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Is Blue Origin's business model exclusively space tourism? If so, I think that's unlikely to sustain them. SpaceX is busy building the intercontinental railroa
by tbabb 8y ago
Is Blue Origin's business model exclusively space tourism? If so, I think that's unlikely to sustain them.
SpaceX is busy building the intercontinental railroad to space; if Blue Origin is not building toward a similarly ambitious and lucrative goal it looks like they're going to get left behind.
- elvinyung 8y agoDid you mean to make an analogy to the "transcontinental railroad"?
- tbabb 8y agoOops, yes. (Must have been thinking about intercontinental ballistic trains).
- adventured 8y agoBezos has, for about a decade now, laid out his intention to have Blue Origin put what he calls the heavy lift infrastructure into place to dramatically broaden the use of space for industry. He relates it to the way Amazon didn't have to invent credit card processing, build fiber optic networks, invent operating systems, invent the microprocessor, create UPS and Fedex, et al. before he could start the company. His goal is to provide core space infrastructure so new businesses can be built on top of that. Long-term he believes it's a practical growth requirement to move industry off of earth, that if we don't do so we're condemning ourselves to stagnation. https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-internet/ https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space-i...
- handbanana 8y agoTheir model is not exclusively space tourism. I imagine this is either PR or fundraising (or a mix of the two).
- larkeith 8y agoMainly PR - at $200k/person, you'll be losing millions on every flight.
- martythemaniak 8y agoYeah, it probably covers operating costs and maybe even a decent chunk of the rocket. Wouldn't come close to touching the big items, R&D, etc.
- danielvf 8y agoNon-orbital flight takes ludicrously less power and rocket than getting to orbit. Flying six people per flight would easily be profitable on a per flight basis, ignoring development costs. And the development stuff is already a paid cost, and a part of reaching the real goal of AWS, but for space.
- danielvf 8y agoBlue Origin is building a new full sized rocket motor that will power SpaceX’s main competitor ULA. Blue Origin has also announced that their next rocket, “New Glenn”, will be an orbital class rocket competing with the Falcon 9.