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Jeff Bezos will fly on the first passenger spaceflight of Blue Origin in July
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI’m wondering if Amazon wouldn’t let him do this while he was at the helm. It sounds quite dangerous. Your first manned flight and it has the world’s richest man and owner in it? I don’t keep up with Blue Origin, have they demonstrated the ability to do this safely?
- nojito 5y agoThey have done many successful flights. They just don’t have the marketing skills of someone like a Spacex.
- detritus 5y agoBO has completed 15 test flights over 6 years of a platform that bears little comparison with SpaceX's achievements. Each BO test I've watched has been very well presented and seemingly marketed - it's just that at this point, frankly, what they're doing is of less interest than that what SpaceX has accomplished.
- craftinator 5y agoI agree with this thought. They've done a whole lot less boundary pushing than SpaceX. The rationale for getting into the game seemed more like, "Well, this space thing seems like an emerging market, and we can't be a true monopoly unless we have a tentacle in it, too."
- shantara 5y agoSuborbital flights. Which require about 3% of energy needed to reach an orbit, and are of very limited practical use other than serving as an extended rollercoaster ride for tourists. Blue Origin are very far away from achieving anything comparable to even SpaceX first Falcon-1 flight from 2008.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoThe flights are of completely different magnitude. SpaceX sends humans to orbital velocity. BO goes straight up and down to the karman line
- piva00 5y agoAll of them sub-orbital, launching a parabola rocket is much easier than putting something out in space.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoThey've done 14 successful launches. It's probably considerably safer than mountain climbing etc. On the other hand, Blue Origin's competitor Virgin Galactic isn't automated and looks a lot more dangerous.
- sokoloff 5y ago> considerably safer than mountain climbing I thought that the failure rate for manned missions was accepted to be around 1 crew loss in several hundred flights. That seems much worse than typical mountain climbing, with Everest and K2 being somewhat riskier than space flight on a per-attempt basis.
- ceejayoz 5y agoThe Shuttle's rate was much higher than that one in several hundred - two full crew losses in 135 launches. That said, suborbital flight is substantially safer.
- relativ575 5y agoIt's 1/270, but this won't be an orbital flight. The rocket climbs up to the Karman line then releases the capsule. There is no reentering which is one of the most dangerous phases of orbit flights.
- blululu 5y ago14 trials is nothing - especially when even a 5% risk would be considered too high. For reference, the 95 % confidence interval on a distribution with a 1 in 5 accident risk would include this result: https://epitools.ausvet.com.au/ciproportion https://epitools.ausvet.com.au/ciproportion
- bryanlarsen 5y agoA 0.1% risk is probably considered too high for tourist flights that have no other useful purpose. They can't do enough flights to verify that experimentally, they'll calculate the risk via simulation and then validate the simulations with the test flights.
- myfavoritedog 5y agoI’m wondering if Amazon wouldn’t let him do this while he was at the helm They're required to have contingency plans in case something happens to him, but they can't keep him from going. Not that they would if they could.
- gameswithgo 5y agoThey have lots of successes in testing and it is a far less dangerous thing than orbital flight and reentry
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoi don't think anyone could have told him anything; at amazon employees are supposed to learn the word of the dear leader by heart, there used to be a bit of a personality cult around him, when i worked there.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nicholasbraker 5y agoWell, eat your own dogfood they say.
- st_goliath 5y agoAh, so we are lunching rockets again? :-)
- breck 5y agoRespect (and godspeed!)
- peteretep 5y agoAn Elon / Jeff space willy-waving contest about who gets to be Space Bro Alpha seems like a net win for humanity
- gameswithgo 5y agoAmerican Oligarchs are certainly up to more interesting things than Russian ones at the moment!
- gccs 5y agoYes, like raping kids and blackmailing each other. (Epstein and the gang) Although I wouldn't be suprised if Russia had a similar operation.
- ksec 5y agoIs that the new/modern definition of oligarch, or how oligarch is used in US? I dont see how Jeff or Elon are oligarchs in the sense of russian oligarchs.
- cdmckay 5y agoWhat's the difference between an American oligarch and a Russian oligarch? Aside from the nationality.
- germinalphrase 5y agoLevel of control over governmental functions?
- blendergeek 5y agoOligarch tend to need outsized control over the government in addition to billions of dollars. I don't know if Elon and Jeff have that yet.
- nextstep 5y ago
- belter 5y agoThat is one way to top Elon Musk :-)
- callamdelaney 5y agoI disagree. SpaceX doesn't need to play at Space Tourism. Musk is working on species defining technology and capabilities while his 'competitors' play with space Tourism.
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoCongratulations to everyone who contributed with their wallet. We did it, Amazon users!
- Jyaif 5y agoOff-topic, but did Bezos just do plastic surgery?
- _Microft 5y agoI was a bit shocked how Jeff Bezos looked in the video [0] in which he invited his brother to go with him. He does not look healthy, even a bit bloated. Does anyone know if he is having health issues? [0] https://www.instagram.com/p/CP0MSOqnYEo/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CP0MSOqnYEo/
- flemhans 5y agoI think he looks fine. But maybe I'm just not used to how he usually looks. Others in this thread say the same as you.
- reidjs 5y agoHe’s always looked a bit strange like that, I don’t think it’s a recent change.
- kobieyc 5y agoyes
- ksec 5y agoMy guess is that he stopped working out and now retired he put on lots of weight. Hopefully not health issues.
- FartyMcFarter 5y agoThis is a picture from 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#/media/File:Jeff_Bezos_talking.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#/media/File:Jeff_Be... Doesn't really look that different?
- HatchedLake721 5y agoIt looks like he had some face procedures done
- lotsofpulp 5y agoThat’s what I thought. It doesn’t move as I would expect it to, and I usually see that with Botox or whatever other plastic surgeries there are. Also looks like he gained weight, at least in the face. PS: It is disappointing when people use services that don’t let you skip back and forth in video.
- SilkRoadie 5y agoI am somewhat uneducated on the topic but is space tourism a good idea? It is a flight to nowhere which surely has a hefty carbon cost. Doesn't it also add pollutants high up in the atmosphere? As exciting as it is to experience space I could imagine the environment cost is far from ideal.
- ecmascript 5y agoIt will probably help humanity venture into space so I would answer yes it is a good idea. Rich people that can afford space tourism also can afford doing other things with their money which is also carbon intensive but doesn't bring humanity forward technology wise.
- schnebbau 5y agoRegular tourism is far worse.
- cdmckay 5y agoRegular tourism is bad, but rocket tourism is a new kind of bad because it puts pollutants in the upper atmosphere and we really don't know what the effects of that will be. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-air-pollution-is-produced-by-rockets/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-air-poll...
- bryanlarsen 5y agoNew Shepard doesn't use solid fuel. Its exhaust is water.
- cinntaile 5y agoIn absolute numbers you're right because millions of people are tourists compared to a few wealthy space tourists. But that's a strange metric to use, the space tourists are part of the regular tourist group as well. If we compare energy usage per tourist the numbers will be stacked against space tourism.
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- globular-toast 5y agoThat's commendable IMO. Arthur C. Clarke's first published short story "Travel by Wire!" shows the inventor of teleportation travelling by plane. When questioned on this he says, "I don't travel by wire, I invented it!"
- codeulike 5y agoI mean it would look bad if he wasn't aboard, wouldn't it? "Pay lots of money for my space ride [that I'm not going to actually go on myself]"
- rplnt 5y agoI don't know, does it look bad for Elon Musk to not go on SpaceX private flights? I would say it doesn't change much.
- codeulike 5y agoPeople generally dont expect Musk to go to the ISS on Crew Dragon - because he's not an astronaut. But if SpaceX start doing 'space tourism' aimed at general (if somewhat rich) consumers then it would be odd for Musk not to take a ride on that - dont you think? Similarly Branson would be expected to have a go on his space tourism thing once it opens up to the public.
- rm445 5y agoMusk was known to joke that the (pressurised) Cargo Dragon spacecraft had everything needed for a stowaway to visit the ISS. Thank goodness he didn't try it - probably a stunt too far even for him.
- eplanit 5y agoIt seems more desperate. I think he's jealous of musk, as he should be. Musk is doing so much net good for humanity, while Bezos seems more like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.
- kleton 5y agoYour tax dollars at work? https://theintercept.com/2021/05/25/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-senate-bailout/ https://theintercept.com/2021/05/25/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-s...
- aero-glide2 5y agoThat's a different program. And that $10B (actually $6B, and even that $6B will be split among 4 companies) hasn't actually been awarded. Jeff has put $9B of his own money to Blue Origin so far.
- jl2718 5y agoWill there ever be a point where the NASA director will request a lower budget because private companies have enough funding already?
- Communitivity 5y agoI suspect this may be why he stepped down as CEO of Amazon. The corporate risk is huge for the the CEO of Amazon to fly on something that risky, and the board may have insisted he step down before doing it.
- neilv 5y agoBesides personal desire to do it, this could be seen as a traditional symbolic show of confidence in safety -- like an engineer standing under their new bridge, the first time vehicles go over it.
- Pungsnigel 5y agoShow of confidence + skin in the game
- Rochus 5y agoFor no money I would do that. I would rather start a life as a farmer and care more about the environment.
- cletus 5y agoThis article was light on details of what this flight entails. Here is a better source [1]: > Zero-G will begin from the third minute into flight, and then at some point between and the flight’s highest point, or apogee, at four minutes, Bezos and the others onboard will officially pass into space. Gravity will return at approximately six minutes post-launch, with the parachutes deploying at nine minutes, and finally a landing at around 10 minutes after takeoff. So this is a 10 minute flight with 2 minutes of zero G. It came as a surprise to me to learn that Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and SpaceX was founded in _2002_. SpaceX recently celebrated 100 successful Falcon 9 launches _in a row_. It's fair to say that Blue Origin at this point has... under-delivered. I can't find a definitive list of commercial launches (which, presumably, would be for New Shepherd) but it seems to be a handful at best. And just how many billions has Bezos poured into this? I do wonder if Bezos's retirement as Amazon CEO will lead him to taking a more active role in Blue Origin going forward. This flight is probably meant to bring attention to the company and maybe put the pressure on. It seems like quite a risk though for something still so relatively unproven. I mean Musk hasn't gone up on a SpaceX launch yet. To be fair, his contract with Tesla probably forbids it (as, I suspect, Bezos's with Amazon does as well). Oh and to anyone commenting on billionaires flexing at each other and otherwise competing this is nothing new. I suggest you look back at the history of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and JP Morgan (to name a few). This is nothing new. [1]: https://www.slashgear.com/jeff-bezos-is-going-to-space-07676525/ https://www.slashgear.com/jeff-bezos-is-going-to-space-07676...
- throwaway316943 5y agoIt’s an expensive roller coaster but it’s still promising. They’re perfecting technologies and gaining the experience they’ll need to build real orbital vehicles. They seem to be trying to do something between Virgin Galactic and SpaceX to get this company off the ground, so to speak. Probably not a bad idea since Bezos obviously doesn’t want to go all in like Musk did but also doesn’t want to bleed cash into a money pit.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Opt_Out_Fed_IRS 5y agoThis will shut Musk very big and fat mouth. Musk will not be able to comment on space anymore without journalists and reply people on Twitter asking why doesn't he go to space too. And no, 99% of people don't know the difference between higher orbit and what Bezos is doing. This is really smart from Bezos, he's recapturing the narrative of space and sucking air out of Musk baloon If he ups the dose of TRT/HGH he'd pretty soon mock Musk because he can't go due to him being obese.
- ck2 5y agoWell you how know even something simple like an app is buggy and has issues the developer didn't anticipate for the first few releases? Imagine something as serious as a spacecraft. But this is about as much as a journey into "space" is as a high altitude plane flight. I still remember the months of watching "go for throttle up" explosion footage in 1986 (it was the 9/11 before 9/11) the few tv stations at the time would not stop playing it. I think we all became numb to it.
- bradgranath 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwkXZ0SmTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwkXZ0SmTs