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I’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

I’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 ago
They have done many successful flights. They just don’t have the marketing skills of someone like a Spacex.
- detritus 5y ago
  BO 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 ago
    I 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 ago
  Suborbital 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.
  - nojito 5y ago
    I mean the OP is talking about successful suborbital flights...
    - shantara 5y ago
      My point was that the difference between SpaceX and BO is more than simply marketing skills.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  The flights are of completely different magnitude. SpaceX sends humans to orbital velocity. BO goes straight up and down to the karman line
- piva00 5y ago
  All of them sub-orbital, launching a parabola rocket is much easier than putting something out in space.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
They'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 ago
    The 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 ago
    It'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 ago
  14 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 ago
    A 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 ago
I’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 ago
They have lots of successes in testing and it is a far less dangerous thing than orbital flight and reentry
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
i 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.

nojito 5y ago

They have done many successful flights. They just don’t have the marketing skills of someone like a Spacex.

detritus 5y ago
BO 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 ago
  I 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 ago
Suborbital 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.
- nojito 5y ago
  I mean the OP is talking about successful suborbital flights...
  - shantara 5y ago
    My point was that the difference between SpaceX and BO is more than simply marketing skills.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
The flights are of completely different magnitude. SpaceX sends humans to orbital velocity. BO goes straight up and down to the karman line
piva00 5y ago
All of them sub-orbital, launching a parabola rocket is much easier than putting something out in space.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

They'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 ago
  The 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 ago
  It'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 ago
14 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 ago
  A 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 ago

I’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 ago

They have lots of successes in testing and it is a far less dangerous thing than orbital flight and reentry

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

i 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.