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Jeff Bezos Lifts Veil on His Rocket Company, Blue Origin
- LAMike 11y agoHope they eventually offers tours like SpaceX, it is really cool to check out the factory and see the Merlin engines. They are surprisingly small, but they look like time machines. Jeff really likes things that fly. Drones, Cargo planes and rockets!
- TrevorJ 11y agoWait, you can take tours of SpaceX?
- MPSimmons 11y agoEmployees can give tours to friends and family. Also, don't beg for tours over the internet. You could also get a Tesla and enter the contest: http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-referral-program-ludicrous-model-x-p90d-spacex-prize/ http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-referral-program-ludicrous-mo...
- samstave 11y agoFunny how he started a rocket company, yet carmack abandoned one... I feel carmack could have done a better job, but if carmack can give up - my prospects on bezos are quite dim...
- jimminy 11y agoVastly different levels of capitalization. Bezo's is a multi-billionaire, while Carmack was only a multi-millionaire. Bezo's has more money to invest in failures and iteration than Carmack did. Also as far as intelligence goes I think they're pretty close, or Bezos would come out ahead, specifically when taking account of deep breadth of knowledge.
- venomsnake 11y agoCarmack is a rare breed - true engineer. Not in the sense of having a degree, but in Isamabard Kingdom Brunell ability to solve problems.
- ansible 11y agoVastly different levels of capitalization. Bezo's is a multi-billionaire, while Carmack was only a multi-millionaire. And motivation. Carmack's original thing was just that he was spending a lot of money on modifying Ferarris, and instead decided to put that money towards rocket development. That's not to say they took things more seriously later on, but that was the start of it. And we learned very, very well, that H2O2 monopropellants rocket engines are a pain to use in practice, and don't seem feasible for any kind of reusable system.
- avmich 11y ago> And we learned very, very well, that H2O2 monopropellants rocket engines are a pain to use in practice, and don't seem feasible for any kind of reusable system. In no way Armadillo Aerospace's work shown that H2O2 engines are somehow fundamentally inferior to other rocket engines. What turned AA away from H2O2 were problems to obtain rocket-grade without building a processing plant.
- infocollector 11y agoIt would be nice to see which billionaire is next :-)
- venomsnake 11y agoZuckeberg funded Iridium done right. That will show that pesky India with it's "net neutrality"
- thematt 11y agoThis isn't a "who is hiring?" thread obviously, but if anyone wants to be a part of our team we are always looking for folks who share our passion for space, especially those who happen to build software too! https://www.blueorigin.com/careers https://www.blueorigin.com/careers Needless to say, there are tons of interesting problems to solve and opportunities to make a huge impact.
- BrandonMarc 11y agoTempting. Are your working hours more reasonable than SpaceX? With a family to love, 70-hour weeks just don't fit well.
- victor9000 11y agoI do not envy those who place their quality of life in the middle of a pissing contest between Bezos and Musk.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoProgress is not cheap, nor easy on the soul.
- gaze 11y agoYeah but... to a degree, right? Many amazing things have been accomplished by people not working themselves to death. If the workforce convinces itself that people are expendable then I suppose people are expendable! I however choose to fight this attitude. Frightened, stressed people work hastefully and make mistakes... somehow the worst thing imaginable for a space exploration company, right?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jzwinck 11y agoMany truly incredible things were built at some cost in human lives. I recently watched a documentary which said large tunneling projects expected to lose one man per X miles dug, a few decades ago. I'm not saying you should be willing to die for your work. But historically someone always seems to be. Not least of all in the space business.
- pjscott 11y agoBlue Origin is a credible rocket company, in case anybody was wondering. They've got some impressive engineering, a realistic, incremental long-term plan, and pockets deep enough to pay for it.
- avmich 11y agoI agree, but take a look here: SpaceX was established 2 years later than Blue Origin, with principal sponsor's net worth may be an order of magnitude less; yet today's SpaceX achievements, I think, are more serious overall than Blue Origin's. Having a realistic, incremental long-term plan may be not enough to remain relevant in the market, if the latter shifts fast enough. Would you say Lockheed and Boeing don't have have a realistic plan? Yet their lunch is increasingly eaten by competition. It's good they actually adapt their plans.
- c3534l 11y ago> may be not enough to remain relevant in the market You're forgetting that there isn't actually a market here. There is currently no commercial service that brings you into space.
- avmich 11y agoMarket is figurative here - even if you don't pursue immediate commercial benefits, you may get ahead of fall behind, as it was happening in less than market oriented Soviet space program. But on the other hand, I'd be surprised if Blue Origin was only focused on the market of commercial flights to space. That market is somewhat covered by Russia's Soyuz flights - admittedly just a few flights total so far. Suborbital flights - may be, but there could be competition from Virgin Galactic. Blue Origin also makes engines which are planned to be used on other manufacturer's rockets - here we have competition from Aerojet and even XCOR. So - even if some market niches don't exist today, it doesn't mean Blue Origin doesn't have competition - as they are also not offering flight right now. Competition in space flight, for example, existed, say, in 1960, when two countries tried to send a man to space first.
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- roflchoppa 11y agoIts almost an eerie feeling of these companies having the potential to last "forever". common health technologies freeze me now and wake me up in 400 years please.
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- cm127 11y agoMore like delaying the inevitable...
- pnathan 11y agoI had an interview at Blue Origin a few years ago. Very driven group of people. I wasn't the right fit for the position, we both agreed, but it was a great experience. If you're into spaceflight, I would definitely recommend checking them out.
- askafriend 11y ago> I wasn't the right fit for the position But seriously...what did you really mean to say? I hate that phrase with a passion.
- pnathan 11y agoI mean to say: I wasn't the right fit. They were looking for someone with different attributes; after the interview, I realized this, and when the recruiter called me up to tell me so, I told him I agreed and had planned to turn the offer down if I had gotten the offer. Absolutely nothing against Blue Origin: I would have not been a good fit. I think I needed a solid 5-10 years more experience to do the job they wanted to the exactitude they needed.
- vonmoltke 11y agoHow did you get the interview in the first place of there was such a disconnect?
- pnathan 11y agoCandidly, it was a great experience, and I walked out with a lot of respect for Blue Origin and the people I spoke with; this really hasn't lessened through the years. Interviews ought to be a two-way street: the interview I did definitely was. A+. I'd really rather not answer more personal questions about this beyond what I've already said in this thread.
- shepardrtc 11y agoSometimes position descriptions and recruiter pitches don't quite match what an employer is looking for. You initially think you'd be great, but once the interview starts, you realize that they're looking for something different. And they realize that too.
- kin 11y agoThis is awesome. I love that there is more and more interest in space exploration lately. Hopefully real life events will soon inspire beyond what recent movies like Interstellar and the Martian have shown us.
- hooliganpete 11y agoGone are the days of billionaires buying sports teams, buying newspapers and blogs still seems to be in but not quite as hot as space exploration. With SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin sort of seems like a "me too" venture...
- username223 11y agoHere are the days of billionaires putting millionaires in metal capsules, then blasting them into space? ;-) I don't know whether this is a step forward, as I enjoy reading the newspaper.
- adventured 11y agoBlue Origin pre-dates both SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. Bezos founded it in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin#History
- adrianN 11y agoIt's about time we get those cyber-punk ultra rich building space stations from where they control their vast enterprises while cheating death with the latest med-tech from Chiba's underground hospitals.
- peteretep 11y agoSounds good to me
- dkarapetyan 11y agoWhat a weird sentence > Currently, most rocket companies launch, at most, about a dozen times a year. “You never get really great at something you do 10, 12 times a year,” Mr. Bezos said. With a small fleet of reusable New Shepard rockets, Blue Origin could be launching dozens of times a year. So they'd be doing the same as everyone else?
- 6581 11y ago"Dozens" is at least 24.
- dkarapetyan 11y agoI don't think that's the colloquial definition of "dozens" > plural dozens or dozen 1 : a group of 12 2 : an indefinitely large number <dozens of times>
- Vraxx 11y agoThere's an implied upper bound or they would have used a more extreme term to play it up even further. 18,000 times a year is "dozens", but you're going to say "thousands of launches per year" if you're conservative and "tens of thousands" if you're a little more daring.
- vidarh 11y agoIt is clearly implied in the quote that they will be doing much more than the others - that's what matters. Your interpretation above that they will be doing "the same" is unreasonable given the context. It's pretty reasonble then to assume "dozens" will be at the very least two dozen on the lower bound. Even if it's a guess, it's likely a far better guess than to assume they meant "others are doing too few launches, so we'll do the same number of launches"
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- goldenkey 11y agoSo you were unqualified. Is that what you meant to say?
- falsestprophet 11y agoYes, of course, but you knew that already. I also asked a supermodel out, but in the end we both agreed it wouldn't be a good fit. edit: Just to be clear, my point is that it's correct, rational decision on the part of the hypothetical supermodel.
- goldenkey 11y agoWell she's just a shallow rake. Sorry for your confrontation with the worst of humanity.
- dang 11y agoPlease don't be rude. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11251509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11251509 and marked it off-topic.
- kirk21 11y agoGood to see that they will become more open about what they are doing. Great job Mr. Bezos.
- josefresco 11y ago"His argument was simple: Energy consumption has been rising at 2 or 3 percent a year. Even at that modest rate, within a few centuries, the energy usage would be equal to the energy produced by high-efficiency solar cells covering the entire surface of the planet. “We’ll be using all of the solar energy that impacts the Earth,” he said. “That’s an actual limit.”" What now? I was under the assumption that the solar energy levels hitting the earth were quite higher/more than we could ever "need" and also that energy usage isn't going to increase at a consistent rate. Anyone have data on this? Does his timeframe (few centuries) exceed than existing reporting? Does it even make sense to project a 2-3% increase in energy consumption over ~300 years? Found: http://illumin.usc.edu/assets/submissions/675/murphy_CSP.pdf http://illumin.usc.edu/assets/submissions/675/murphy_CSP.pdf
- debacle 11y agoWhile the forecast might be wrong, a big hindrance right now (to pretty much everything) is a lack of cheap, clean energy. There will never be a time in the apparent future where anyone will ever say "We're producing too much energy." And if we ever get there, it will be one of those nice problems to have.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago> a big hindrance right now (to pretty much everything) is a lack of cheap, clean energy This is kind of true, except cheap energy is fungible with smarter energy use. So you could argue that everything is hindered by the lack of good design (and by extension design instruction in schools). I would be interested to know what you're thinking about when you say "pretty much everything". For reference, the things I care a lot about limited job mobility, people getting murdered, abuse, including rape and incarceration, forced migration, and addiction and I don't see how any of that is the result of expensive or dirty energy.
- erikpukinskis 11y agoThe whole notion of "need" in this context is strange. Need is relative to supply. The cheaper and more abundant energy is, the more people become addicted to energy-rich activities. If that energy disappears there is a period of withdrawal pain and then the "need" is gone. Population growth should start stabilizing near 10 billion around 2050... but if a billion of those people are taking exotic vacations every month in their electric jets and living in nanorobot houses that reconfigure themselves every week based on the trends on Pinterest then yes... we will bump up against terrestrial photon limits. Do we need to use that energy? No. If we move the other direction, towards efficiency-focused technologies that allow us to live embedded in native-ish ecologies then 10 billion people can live with a tiny fraction of Earth's solar energy. Which scenario will we be in? I think it's impossible to know. Right now we're still piecing together how that second scenario works. What is a minimal human-supporting ecology? How do you organize goods and services to maintain it? Wealthy people who want to maintain power will push us as hard as possible to keep production and consumption as high as possible because that's where their power is derived. Networks and artificial intelligence will try to show people how to live efficiently, maximizing happiness with a minimum of resources in loose federations. Which of these two forces will control human hearts post-2050? I have no idea.