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Jeff Bezos Pledges to Expand His Space Ventures
- of 8y agolike ugh.. you've ruined Seattle and now you want to ruin the moon? Get a life.
- greesil 8y agoWhy? It's an airless rock that sits at the bottom of a gravity well that has maybe a smidge of water. I guess you can make yourself a nice radiation shelter there?
- weissguy123 8y agoThere is a lot of Helium-3 on the moon that could make the trip worth it.
- greesil 8y agoYes, and the tokamaks on Earth to use it are going to be ready when? And why bother when deuterium tritium reactions are sort of okay (waste half life on the order of 100 years)
- shawn 8y agoBecause we can. In the 13.72 billion years the universe has existed, we're the only ones who can.
- ajmurmann 8y agoThe only ones who can what? Settle our moon? Settle other bodies?
- jonathankoren 8y agoThere's a lot things we can do. That's not a reason unto itself. This is just adventure travel, gussied up with delusions of species destiny from space operas. Why not settle the Gobi Desert? Develop technologies to suck carbon out of the air, and reverse global warming? Develop technologies to cope with climate disruption, or even just purchase land for the anticipated climate refugees. All of these are really Hard problems, and billion times more pressing, and much more obvious impact.
- pdonis 8y agoActually, it's in a much shallower gravity well than Earth is; that plus the airlessness makes it a much better launch platform for interplanetary spacecraft.
- greesil 8y agoAn even better launch platform is empty space (pick any Earth moon Lagrange point) where there is no delta V penalty.
- s2g 8y agoBut also no gravity which is problematic.
- icelancer 8y agoThere is increased complexity when launching from empty space / manmade built platforms. There's also the potential for Project Orion to be launched from the moon, where this would probably not be acceptable from empty space.
- akira2501 8y agoThese orbits are unstable and require careful stationkeeping or a large orbital amplitude to maintain a semi-stable orbit.
- greesil 8y agoL4 and L5?
- refurb 8y agoYeah, but anything that ends up on the moon must have come from earth, so why not just launch from the earth?
- s2g 8y agoBecause of the rocket equation.
- xor1 8y agoCapitalism demands limitless growth, and ultimately that means leaving the planet. Colonizing the moon is the first major step.
- pravinva 8y agoNot capitalism. Human progress and dynamism. We could all live pre industrial life, be born and die at 30, be cold and sick most of the time and die mostly illiterate. Nasty, short and brutish i.e that ship has long sailed now
- nordsieck 8y agoIf you look at the moon as a really good space station as opposed to a planet, I think there are many good reasons to set up a base there. * Gravity: enough to help with long term habitation, but low enough that getting on and off is much, much easier than Earth. * Close to Earth * Enough space that one could build a lot of things. It's a lot cheaper to dig than it is to launch more space station modules.
- evanlivingston 8y agoBut to what end do we need a really good space station? I realize we can work on more than one problem at a time and that it is expedient to do so. But I often wonder how much space exploration, particularly manned missions, are a distraction from more pressing issues on our home planet. Also, if space exploration is a more scientifically exciting problem than say, ensuring enduring sources of clean water for the millions of people who don't have access to it, well then, that's a sad world indeed.
- icelancer 8y ago>> Also, if space exploration is a more scientifically exciting problem than say, ensuring enduring sources of clean water for the millions of people who don't have access to it, well then, that's a sad world indeed. Enduring sources of clean water for everyone in the world is a scientifically very easy problem to solve compared to most of what is discussed on this website. The problem is that it is a politically very difficult problem to solve. And you want Bezos/Musk/etc to fix this... how?
- evanlivingston 8y agoOh God, I don't want to delegate the task of fixing to the world to just a few tech moguls. However, I would be encouraged to see the scientific community Incorporate a stronger social solidarity into their work. Because a problem is hard or simple is not reason enough alone to pursue it, personally. Finding the largest prime number known might be a somewhat difficult task, but to what end is it found?
- Numberwang 8y agoWhy do anything? The reason we have all that we have is a combination of exploration and problem solving. Meaning often comes at the same time as you solve a problem, not nessesarily before.
- ghjbbbnj 8y agoNo one can actually read this.
- padiyar83 8y agoNice! Just the sheer amount of engineering challenges a permanent moon base would bring in gets me excited. Humanity would learn so much from this experience one way or the other.
- blazespin 8y agoMore exciting to me would be a fully automated moon base. Much more realistic and the advances it will help bring to robotics can be exploited for profit here on earth, a win for everyone. I don’t see how building a moonbase where people live really helps people on earth. For that matter doesn’t the low gravity leech calcium from your bones or something? Why would anyone even want to live on the moon. Sounds unpleasant. The trick will be to developing a delivery mechanism for dropping and installing semi-autonomous robots on the moon. Also, of course, we need robots capable of doing anything a person can do - even to the point of repairing other robots. Not talking self aware, just with the appropriate agility.
- BrainInAJar 8y agoWe could fix the current planet instead of rich people escaping to other habitats
- icelancer 8y agoThe moon is a lot worse than any habitat on Earth, and will be that way for a long time. Furthermore, do you have a list of what Bezos et al give to charity in attempts to improving the current planet? It's not negligable.
- evanlivingston 8y agoThere are much, much better ways to fix the current planet than to give to charity.
- icelancer 8y agoProbably true, and the majority of them can't be solved by throwing money at the problem. Spaceflight, however, can. The idea that Bezos doesn't give any shits about the current planet simply because he is interested in going to the moon is reductionist nonsense.
- penagwin 8y agoI know it's not all that simple, but the Saturn V was ~6.4b USD to make and another billion to launch. Yet Flint or the countless other communities across the "first world country" - the USA don't have access to clean water? Again, I know it's far more complicated then this, but we could easily just freight bottled water in far cheaper.
- icelancer 8y agoFlint is a solved problem as far as logistics and planning are concerned; lead levels fell below the acceptable amount in 2017 and the pipes are being replaced systematically through 2020. The bottled water program has been extended despite the state terminating it; the company that is privately funding it to the tune of 100,000 bottles per week is the very evil corporation Nestle. (Note: They actually do some terrible shit, but give credit where it's due here.) The original problem in Flint had nothing to do with money that someone could throw at it and everything to do with government corruption and potentially racism. Is the plan to privatize cities in hopes of better and more efficient oversight, giving Elon/Bezos cities to purchase? Here is a list of celebrities and rich people who have donated to Flint, since you brought it up. It is not an insignificant list nor an insignificant amount of money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Donations_of_water_and_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Donations_o... >> but we could easily just freight bottled water in far cheaper This is being done by Nestle, and had been funded by many other rich people as well. The headlines of "Flint still doesn't have clean water" are technically true, but the problem has a solution being applied to it. Upending all the pipes tomorrow by throwing billions of dollars at contractors to do it will cause the entire city of Flint to have no water instead of potentially risky water (despite testing showing that the water is almost entirely fine), so that's not a solution either.
- blackrock 8y agoI hate to say this, but has anyone noticed the outline of the feather in Blue Origin's logo, looks like a penis about to go erect? Especially the logo on the jacket. I don't know if this was some kind of cosmic joke, played by the graphic arts department. But I think someone should tell the king about what that logo he's wearing over his heart, sort of looks like.
- mrep 8y agoWell all my friends here in Seattle call Amazons new spheres "Jeffs Balls" so it would be fitting. It could have just played out like gavin belsons signature in silicon valley the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=335Qnh-GRcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=335Qnh-GRcA
- shalmanese 8y agoIt's the Blue Origins 3.0 Signature Edition.
- sadamznintern 8y agoHave you seen the New Glenn? It looks phallic as hell! More so than most rockets! I love Jeff but sometimes it seems like he's compensating for something...
- frisco 8y agoI fundamentally don’t understand how anyone can see this and think, “nah, fuck those guys.” Clearly we cannot be a single-planet species forever and survive. Beyond that, it’s such a hard challenge to push our technical skills against, and the ultimate adventure for those who go. The universe is vast and we haven’t left the cradle yet. There is so far to go for us. It makes me feel so much better about Earth and humanity just knowing we are doing this. As was said by XKCD: "The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
- icelancer 8y ago>> I fundamentally don’t understand how anyone can see this and thing, “nah, fuck those guys.” It's currently en vogue to hate Bezos, Musk, and anyone else who is spending money on spaceflight instead of donating all of it to poor people / fixing the planet / fixing the government / whatever, as if it's a money-only problem and that these people don't have vast charitable giving programs. I realize this doesn't answer your question, but that's the main opposition.
- zeth___ 8y agoThe reason to hate on Bezos, Musk et al is the same reason why we hate cancer: an entity that is malfunctioning has found a way to maximize short term gain at the expense of long term survival. Worse, while the billions they have can buy them a private island filled with whatever perversions they enjoy they are too poor by an order of magnitude or three to actually finance real space exploration. It takes unfathomable amounts of time, effort and money to bring in a technology from R&D to the consumer market. "Entrepreneurs" merely privatize the gains in the last step of the process and call themselves a genius. Space exploration is so far away from commercialization that the private market will not be able to finance any thing past low earth orbit for another generation or three. By then the climate change already locked in would make the world hospitable for Lizard People and put most of our major cities 0.2m below sea level.
- neonate 8y agohttp://archive.li/vV5FP http://archive.li/vV5FP
- ageofwant 8y agoI've noticed that I have been modifying my purchase preferences to favour Bezos and Musk (holding out for that Model 3). Not because their stuff is better but I'd like to think some of the money they make of me goes into uplifting world-changing things like this.
- Kusse 8y agoThe greatest tragedy is that Silicon Valley has specialized in surveilance instead of actually creating something good. So many engineering hours wasted on tracking people.