016 wrote:
| Exactly. As a pilot, I find both of these rides
| uninspiring. Now if I could strap myself to the top of a
| Titan II in a Gemini capsule and do some piloting... now
| that would be an experience.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The publicity aspect would deter some, but it would attract
| others. By the time even 20 people have gone up, it won't
| be newsworthy, and then it will just be like buying a
| yacht. There are about 1.5 million people in the US worth
| $10 million or more, which is about where you need to be to
| comfortably afford this type of thing now, and another 10
| million or so single digit millionaires, many of whom would
| take a significant hit to net worth to go up. So I think
| the odds that you can get > 10K takers just in the USA are
| pretty much 100%. If you can put 10K people up with a solid
| safety record, then that number would probably go up to
| 100K to 1 million potential customers. The economy of scale
| at that level would probably drop the price to where most
| of the upper middle class is a potential customer. So I
| think this can work. Safety record is the key.
| samstave wrote:
| I'm surprised we haven't heard of that scammer Blizarian
| trying to get on one of these flights yet...
| pie420 wrote:
| The economics are just silly. 4 passengers at $250k each
| is only $1M in revenue per flight. Between fuel costs,
| rocket costs (even assuming 10x reuses per rocket, you'd
| need to build the rocket for significantly under $10M to
| have a chance at profitability, could you imagine
| building a rocket for under 10M?), engineer and employee
| salaries and benefits, advertising, liability, etc.
|
| Add in the fact that you have a very viable competitor in
| Virgin Galactic and SpaceX who could leapfrog both and
| provide even better experiences, and I don't see how Blue
| Origin will ever be viable without government funding
| dcow wrote:
| I suspect their end goal is other funding whilst using
| the consumer space to launch their program and establish
| credibility.
| meepmorp wrote:
| I think BO's game plan has been to become something along
| the lines of a traditional aerospace contractor, and
| SpaceX has made that very hard.
|
| I think the timing of the launch isn't coincidental -
| iirc, the investigation into the HLS decision is going to
| be done in early August, and it undoubtedly looks better
| for BO's case to have had a successful launch with humans
| onboard one of their rockets.
| bitL wrote:
| There will be an inevitable crash/failure resulting in a mass
| casualty event where many industries will lose their leaders
| (the only people that could afford a spaceflight for fun),
| and that's very bad for PR and could sink the whole company
| as a result.
| notatoad wrote:
| >the only people that could afford a spaceflight for fun
|
| i suspect the market will be less corporate leaders and
| more the family of corporate leaders (and saudi royals)
| chasd00 wrote:
| i feel pretty guilty for being so underwhelmed because I sure
| as hell couldn't build an engine and airframe to do that but I
| am. I think the duration and lack of events is what did it. I'm
| use to the multiple phases of a falcon9 launch and the landing.
|
| 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.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > i feel pretty guilty for being so underwhelmed because I
| sure as hell couldn't build an engine and airframe to do that
| but I am.
|
| 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.
| Ottolay wrote:
| The underwhelming part is that it took so long.
|
| 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.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Note that SpaceX hadn't even launched its first rocket in
| 2004. They didn't reach orbit until 2008 and yet sent crew to
| the space station over a year ago already.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Yes, and the first suborbital crewed flight was in May 1961.
| A bit more than sixty years ago.
|
| 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.
| mongol wrote:
| Yes. What made it take this long?
| wombatpm wrote:
| Virgin Galactic had an accident the killed its test pilot a
| few years back. Had to build new spaceshiptwo
| Clewza313 wrote:
| And even then we still don't have "paying passengers" in the
| sense of being able to rock up and buy ticket. One seat being
| raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count.
|
| 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).
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| > One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite
| count.
|
| 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.
| usrusr wrote:
| Let's look at it from the Hollywood angle: SpaceX clearly wins
| in explosions per minute, but on the other hand BlueO has Vin
| Diesel (I might have squinted too hard)
| rtkwe wrote:
| I think it's pretty underwhelming and then is further
| diminished because it feels so much like Bezos and Branson just
| spending their obscene amounts of money to notch a win in this
| billionaire one upmanship game. First there was Bezos's Blue
| Origin crowing about their early launch and land success vs
| SpaceX like they were in a similar league of difficulty. Then
| with this you have Virgin Galactic coming out of seeming
| corporate catatonia so Brandon could rush out this first ahead
| of Bezos. I hadn't heard anything about SpaceShip One for what
| feels like years before this stunt.
|
| 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.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| come on, our billionaires are spending money advancing space
| tech. what a grand improvement over billionaires bribing
| governments and having people slaughtered instead, as happens
| through much of the world and history. applaud this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but 'Blue Origin successfully avoids achieving orbit'
| sounds so much less like an achievement than 'first human
| flight'.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well in one sense you're right, however...if they decided that
| they wanted to go for orbit without first doing an up-into-
| space-then-down trip, that wouldn't be a very wise thing to do.
| Test at each step. It makes perfect sense to do up-into-space-
| then-right-back-down first, before you try for orbiting the
| Earth, for many of the same reasons that NASA did it that way.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| He went up and then down again.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's frustrating, because I'd like to get excited, but relative
| to even the regular things going on in aerospace this isn't
| interesting. Interesting enough, I guess. Guy went up and down.
| There are _six_ people going around and around right now on the
| ISS and a second station is coming into orbit. He never left
| Earth? CNSA has a rover on the moon, and NASA has several
| rovers, some satellites, a helicopter, and a Will.i.am single
| on Mars.
|
| 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.
| mLuby wrote:
| > Step it up or step out, Bezos.
|
| 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.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Absolutely true.
|
| ... 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.
| docdeek wrote:
| Incredible achievement.
|
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| >Incredible achievement
|
| Is it though? I don't see how.
| docdeek wrote:
| When I was growing up the only people who had a chance to go
| where these four people went were trained for years by a
| nation-state. It was incredibly dangerous and it was only
| those who the government approved who might make the trip.
|
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| But there has been space tourism since the 00's. For the
| right amount of money anyone could ride a Soyuz rocket.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Made by a Space Race government. Now it's in the reach of
| individuals. I'm a space universalist. I'm cheering for
| all the teams here.
| pavon wrote:
| Those trips cost tens of millons of dollars. These cost
| hundreds of thousands. That makes it available to many
| more people that could afford it before, and hints at the
| potential for continuing price decreases in the future.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| I agree - it's incredible. First flight of Wright Brothers
| lasted about 8 seconds. For initial flights, I would not
| consider time spent in space as the most important metric.
| 908087 wrote:
| The Wright brothers weren't achieving a fraction of something
| which had already been going on semi-regularly for over half
| a century, though. Not at all comparable.
| flareback wrote:
| Am I the only one annoyed that it's spelled "Shepard"
| JshWright wrote:
| Probably...
|
| It's named after Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut to fly in
| space.
| flareback wrote:
| That makes a lot more sense
| markx2 wrote:
| The coverage was excellent.
|
| So many ways that this could have been an ego / company boosting
| event and it was not.
|
| Branson, take note.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You mean like they used 'Blue Origin' in tiny letters next to
| huge letters spelling out 'First Human Flight'?
|
| Always check the fine print.
| astatine wrote:
| Did anyone get the feeling that this was a "MVP" style launch? It
| looked more engineering oriented with its very firmly functional-
| only everything. Or maybe, Virgin Galactic pushed so far towards
| the other end that this pales in comparison.
| mendigou wrote:
| I found it annoying, even a bit insulting, that they kept
| referring to the people in the capsule as "astronauts".
|
| 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.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Looking up the definition of astronaut, I'm inclined to agree
| with you. They weren't crew, the flight was autonomous. It's
| unclear what if anything they could do should there have been a
| problem.
| nickik wrote:
| Its the same with pilots. Early on only pilots flew at all.
| Currently anybody who crosses a certain line is considered an
| astronaut.
|
| 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.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| "An astronaut (from the Greek "astron" (astron), meaning
| "star", and "nautes" (nautes), meaning "sailor") is a person
| trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program
| to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft."
|
| 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"?
| nemo44x wrote:
| When I'm out rowing a boat I don't think anyone would
| consider me a captain. Or when I'm sitting on a ship, I don't
| think anyone would consider me a sailor.
|
| When I'm on a flight I'm called a passenger, for example.
| They were passengers.
| finnh wrote:
| What about the "serve as commander or crew member" part?
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| are the members of the crew of Blue Origin 3 not 'crew
| members'?
| JshWright wrote:
| Is the passenger sitting in 23E on a flight from Newark
| to LA a "crew member"?
| Rumudiez wrote:
| If I drive onto the ferry am I part of the crew? I've
| been told (trained) on what to do and I'm equipped (my
| car), so am I a crew member? No, I'm just a passenger
| following the crew's direction.
| yreg wrote:
| If you are the only one aboard then you are crew.
| rtkwe wrote:
| If the ferry is fully automated and I don't do anything
| beyond parking my car safely I wouldn't say I was crew
| then, I'm still just a passenger until I actually do
| something for the operation of the vehicle/craft.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Is a passenger on a commercial flight a crew member?
| Would you call every passenger an "airman"?
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| I'd ask their name and call them that.
|
| I'm under no obligation to recognize anyone as anything
| but an average human without proof they're actually
| skilled as they claim.
|
| Titles are political euphemism. I want to know someone's
| profile to know who I am dealing with. You're a doctor?
| Of ants. Not helpful when I need someone that studied
| human anatomy.
|
| None of these titles explain the training involved. The
| honestly gained skill set based on direct learning.
|
| Bezos isn't a genius; he's a politically elevated person
| due to financial success. Humans will never live among
| the stars as the meat bags we are; far more likely we
| etch a simulated human consciousness into a new medium
| than adapt this biology. We're just watching one guy get
| his jollies off at our political expense.
|
| Titillate the masses to keep them politically
| disorganized. Humans used to wage holy wars, invade other
| nations to do that. Now it's engineering and economic
| spectacle.
|
| What a trivial and boring people I live among.
| Collectively setting themselves aside to ogle this stuff.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Crew members have defined roles and responsibilities, and are
| important to the success of a mission beyond having paid to
| be there. The alternative is more apt here, I think:
| passengers.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| You may be right.
|
| But still for the sake of discussion, I would argue that
| their mission required only 1 responsibility - that you be
| there. Even if they orbit around the Earth, modern
| spacecrafts are designed in such a way that crew member
| input is almost unnecessary. I wonder how much crew input
| is needed to dock on ISS in modern crafts...
| spicyramen wrote:
| Astronaut pro tempore may apply
| nautilius wrote:
| I take it you're not a big fan of Gagarin, the first human
| in space, then. What was his importance beyond 'being
| there'?
| croes wrote:
| That why they called him an cosmonaut instead of
| astronaut. SCNR
| KuiN wrote:
| Vostok 1 is a tricky exception because there was no
| gurantee Gagarin would be conscious or even alive when he
| got to space. That mission had to be automated.
|
| But he had a role other than just being a passenger. He
| was there to make observations on the performance of the
| rocket and the spacecraft, as well as himself throughout
| the mission. There's a clear scientific role here that
| the Blue Origin tourists do not have. And while the
| controls were locked, Gagarin had the code to unlock them
| and was to take over the spacecraft in the event of
| automation failure or another manually recoverable
| emergency.
| nautilius wrote:
| As I wrote someplace else before: his job was done by
| dogs and monkeys before, so it's hardly mission critical
| for him to even be conscious. In fact, the mission would
| have been considered a great success even if he had been
| unconscious the whole flight, as long as he survived. His
| presence was the key point.
|
| Throughout Mercury, the astronauts had to fight for
| control elements to even be included in the spacecraft
| because automation was considered the safer option.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan and these steps were
| incredible milestones, and I certainly wouldn't have
| wanted to switch seats with anyone.
|
| Here, I am sure Bezos can/would argue that "someone had
| to make observations on the performance of the rocket and
| the spacecraft, as well as himself throughout the
| mission". Sure, the goal here is commercial, but it's
| hard to argue that Gagarin's flight was made to gain pure
| scientific knowledge to finally answer the pressing
| question of how humans react to spaceflight, rather than
| political/technological.
| croes wrote:
| To finish you wiki quote:
|
| "Although generally reserved for professional space
| travelers, the terms are sometimes applied to anyone who
| travels into space, including scientists, politicians,
| journalists and tourists."
| jszymborski wrote:
| Surely I'm not a sailor for having taken a cruise ship. I
| did, however, participate in the safety demonstration, and
| packed my bags.
|
| I'm definitely on-board with calling Bezos a passenger.
| simonh wrote:
| Shuttleworth and Tito underwent a year of training, including 7
| months at Star City. They also conducted scientific experiments
| while on the station. They are formally considered Spaceflight
| Participants by Roscosmos, the FAA and NASA. They weren't
| considered Cosmonauts or Astronauts, but that seems to be
| solely due to their non-professional status rather than their
| training or operational duties.
| _moof wrote:
| Honestly these days even the "real" astronauts are basically
| passengers. The systems are so heavily automated, including
| anomaly response, and the parts that aren't are mostly done by
| ground operators. Crew Dragon doesn't even have a stick. It's
| not the '60s anymore, which in many ways is good. But glamorous
| it ain't. Let's not forgot that the end result of all this will
| be to make spaceflight as pedestrian as air travel, an activity
| that hasn't had a shred of its initial sparkle for decades.
|
| 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.
| baus wrote:
| That seems pedantic. Just because technology has lowered the
| requirements for becoming an astronaut, that doesn't change the
| definition.
| eplanit wrote:
| So if I go on an ocean cruise I'm a Sailor?
| beamatronic wrote:
| It seems like you can clearly delineate, by whether you are
| being paid to be there, or you are paying to be there.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The analogy is tough because as far as I know there isn't
| an official definition of what a sailor is. Nor is there an
| internationally recognized registry like the "Federation
| Aeronautique Internationale" which keeps track of people it
| considers Astronauts/Cosmonauts/Taiknonauts, etc.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| There is an official definition of what a seaman/sailor
| is. Admiralty law is a thing [1][2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_status_in_United
| _States...
|
| [2] https://www.maritimeinjuryguide.org/maritime-
| lawsuit/qualifi...
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > I found it annoying, even a bit insulting, that they kept
| referring to the people in the capsule as "astronauts".
|
| 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 Karman 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.
| goshx wrote:
| as*tro*naut /'astr@,not/
|
| 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.
| tqi wrote:
| Would you feel the same way if this were, say, a collection of
| college students that achieved the same thing?
| jb1991 wrote:
| And how about Christa McAuliffe? She was a career school
| teacher who had the opportunity to fly on the Challenger. But
| she was also titled an astronaut.
| js2 wrote:
| She trained for that mission for a year, and planned to
| conduct experiments and teach lessons from space. I don't
| make the rules, but it seems to me she did a fair bit more
| than touristing.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Christa was trained and fully qualified for her role.
| nautilius wrote:
| All on board today were trained and fully qualified for
| their roles.
| w0de0 wrote:
| Your critical responses focus on parsing the meaning of
| "astronaut," or on the true utility of the job with respect to
| other non-human test pilots.
|
| 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.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > I found it annoying, even a bit insulting, that they kept
| referring to the people in the capsule as "astronauts".
|
| 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.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| I find strange that line of thinking. That NASA and other space
| agencies use highly trained personnel like military pilots for
| space missions seems largely a historical accident.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| Exactly. Literal monkeys and dogs did the job, before Gagarin
| or Shepard.
| Faaak wrote:
| If you're interested about that, the "The Calculating Stars"
| book talks a bit about it. It's really nice to read !
| aardvarkr wrote:
| Do you really think the pilots are nothing more than dead
| weight whose only purpose is to be a passenger? The
| astronauts were some of the best of the best because it was
| an experimental flight program. Do you really think the best
| pilots would sign up and give their lives just to be a test
| subject with no control like the chimpanzee the Russians put
| into space?
| rrss wrote:
| Basically yes, that's what they signed up for in project
| mercury. The initial plan had nothing for the human to
| pilot. Mercury only got manual controls and a window
| because the astronauts fought for them.
| vmception wrote:
| The point is that they don't have to, the level of
| discipline is unnecessary, viable commercial space travel
| means it is supposed to become even more unnecessary
|
| So the gatekeeping can go away
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"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.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > are already familiar with following orders.
|
| Probably more than this, following protocols but having an
| ability to think for themselves on their feet (as opposed
| to a grunt following minutia orders).
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm sure it was over-dramatized in the film (which I
| haven't seen, I'm just assuming they prioritized compelling
| storytelling based on the fact that it wasn't a public
| television documentary), but supposedly something like that
| decisionmaking process actually happened. For example, see
| Wikipedia's synopsis of the book, which was presumably at
| least somewhat more factual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book):
|
| _The storyline also involves the political reasons for
| putting people into space, asserting that the Mercury
| astronauts were actually a burden to the program and were
| only sent up for promotional reasons. Reasons for including
| living beings in spacecraft are barely touched upon, but
| the first option considered was to use a chimpanzee (and,
| indeed, chimpanzees were sent up first)._
|
| _Another option considered was using athletes already
| accustomed to physical stress, such as circus trapeze
| artists. Wolfe states that President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
| however, insisted on pilots, even though the first crew
| members would not actually fly the spacecraft._
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Mixed feelings. I suppose it's important to have
| competition/alternatives to SpaceX, but does it have to be done
| in such a sluggish manner by one the most unlikable people in the
| world?
| basisword wrote:
| I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as unlikeable.
|
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Bezos is so rich that he has plenty left to spend on mansions
| and supercars.
| selykg wrote:
| > I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as unlikeable.
|
| 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.
| rvz wrote:
| > he really makes me not want to buy anything from Tesla
| ever just because he's associated with it.
|
| Maybe people like him because he knows how to overpromise
| (and lie) to his loyal Tesla fanbase and give them a
| product that doesn't function as advertised.
|
| They knew FSD (Fools Self Driving) was never going to be
| Level 5 and still promised it and missed their own
| deadlines and was admittedly Level 2. Now they introduce a
| subscription package to a broken product feature even
| though his customers have already paid for it!
|
| Perhaps Musk is clever at playing his Tesla customers or
| the fanatics just love getting scammed by him. Maybe both.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I don't get the guy's appeal.
|
| You could be talking about some politicians and I'd feel
| similarly. I think it says much more about society that
| these are the folks we hold up on a pedestal than it says
| about the people themselves.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> I hate to break it to you but Musk is just as
| unlikeable.
|
| I had long suspected that he's on the spectrum, and earlier
| this year he came out and openly talked about his
| Asperger's diagnosis.
|
| That's not to say that excuses his terrible treatment of
| other people, but it sure explains it.
| selykg wrote:
| Well, that makes some amount of sense. Certainly doesn't
| excuse it. Perhaps he needs to rethink how he
| communicates with people, maybe putting someone between
| himself and how he communicates with the public. "No,
| Elon, think about what this could possibly do if you said
| this" type of person.
|
| Either way. He's super polarizing. Some people love him.
| Some people totally despise him. It's probably clear
| which side I'm on lol
| [deleted]
| kiba wrote:
| _I had long suspected that he 's on the spectrum, and
| earlier this year he came out and openly talked about his
| Asperger's diagnosis._
|
| I don't think that confirms he has Asperger's. He said it
| on SNL as a joke.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >He said it on SNL as a joke
|
| Source?
| radihuq wrote:
| I can't find the exact timestamp but at the beginning of
| this podcast[0] Jason Calacanis talks about his
| experience joining Musk backstage at SNL, as well as how
| that Asperger's joke came to be. If I recall correctly, I
| think its confirmed, or at least strongly implied, Musk
| does have Asperger's
|
| EDIT: they start talking about it at the 7:00 mark
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/GE0iWGNXKXw?t=420
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I don't believe it was a joke? I watched the bit and it
| certainly didn't come across as one.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > I don't get the guy's appeal.
|
| I suspect there's a level of vicariousness for some fans,
| some shade of "He's a nerd like me - it could have been me
| if I caught a lucky break. Hell, I can still be something
| like him if I found/get RSUs in a rocketship SaaS startup
| and have multiple recurring successes after that". Elon
| seems to have settled into that "friendly, relatable
| neighborhood billionaire who memes-and-does-crypto just
| like you" persona
| q1w2 wrote:
| I don't see this sort of joy-riding as a material competition
| to what SpaceX is doing.
|
| It's not even clear to me that that is their objective.
|
| These sub-orbital flights are not interesting - scientifically
| nor engineeringly.
| rrss wrote:
| Their objective is to make money through space tourism.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > such a sluggish manner
|
| Can you elaborate? I'm not sure "sluggish" is an adverb I would
| use to describe space launches.
| [deleted]
| FredFS456 wrote:
| Blue Origin is funded by Bezos with much more resources/year
| than SpaceX, yet has achieved far less over a longer time
| since founding. "Sluggish" is the adverb I would use to
| describe its engineering progress.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| And purely for egotistical reasons...
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What a silly statement. No, you don't have the ability to
| read Bezos' mind from your armchair.
|
| My 2c - it's great that billionaires are starting important
| businesses that are highly capital intensive, since those
| types of businesses are more inaccessible to newer
| entrepreneurs.
| vmception wrote:
| I get a laugh imagining that Bezos took that boy/bidder up as
| insurance he would be allowed back onto the planet
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The latest of the rich man roller coasters. Biggest windows in
| space... Cool. I cannot wait to see the first Champaign cork
| opened in zero gravity. At least spaceX's efforts have some none-
| entertainment uses. This rocket is nothing more than a pleasure
| craft.
| holoduke wrote:
| Waiting for youporn to have their first facial in space.
| meepmorp wrote:
| You're getting downvotes, but we're going to real porn shot
| in space within the next decade. Personally, I'm hoping to
| see some really shameless public handwringing and outrage by
| politicians and religious leaders.
| Me1000 wrote:
| Blue Origin has already flown New Shepard with various science
| experiments onboard. They've flown it with new guidance systems
| which they were testing for their moon landing bid which they
| submitted with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper.
|
| 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.
| DaniloDias wrote:
| One way I feel different from most people posting here:
|
| A man spends his life building a company successful enough to
| have the financial tools necessary to explore space flight. He
| won't get that time back. The money that corresponds to that time
| is his to spend.
|
| A bunch of boring and predictable meat bags on the Internet are
| so narcissistic that they blandly claim to know better how he
| should spend that money. You are no different than the Catholic
| Church.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I was amazed at how routine it felt. Definitely a rich person's
| rollercoaster. I could see hotels in space as a thing.
| ninjamayo wrote:
| Gongrats to Blue Origin, this was great but when compared to
| SpaceX its like seeing a bicycle ride compared to a Model S Plaid
| track on Nuremberg.
| _joel wrote:
| It's great to have more companies operating in space but, as
| noted by others, it felt fairly routine given what SpaceX have
| been achieving (BN3 static fire yesterday and proper orbital
| flight in a few weeks)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I didn't see Bezos sitting inside, except after the landing.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I'm more impressed that Bezos took the ideas that worked from
| Spacex and successfully copied it.
| ProAm wrote:
| You mean tax payer funding?
| JshWright wrote:
| Blue Origin actually predates SpaceX. They have been working in
| parallel on related ideas, so I don't think it's fair to say
| they "copied" SpaceX.
|
| 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.
| eco wrote:
| I still can't wrap my head around how little Blue Origin has
| accomplished in 21 years despite having an earlier start than
| SpaceX and with Bezos injecting a billion or so into it every
| year.
|
| SpaceX launches people and cargo to the ISS, just completed
| the first shell of a nearly worldwide satellite internet
| network using reused boosters many of which approaching 10
| flights, and is a few months out from test launching a fully
| reusable rocket with twice the thrust of the Saturn V using a
| novel-full flow staged combustion rocket engine of their own
| design.
|
| And now Blue Origin is seemingly dragging down ULA with them
| because of the constantly delays of the BE-4 engine ULA
| selected for Vulcan.
|
| I just don't understand how Bezos can find this progress
| acceptable. I want Blue Origin to succeed. Having SpaceX as
| the only US launch provider is not the future we want.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Bezos doesn't know the science as well as Elon. Not to say
| Elon is a rocket scientist, but knows enough to impact
| something (direction, velocity).
|
| Bezos is showing where he _does_ know things. He knows what
| works (spacex design and vertical landing), so copy that.
| Amazon didn't invent books, they just sold it cheaply and
| on the internet.
|
| It's interesting, I think Musk and Bezos would make a good
| team, especially on something like Tesla.
| Me1000 wrote:
| I think it comes down to a few different reasons. Firstly,
| SpaceX had to find profitability relatively quickly or die.
| Blue doesn't have that problem, thanks to Bezos' personal
| war chest. SpaceX couldn't gamble on the idea that space
| tourism would be a significant cost offset. Putting
| payloads into orbit was a more viable business model.
|
| Second, New Shepard is massively over engineered for what
| it is. The reason for that is that they plan on using it to
| learn how to make much bigger rockets. Though, I suppose
| you could reasonably argue that the delays of New Glenn
| means that wasn't a smart tradeoff.
|
| Lastly, Blue doesn't have the same laser focus SpaceX does.
| I think this is most likely the biggest contributor.
| They've made all kinds of different engines, they designed
| their own lunar lander, then they designed another one with
| Northrop, Lockheed, and Draper for NASAs HLS project.
|
| My understanding through people I've talked to with
| connections to Blue, is that Blue operated more as an R&D
| lab for the first several years of it's existence.
|
| I, like a lot of people, suspect now that Bezos is more
| focused on Blue they will start making bigger waves in the
| industry. At least I hope so, because I'm really excited to
| see competition in the space!
| Me1000 wrote:
| New Shepard landed after going to space nearly a full year
| before SpaceX's first landing.
|
| Obviously an orbital class booster is a different challenge
| than a suborbital booster, but the idea that Blue is copying
| SpaceX is just wrong.
| [deleted]
| ruined wrote:
| dude goes to space but can't show me a webpage without executing
| js
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Seems that between Musk, Bezos and Branson, we have in essence
| restarted a space race but this time it's billionaires in the
| private sector versus governments. Some will surely say that they
| have better things to spend their money on (Bezos for sure) but I
| gave to say it's still mindblowing. I would imagine if you're one
| of those guys, you've basically have enough money to solve any
| problem, so these guys it seems are chasing harder and harder
| problems, space exploration seems to be top of mind among these
| problems.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't see a race. I see one company that does space travel
| and two dilettantes, who may or may not one day actually do
| something useful.
| api wrote:
| Blue Origin is the closest to actually developing useful
| orbital and beyond-orbital capabilities. They have their own
| new engine design that's not quite as impressive as Raptor
| but not bad and their own super-heavy lift booster in
| development. The thing you just saw fly is similar to
| "Starhopper."
|
| 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13
| blhack wrote:
| Virgin galactic does go to orbit:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Orbit
|
| They launched satellites earlier this year.
|
| The space tourism thing is just a part of what the company
| does.
| JshWright wrote:
| Virgin Galactic doesn't go to orbit, Virgin Orbit does.
| api wrote:
| Wow... I didn't even know about that. I stand corrected.
|
| SpaceX is still way ahead though.
| JshWright wrote:
| "Ahead" implies the same end goal... Neither Virgin
| Galactic (the suborbital space tourism company) or Virgin
| Orbit (the orbital small-sat launch company) have the
| same end goal as SpaceX.
|
| That's like saying Lockheed Martin (maker of the F-35) is
| "way ahead" of Textron (maker of the Cessna). They have
| different goals entirely.
| JshWright wrote:
| > The thing you just saw fly is similar to "Starhopper."
|
| I think you mean "Grasshopper" (the Falcon 9 VTOL test mule
| from a few years back). New Shepard is less than half the
| size of Starhopper, and the BE-3 engine has ~25% of the
| thrust of the Raptor engine.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| There is a race, but the competitors are China and SpaceX.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You're seeing the very first steps of a long race.
| maverick-iceman wrote:
| That's right. Up until we have 100,000 people living in
| space we are just winging it.
|
| Winner of the race will be the dominant company in said
| community of 100,000 or the most socially influential
| person.
|
| Bezos, Musk and Branson won't be alive to see that, so they
| are shooting for George Washington type influence, the one
| reserved for the founder, the guy who was at the beginning
| of it all and gets remembered .
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This is what "trickle down" technology looks like. We are
| watching space flight move a rung down the economic ladder.
|
| Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project ->
| ????? -> normal people
|
| (some steps omitted for brevity)
| afavour wrote:
| But what's the actual purpose? Space tourism I get. But
| beyond that I'm struggling to see the uses of normal people
| having access to space travel. By comparison people having
| access to air travel has clear benefits.
| rhdunn wrote:
| Our planet will only last so long until the Sun becomes a
| Red Giant. At that point we will need to venture to at
| least the outer planets, if not beyond the solar system if
| we want to continue as a species.
|
| 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.
| afavour wrote:
| > Our planet will only last so long until the Sun becomes
| a Red Giant.
|
| In, what, five billion years? I'm not sure we need Bezos
| to be focusing all his money on that timeframe.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Not sure if you're being facetious. If so, I'll point out
| that it didn't take long to get from the Wright Brothers to
| regular civilian jet passenger flights, and it won't take
| long to get from Musk and Bezos to regular civilian space
| flights.
|
| 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.
| pdelgallego wrote:
| Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project ->
| hobbyist (e.g. Copenhagen Suborbitals) -> normal people.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Nation state R&D -> billionare's pet-project PoC -> wealthy
| bigco Commercialisation effort -> Commercial service (for
| wealthy/business) -> Commercial service (for normal public)
| -> hobbyists & higher education
| chasd00 wrote:
| when Copenhagen Suborbitals does this i'll cheer (and
| theiy're getting close). Bezos and his resources should be
| able to do better.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Mentioning Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin in the same breath
| as SpaceX seems disingenuous. It's like comparing an horse+cart
| with a modern car.
|
| 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.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Understanding the difference between orbital and suborbital
| space flight need not cause one to be cynical and negative
| about things.
|
| Especially since blue origin has a design that can scale up
| quickly, as SpaceX did with falcon 1 to 9
| [deleted]
| themgt wrote:
| Falcon 1 put a payload into orbit though, so it's really
| not the same. Falcon 9's first flight was less than 2 years
| after Falcon 1 made it to orbit.
|
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| that's a good point, i think orbit was the minimum
| planned for Falcon1. I don't believe SpaceX every just
| went to the karman line and back. I think all of their
| flights have been either crashes or fully orbital.
| chippiewill wrote:
| > Think all of their flights have been either crashes or
| fully orbital.
|
| Certainly applies to the operational launches of all
| their rocket vehicles, however they've also done
| suborbital test flights with with Grasshopper, F9R,
| Starhopper, Starship (and maybe Super Heavy soon as well
| depending on if they do a sub-orbital with that first).
|
| The important difference is that SpaceX has never
| considered the Karman line as a target in its own right
| (somewhat rightly, its only value is for "whelming" space
| tourism).
| eco wrote:
| Falcon 9 was a direct extension of Falcon 1. New Glenn
| shares almost nothing in common with New Shepard. They
| don't even use the same fuel or engine.
| DennisP wrote:
| Second stage of New Glenn uses a variant of the New
| Shephard engine.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| "Scale up", a software term that has almost zero value when
| translated to aerospace engineering.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| Will see how Elon's 100 of Starships per year will affect
| costs of transport to space.
| nimithryn wrote:
| The US was behind the USSR at the beginning of the last space
| race. Jeff Bezos is an extremely smart and talented guy, and
| is now focusing a lot more of his time on Blue Origin. I
| wouldn't count them out.
| ranman wrote:
| Blue Origin technically started before SpaceX and has an
| increasing delta in accomplishments... They're easily a
| decade plus behind and SpaceX doesn't seem to be slowing
| down.
|
| Bezos is smart and talented... but it's hard to overcome a
| lead like that.
| [deleted]
| freediver wrote:
| This tweet summed it up well:
|
| https://twitter.com/Charly923407591/status/14162863209561210.
| ..
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I hear those complaints, but aside from a snarky "then spend
| your own money on <whatever> then", they fail mention:
|
| - 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.
| ethanbond wrote:
| "Space exploration" is lending way, way too much credence to
| this.
|
| 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.
| eevilspock wrote:
| > it's their money to spend
|
| Not everyone agrees.
| jpt1 wrote:
| Not everyone agrees the earth is round but we don't take
| their opinions seriously
| ethanbond wrote:
| Sure. I myself am not entirely bought into this position,
| but it is in fact the position of "our society." Figure we
| have to start by not calling these people explorers before
| making our way to questioning whether such extreme
| accumulation of wealth is optimal in the first place.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > questioning whether such extreme accumulation of wealth
| is optimal in the first place
|
| But why is it anyone's choice? People are already taxed
| disproportionately, why can't Musk spend his money, or
| the money people invest in him?
|
| The US is free to outlaw large accumulations of wealth,
| it would just lose a lot of people in the process
| (assuming emigration wasn't also outlawed).
|
| People _in_ the US are, equally, free to move to places
| with fairer tax laws.
| flareback wrote:
| Can you expand on this? I've never looked into who is
| financing this project. I've always assumed it was just
| Bezos' own money he was using.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Bezos sells ~$1B of his Amazon stock per year to finance
| it.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I don't think Blue Origin is currently in the same league as
| SpaceX. One is making money putting payloads in orbit, actively
| disrupting the industry and developing new hardware. They other
| has a sub orbital rocket that is only good for joy rides and
| otherwise is a lot of talk and little results. Rocket Lab is a
| more substantial player in the space industry right now than
| Blue Origin is. Maybe some day they will get off their ass and
| actually do something noteworthy.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Space tourism will be noteworthy insofar as it will normalize
| more and more of the public to space travel, which in turn
| normalize the acceptance of the expenditure required.
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| Consider if "space tourism" ends up having no product
| market fit. There is no data currently that it is a viable
| business. Sure, there are a bunch of pre-orders, and owners
| of companies now making maiden voyages, but that's it.
|
| A couple vaporized high profile customers will have a
| massive chilling effect on the industry.
|
| I think Musk's "we are going to Mars, people will die" is
| the most sober/realistic take. This messaging will do a
| much better job eliciting a customer base that understands
| the product and that will lead to sustainable industry
| someday.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| > Some will surely say that they have better things to spend
| their money on
|
| 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.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The question every time space exploration comes up is whether
| the money and effort is better spent in space or on more
| terrestrial problems.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >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.
| afavour wrote:
| So to paraphrase: doesn't matter for developed nations, we
| don't have an answer for undeveloped ones.
|
| ...doesn't that suggest it would be worth a billionaire
| trying to find an answer for the latter? A way to help
| local farmers feed their population? It seems like an
| interesting problem space to me. Certainly more interesting
| than replicating space flights NASA already did decades
| ago.
| DennisP wrote:
| SpaceX at least is not just replicating NASA feats.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| >>With a private space race, technologies like these seem
| more likely to remain a trade secret.
|
| 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.
| aylmao wrote:
| > Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't
| patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove
| out.
|
| I'd argue this is, if we're talking about practicality, is
| just crumbs though.
|
| For example, scratch-resistant lenses were developed at
| NASA. Proving that it could be done wasn't the important
| factor that brought it to everyone's homes. What brought it
| to everyone's homes was the fact that NASA licensed
|
| As another example, single-crystal silicon solar cells were
| first developed after NASA sponsored a 28-member coalition
| to develop an unmanned, high altitude aircraft. Private
| companies don't create coalitions like this and are much
| less likely to license or waive patents.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologie
| s#Scra...
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > With government-sponsored exploration, you at least ended
| up with public research
|
| 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.
| drcongo wrote:
| It takes a special kind of awful person to think that this is
| the hard problem they should solve with their billions.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| "They should stop wasting money sending those ships around
| Africa"
|
| -Some dude in the 1400s
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, a million of us have more money than each of them and
| instead of exploring space or feeding the poor, I (a member
| of the million) am going to choose to buy a MacBook Pro. Our
| collective $2 billion is going to go to consumer devices.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I can't help but thinking we've entered another Gilded Age.
| boringg wrote:
| The Space Race is still happening, but it's happening on other
| planets and with government money (see: Mars and further afield
| exploration). All these initiatives have been possible by the
| heavy lifting of NASA and other international government
| agencies over the last 6 decades.
|
| 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.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| In my opinion, they are still doing incredible work. SpaceX
| and Blue Origin can both bring their rockets down - no
| government space agency can do this today (and govt space
| agencies had a 60 year lead)
|
| 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
| boringg wrote:
| I agree privatization is a benefit - i believe that was my
| final statement in that they are complementary. I think
| that the bulk work is still done by public agencies,
| however the privatization part capitalizes from a revenue
| perspective on the work done by the public agencies.
|
| It's not dissimilar to how most energy technology makes its
| way to the private companies. DOE research labs do most of
| the work with college collaboration and then it gets
| released through private equity into the public domain.
| nickik wrote:
| NASA could have done this long ago. And had test project
| that proved as much. Suborbital human flight is just not
| very interesting for anything other then tourism.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Bill Gates is chasing harder and harder problems, not these
| guys.
| nostromo wrote:
| Gates is doing great work, no doubt.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| solidasparagus wrote:
| I believe Bezos has been obsessed with space since before he
| even started Amazon. Apparently he even talked about this dream
| during his high school graduation.
|
| I always thought that Amazon was just the way to make his space
| dream possible.
| simmytot wrote:
| Blue Origin looked like "dildos into space"; Virgin Galactic like
| "jackasses into space".
|
| I look forward to marketing a dildo with the name "Blue Origin",
| one that can "launch you into space" (albeit figuratively only)
| better.
|
| And how else could you characterise a camera focusing on
| Branson's grin for 5 minutes - isn't there a more photogenic
| angle for the spacecraft's contents?
| mesozoic wrote:
| What was Jeff Bezos' carbon footprint today?
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