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Richard Branson ready for today's 'extraordinary' space flight

66 points by bencollier49 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago
Just ways for the rich to continue to destroy the environment while finding new ways to make the poor feel guilty.
alblue 5y ago
The live stream starts in 4 hours time at http://www.virgingalactic.com/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/
shoto_io 5y ago
> Sir Richard says he has spoken to Jeff Bezos on the phone and they have wished each other well in their space endeavours. But there is no doubting there is some edge in the relationship. Other would say that there is a billionaire space dick contest going on between Branson, Bezos and Musk...
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Yet another would say: they are still people and as long as their dick contest contributes to human knowledge and technology, let them have it. Most other dick contests on the planet are far less meaningful. I for one will reach for my organic, non-Amazon-supplied popcorn and watch the entertainment. Hopefully no one dies, but given that their own skins are at stake, the flights should be safer than whatever the governments in the 1950s and 1960s did with their pool of obedient and expendable military men.
  - Certhas 5y ago
    Kind of agree with the first half of your comment, but I think the second half seriously sells both the efforts to make things safe and the character of the first astronauts short. People didn't become test pilots through obedience, and I don't think they were particularly treated as expandable either.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      These are now distant times for us. Back then, the overall tolerance for loss of life among pilots was much higher. Not least because there were either active conflicts going on (Vietnam) or very fresh memories of other conflicts with large death toll (WWII, Korea). I don't think that the first astronauts were as expendable as paper tissues, no, but their level of expendability almost certainly exceeded the norm of 2021. We are being much more careful now. Even civil aviation was much less safe than today and the expectations of deaths around anything that flew were simply higher. As far as obedience goes, I can believe that test pilots are on average less obedient than an average member of the military. They might be better motivated/manipulated through feelings of national pride etc., though.
      - redis_mlc 5y ago
        > As far as obedience goes, I can believe that test pilots are on average less obedient than an average member of the military. They might be better motivated/manipulated through feelings of national pride etc., though. That's false for a number of reasons: 1) military test pilots followed orders. Chuck Yeager also said that it was a sense of duty that motivated him. Test pilots follow a "test profile", so there isn't a lot of time for showboating. If you watch some YT videos on military test pilot training, you'll understand how they're the opposite of cowboys. 2) civilian test pilots demanded 6-figure bonuses for test flights, so they were the "less obedient" ones. Though Scott Crossfield held back in the X-15 to avoid setting certain space records first by a civilian instead of the military, as requested. 3) the X-Planes program stopped and the space program started. Astronauts (often test pilots or instructors) were obedient in space with rare exceptions (the Atlantis tile near-accident resulted in a rift between the astronauts and ground control during re-entry.)
      - Certhas 5y ago
        Sure, but there is a big difference between "obedient and expendable" and highly trained to do risky things that might well kill you (and would certainly kill anyone not as highly trained). From a cynical resource investment perspective this is true, too: Infantry that you spend a week training, put in the cheapest boots possible and send to front to soak up bullets is expendable. Test pilots that are among the most highly trained pilots in your military and have decades of experience are not. I just don't think the picture where engineers build death traps and the generals order obedient pilots to fly them really applies to the type of experimental flight programs that eventually turned pilots into astronauts, where engineers and pilots would have worked closely with each other.
  - kijin 5y ago
    The space race of the 50s and 60s was an international dick contest, too. We got a lot of useful inventions out of it.
  - mywacaday 5y ago
    Did Bezos step down as CEO in case anything goes wrong and the subsequent share price impact?
  - skissane 5y ago
    > as long as their dick contest contributes to human knowledge and technology, let them have it Both New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo are basically dead-ends on the technology tree. In themselves, they don't really get us anywhere useful. The best that can be said is that New Shepard may have given Blue Origin's engineers some experience which may have helped them towards developing New Glenn. On the other hand, maybe New Shepard has been a distraction which has held back progress on New Glenn. What SpaceX is doing is completely different. Starship is giving us a whole new level of capability in terms of going to space compared to what we've had before. No other vendor is anywhere near as close to achieving the same capability level. New Glenn comes the closest, but the capabilities it offers are less and we don't really know how close Blue Origin are to delivering, their development process is much more opaque than SpaceX's.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      "The best that can be said is that New Shepard may have given Blue Origin's engineers some experience which may have helped them towards developing New Glenn. On the other hand, maybe New Shepard has been a distraction which has held back progress on New Glenn." This best is actually pretty good. We need several competing space corporations and learning by doing is what young space engineers need. Plus, a lot of the technology developed for NS and SST is likely to be reused in other applications. "What SpaceX is doing is completely different. Starship is giving us a whole new level of capability in terms of going to space compared to what we've had before." SpaceX absolutely has better results. Which actually is a great comeback to the "money buys everything" trope that circulates on HN or reddit so much. Compared to Bezos, Musk was a wannabe also-millionaire back in 2002. TBH I don't really understand why Blue Origin is so slow. Too much micromanagement? Bezos is famous for being an obnoxious micromanager, but maybe that works in retail and does not work in research.
      - skissane 5y ago
        > TBH I don't really understand why Blue Origin is so slow. Too much micromanagement? Bezos is famous for being an obnoxious micromanager, but maybe that works in retail and does not work in research. One theory is that it is less micromanagement than bad strategy. SpaceX bootstrapped themselves using an incremental approach. BO tried to copy that by going from New Shepard to New Glenn, but a crewed suborbital vehicle was a poor stepping stone. Being crewed, it has to work near perfectly before it can be used in revenue operation. A cargo vehicle can be used when less perfected, since you can risk loss of cargo. But there isn’t much market for suborbital cargo. Also suborbital isn’t that great as a stepping stone to orbital, you can only learn so much. They would have done much better starting with expendable orbital cargo, just like SpaceX did, and then push for reusability and crew later. Another theory is that Bezos’ choice of CEO, Bob Smith, brought a lot of slow OldSpace culture into BO. Bezos tried to poach Gwynne Shotwell from SpaceX but she refused. (It isn’t that anyone who comes from OldSpace has that culture - Shotwell started out in OldSpace too; I think the argument more is some OldSpace people say “this slowness sucks” and others are fine with it, and maybe Shotwell was the former but Smith is the later.)
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  Nothing wrong with that. It's how we got good at building skyscrapers too.
- tigershark 5y ago
  Musk has a ginormous 120m dick though..
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't do this here.
- awestroke 5y ago
  How is it a contest? How can they even be compared? The first two have vanity projects that dream of one day sending payload to orbit. The third have a successful space company that have sent over a hundred rockets, including some with astronauts on board, to orbit
- thom 5y ago
  History often goes in the direction rich guys' dicks are pointing, regrettably.
vntok 5y ago
He's not really going to space though is he?
- awestroke 5y ago
  Nope. Both Richard and Jeff are playing with suborbital flights.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Not really accurate. Most people consider space to be above the Karman line, which both flights will indeed surpass. Virgin Galactic by NASA's definition (50mi+), Blue Origin by FAI definition (100km+). Yes, neither are orbital flights, but achieving orbit is not so much about distance from earth as it is about your tangential velocity. Said another way: both flights will be entering the same "-sphere" as the ISS, the thermosphere. This is above the other spheres you typically hear about, like the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere.
- ilogik 5y ago
  they are both going to space. but not in orbit. Yes, one is only going 80km up, for all intents and purposes, that's space
  - nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
    Am I in space on my couch right now? Like on a super-low geostationary orbit?
egwor 5y ago
This is very exciting; maybe the first realistic way that we could visit places off earth? I think that Bezos’s approach looks more environmentally friendly (I’ve not looked into it in too much detail, so feel free to correct me). I do think that we should celebrate this whilst also being aware that it isn’t perfect. We should encourage improvements where there can be (e.g. environmentally friendliness)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
Three billionaires fighting a space war. What a fucking dystopian nightmare.
- awestroke 5y ago
  I always find this comparison strange. Comparing a successful space company with hundreds of orbital flights to two vanity projects that have never gotten a payload to orbit.
  - serf 5y ago
    > Comparing a successful space company with hundreds of orbital flights to two vanity projects that have never gotten a payload to orbit. No, the comparison is between three wildly public-visible executive 'personality' billionaires that all seem to be goading one another; not their holdings groups.
- celticninja 5y ago
  It's hardly a space war, space race would be a much more fitting title. And it's hardly dystopian, for dystopian you don't have to go as far as space.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  More like a space PR campaign, acting like rivals to play up the drama, get more viewers etc
antfarm 5y ago
One of the most decadent human endavours. As if there were no real problems to fight on this planet. Ironically, the burning of fossile fuels causes one of the biggest...
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Everyday Astronaut did an hour long video on "How Much Do Rockets Pollute? Are They Bad For Our Air?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4 I highly recommend to everyone who is concerned about this. The knee-jerk reaction needs to be toned down a little bit, we need to look at the data first.
  - antfarm 5y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires-space-tourism-environment-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires...
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I can guarantee Branson's carbon footprint is going to be several orders of magnitude larger than yours or mine. You might argue it is insignificant on the world stage but these things are symbolic. It's going to be hard trying to convince people to lower their footprint when they see the rich and famous behaving as if there isn't problem.
    - garmaine 5y ago
      Or we could not try the impossible task of convincing people to lower their carbon footprint and instead invest in sequestration, sun shields, and geo engineering to eliminate the climate change problem. Austerity will not get us out of this hole.
      - IneffablePigeon 5y ago
        Pour qué no los dos? I mostly agree in the long term, but in some ways analogously to the pandemic strategy of short term mitigation whilst long term solutions are put in place, I see few downsides to trying to stem the flow now by altering behaviour, in order to give us more time to fix the issue properly. There's also a sliding scale - not all things people can do to reduce their footprint are really "austerity" but rather alternatives with a different set of tradeoffs. A sideways move that requires a culture shift. I don't mean this to come across as an attack - I don't know your motivations and I'm guilty of this personally - but IMO most people I talk to who argue your position tend to be doing it as much as a rationalisation of their own behaviour than as a position they've come to from first principles.
rapnie 5y ago
I've heard a number of media call this step towards space tourism something along the lines of "a historical milestone in the democratization of space travel", and I think my, my.. OTOH democracy is also increasingly for the few, not the many.
- Darmody 5y ago
  Computers were for the new, now they are for the many. That's the way some things start.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    Well, maybe I should be more optimistic and someday businessmen will zip to their destinations on tickets of a couple thousand dollar, or in their own private spaceliners. But a real democratization? Okay, I'll leave that open as remote possibility :)
    - AmericanChopper 5y ago
      I suppose your view would be that air travel or vehicle ownership haven’t been “democratized” yet then?
      - Jetrel 5y ago
        Not the person you're replying to, but - I mean, I can (and did) buy a car for $30. No, we're not missing a zero there. That's what democratization means - it doesn't mean driving down the costs to some fictitious level of 'technically I could meet the loan payments'. Democratization means I can fish one out of the trash, and have it so reliably built in absolute terms that it still works pretty well. Real democratization happens when something is in "beg borrow and steal" territory. And I mean that in a profound way informed by the literal meaning of that term - the ability to break the rules, fudge the requirements, break the law, and just generally cheat your way into being able to do something you don't have the money to. If you're trying to fly cross country, you really just have the option of paying an air fare. That's it - either you have the cash, or you simply can't fly. But if I need gas money for a cross-country trip; I can steal gas; I can borrow some from a friend, I can mooch, etc, I can beg strangers at a gas station for a little bit - somehow I can weasel my way into having something which I can't officially afford. It's parasitic, but it relies on a host so ample, so resource rich, that "rats" can make a living there. That's real democratization - when the truly poor can get in on something because there are ways to make it happen that don't have an implacable, mandatory requirement of money.
fancymcpoopoo 5y ago
rich guy masturbates in space. great.
gregoriol 5y ago
Is there any interest in such kind of "flight" except from some kind of fun/tourism for rich people? Will it provide something in the future, like a first step to something or is it just that? It seems to me that this kind of activity has no scientific interest and no next step. Am I missing something?
- mlyle 5y ago
  Very little. SpaceShipOne/SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnight* are interesting craft. Real commercial usage of a hybrid rocket engine is new. And 'LauncherOne' is slowly proving itself capable of orbital launch of small sats from a carrier aircraft, like Orbital did with Pegasus.
- yarg 5y ago
  Not really, Musk has won - this is just a second place dick swinging contest with Bezos.
  - new_realist 5y ago
    If it’s all strictly about duck swinging, Musk has lost: he is not man enough to ride in one of his own rockets. Props to Branson and Bezos; it’s all about ego with them, but it does take some cajones to take the risk. Musk is more comfortable making hundreds of flights in his private jet, emitting prodigious amounts of CO2 when he could just use Zoom.
- jasoncartwright 5y ago
  Blue Origin is part of the NASA Artemis program that has the primary goal of returning humans to the moon.
  - Cipater 5y ago
    1. Blue Origin's bid (and Dynetics') lost out to SpaceX. They have sued and a decision is expected by 4th August but they are not a part of the Artemis program as we speak. 2. Even if their bid had been successful, the Artemis program has nothing to do with the New Shepard project.
stuntkite 5y ago
I used to be so enthusiastic about space. I really hate the privatization of space. It makes me sick. Maybe they can just take their billions and do this shit and we can ignore them doing it or something? How am I supposed to get excited about anything related to space when private dickwheels have turned it into a fun ass roller coaster instead of exploration of what it means to exist?
- fastball 5y ago
  You don't think these "private dickwheels" are interested in space exploration?
  - stuntkite 5y ago
    I think the US should subsidize NASA instead of Musk and Bezos. I think the privatization of space and the fanfare related to it is a huge problem. I don't even know what to say about Branson other than I just wish he'd chill out and go kite boarding with young models strapped to his back or whatever.
    - NavinF 5y ago
      Dude the article is about Virgin Galactic, not Musk/Bezos. There are no subsidies involved. Btw do you think the US should pay $400 million/launch for Crew Dragon or $1.5 billion/launch for the Space Shuttle? I know which one I'd pay :) How about SLS's $2 billion/launch + fixed costs vs Starship?
      - stuntkite 5y ago
        We fund Vigrin as well. I just dislike Musk and Bezos more. In general I think private space exploration is dangerous and stupid. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/5/21248289/virgin-galactic-q1-earnings-supersonic-travel-space-tourism-60-million-loss https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/5/21248289/virgin-galactic-q... https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/01/nasa-taps-virgin-galactic-and-a-peer-for-45-millio/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/01/nasa-taps-virgin-g...
frereubu 5y ago
For all that people are having a go at Branson and Bezos's dick-measuring contest, let's not forget that the original "space race" was to a large extent a dick-measuring contest between the USA and USSR. Yeah, there's been quite a bit of interesting science that came out of it, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that it was all, or even primarily, about lofty scientific goals.
- test_epsilon 5y ago
  It wasn't. The main purpose of the original space race was to develop capabilities to put satellites in orbit and to be able to deliver nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles, which both countries considered (rightly or wrongly) to be existential necessities.
  - Niksko 5y ago
    Being a logical course of action and being a dick measuring contest aren't mutually exclusive. There was certainly lots of national pride and patriotism involved, in addition to it being a tactical necessity.
    - test_epsilon 5y ago
      > Being a logical course of action and being a dick measuring contest aren't mutually exclusive. They are by definition.
- ImaCake 5y ago
  It was as much about science as Napoleon's invasion of Egypt was. Sure, plenty of very important science happened. But that is not why Napoleon did it. The legacy of that invasion however is remembered in the West pretty much only for the breakthroughs in our understanding of history that followed it.
chroem- 5y ago
I'm surprised Virgin Galactic hasn't pursued the high speed VIP transport market. Point to point travel at extreme speeds, without sonic booms or significant aerodynamic drag, seems like a better use of this suborbital technology.
- JulianMorrison 5y ago
  Probably because their ship hasn't got the legs to do it. Even Starship needs a detachable first stage booster.
  - chroem- 5y ago
    I could be wrong, but I thought Starship's booster is reserved only for orbital flights.
    - JulianMorrison 5y ago
      When they did the animation of intercontinental flight, they used it. There isn't that much difference between getting to orbit, and getting almost to orbit but falling back out and landing in Tokyo.
Jemm 5y ago
I fully support launching billionaires in to space.
SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
CTRL + F dick 15 matches
shoto_io 5y ago
The world lost an inspiring billionaire... for a minute.

66 points by bencollier49 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago

Just ways for the rich to continue to destroy the environment while finding new ways to make the poor feel guilty.

alblue 5y ago

The live stream starts in 4 hours time at http://www.virgingalactic.com/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/

shoto_io 5y ago

> Sir Richard says he has spoken to Jeff Bezos on the phone and they have wished each other well in their space endeavours. But there is no doubting there is some edge in the relationship. Other would say that there is a billionaire space dick contest going on between Branson, Bezos and Musk...

inglor_cz 5y ago
Yet another would say: they are still people and as long as their dick contest contributes to human knowledge and technology, let them have it. Most other dick contests on the planet are far less meaningful. I for one will reach for my organic, non-Amazon-supplied popcorn and watch the entertainment. Hopefully no one dies, but given that their own skins are at stake, the flights should be safer than whatever the governments in the 1950s and 1960s did with their pool of obedient and expendable military men.
- Certhas 5y ago
  Kind of agree with the first half of your comment, but I think the second half seriously sells both the efforts to make things safe and the character of the first astronauts short. People didn't become test pilots through obedience, and I don't think they were particularly treated as expandable either.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    These are now distant times for us. Back then, the overall tolerance for loss of life among pilots was much higher. Not least because there were either active conflicts going on (Vietnam) or very fresh memories of other conflicts with large death toll (WWII, Korea). I don't think that the first astronauts were as expendable as paper tissues, no, but their level of expendability almost certainly exceeded the norm of 2021. We are being much more careful now. Even civil aviation was much less safe than today and the expectations of deaths around anything that flew were simply higher. As far as obedience goes, I can believe that test pilots are on average less obedient than an average member of the military. They might be better motivated/manipulated through feelings of national pride etc., though.
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      > As far as obedience goes, I can believe that test pilots are on average less obedient than an average member of the military. They might be better motivated/manipulated through feelings of national pride etc., though. That's false for a number of reasons: 1) military test pilots followed orders. Chuck Yeager also said that it was a sense of duty that motivated him. Test pilots follow a "test profile", so there isn't a lot of time for showboating. If you watch some YT videos on military test pilot training, you'll understand how they're the opposite of cowboys. 2) civilian test pilots demanded 6-figure bonuses for test flights, so they were the "less obedient" ones. Though Scott Crossfield held back in the X-15 to avoid setting certain space records first by a civilian instead of the military, as requested. 3) the X-Planes program stopped and the space program started. Astronauts (often test pilots or instructors) were obedient in space with rare exceptions (the Atlantis tile near-accident resulted in a rift between the astronauts and ground control during re-entry.)
    - Certhas 5y ago
      Sure, but there is a big difference between "obedient and expendable" and highly trained to do risky things that might well kill you (and would certainly kill anyone not as highly trained). From a cynical resource investment perspective this is true, too: Infantry that you spend a week training, put in the cheapest boots possible and send to front to soak up bullets is expendable. Test pilots that are among the most highly trained pilots in your military and have decades of experience are not. I just don't think the picture where engineers build death traps and the generals order obedient pilots to fly them really applies to the type of experimental flight programs that eventually turned pilots into astronauts, where engineers and pilots would have worked closely with each other.
- kijin 5y ago
  The space race of the 50s and 60s was an international dick contest, too. We got a lot of useful inventions out of it.
- mywacaday 5y ago
  Did Bezos step down as CEO in case anything goes wrong and the subsequent share price impact?
- skissane 5y ago
  > as long as their dick contest contributes to human knowledge and technology, let them have it Both New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo are basically dead-ends on the technology tree. In themselves, they don't really get us anywhere useful. The best that can be said is that New Shepard may have given Blue Origin's engineers some experience which may have helped them towards developing New Glenn. On the other hand, maybe New Shepard has been a distraction which has held back progress on New Glenn. What SpaceX is doing is completely different. Starship is giving us a whole new level of capability in terms of going to space compared to what we've had before. No other vendor is anywhere near as close to achieving the same capability level. New Glenn comes the closest, but the capabilities it offers are less and we don't really know how close Blue Origin are to delivering, their development process is much more opaque than SpaceX's.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    "The best that can be said is that New Shepard may have given Blue Origin's engineers some experience which may have helped them towards developing New Glenn. On the other hand, maybe New Shepard has been a distraction which has held back progress on New Glenn." This best is actually pretty good. We need several competing space corporations and learning by doing is what young space engineers need. Plus, a lot of the technology developed for NS and SST is likely to be reused in other applications. "What SpaceX is doing is completely different. Starship is giving us a whole new level of capability in terms of going to space compared to what we've had before." SpaceX absolutely has better results. Which actually is a great comeback to the "money buys everything" trope that circulates on HN or reddit so much. Compared to Bezos, Musk was a wannabe also-millionaire back in 2002. TBH I don't really understand why Blue Origin is so slow. Too much micromanagement? Bezos is famous for being an obnoxious micromanager, but maybe that works in retail and does not work in research.
    - skissane 5y ago
      > TBH I don't really understand why Blue Origin is so slow. Too much micromanagement? Bezos is famous for being an obnoxious micromanager, but maybe that works in retail and does not work in research. One theory is that it is less micromanagement than bad strategy. SpaceX bootstrapped themselves using an incremental approach. BO tried to copy that by going from New Shepard to New Glenn, but a crewed suborbital vehicle was a poor stepping stone. Being crewed, it has to work near perfectly before it can be used in revenue operation. A cargo vehicle can be used when less perfected, since you can risk loss of cargo. But there isn’t much market for suborbital cargo. Also suborbital isn’t that great as a stepping stone to orbital, you can only learn so much. They would have done much better starting with expendable orbital cargo, just like SpaceX did, and then push for reusability and crew later. Another theory is that Bezos’ choice of CEO, Bob Smith, brought a lot of slow OldSpace culture into BO. Bezos tried to poach Gwynne Shotwell from SpaceX but she refused. (It isn’t that anyone who comes from OldSpace has that culture - Shotwell started out in OldSpace too; I think the argument more is some OldSpace people say “this slowness sucks” and others are fine with it, and maybe Shotwell was the former but Smith is the later.)
BelenusMordred 5y ago
Nothing wrong with that. It's how we got good at building skyscrapers too.
tigershark 5y ago
Musk has a ginormous 120m dick though..
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't do this here.
awestroke 5y ago
How is it a contest? How can they even be compared? The first two have vanity projects that dream of one day sending payload to orbit. The third have a successful space company that have sent over a hundred rockets, including some with astronauts on board, to orbit
thom 5y ago
History often goes in the direction rich guys' dicks are pointing, regrettably.

vntok 5y ago

He's not really going to space though is he?

awestroke 5y ago
Nope. Both Richard and Jeff are playing with suborbital flights.
- fastball 5y ago
  Not really accurate. Most people consider space to be above the Karman line, which both flights will indeed surpass. Virgin Galactic by NASA's definition (50mi+), Blue Origin by FAI definition (100km+). Yes, neither are orbital flights, but achieving orbit is not so much about distance from earth as it is about your tangential velocity. Said another way: both flights will be entering the same "-sphere" as the ISS, the thermosphere. This is above the other spheres you typically hear about, like the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere.
ilogik 5y ago
they are both going to space. but not in orbit. Yes, one is only going 80km up, for all intents and purposes, that's space
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  Am I in space on my couch right now? Like on a super-low geostationary orbit?

egwor 5y ago

This is very exciting; maybe the first realistic way that we could visit places off earth? I think that Bezos’s approach looks more environmentally friendly (I’ve not looked into it in too much detail, so feel free to correct me). I do think that we should celebrate this whilst also being aware that it isn’t perfect. We should encourage improvements where there can be (e.g. environmentally friendliness)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

DeliriumTrigger 5y ago

Three billionaires fighting a space war. What a fucking dystopian nightmare.

awestroke 5y ago
I always find this comparison strange. Comparing a successful space company with hundreds of orbital flights to two vanity projects that have never gotten a payload to orbit.
- serf 5y ago
  > Comparing a successful space company with hundreds of orbital flights to two vanity projects that have never gotten a payload to orbit. No, the comparison is between three wildly public-visible executive 'personality' billionaires that all seem to be goading one another; not their holdings groups.
celticninja 5y ago
It's hardly a space war, space race would be a much more fitting title. And it's hardly dystopian, for dystopian you don't have to go as far as space.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
More like a space PR campaign, acting like rivals to play up the drama, get more viewers etc

antfarm 5y ago

One of the most decadent human endavours. As if there were no real problems to fight on this planet. Ironically, the burning of fossile fuels causes one of the biggest...

systemvoltage 5y ago
Everyday Astronaut did an hour long video on "How Much Do Rockets Pollute? Are They Bad For Our Air?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4 I highly recommend to everyone who is concerned about this. The knee-jerk reaction needs to be toned down a little bit, we need to look at the data first.
- antfarm 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires-space-tourism-environment-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires...
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I can guarantee Branson's carbon footprint is going to be several orders of magnitude larger than yours or mine. You might argue it is insignificant on the world stage but these things are symbolic. It's going to be hard trying to convince people to lower their footprint when they see the rich and famous behaving as if there isn't problem.
  - garmaine 5y ago
    Or we could not try the impossible task of convincing people to lower their carbon footprint and instead invest in sequestration, sun shields, and geo engineering to eliminate the climate change problem. Austerity will not get us out of this hole.
    - IneffablePigeon 5y ago
      Pour qué no los dos? I mostly agree in the long term, but in some ways analogously to the pandemic strategy of short term mitigation whilst long term solutions are put in place, I see few downsides to trying to stem the flow now by altering behaviour, in order to give us more time to fix the issue properly. There's also a sliding scale - not all things people can do to reduce their footprint are really "austerity" but rather alternatives with a different set of tradeoffs. A sideways move that requires a culture shift. I don't mean this to come across as an attack - I don't know your motivations and I'm guilty of this personally - but IMO most people I talk to who argue your position tend to be doing it as much as a rationalisation of their own behaviour than as a position they've come to from first principles.

rapnie 5y ago

I've heard a number of media call this step towards space tourism something along the lines of "a historical milestone in the democratization of space travel", and I think my, my.. OTOH democracy is also increasingly for the few, not the many.

Darmody 5y ago
Computers were for the new, now they are for the many. That's the way some things start.
- rapnie 5y ago
  Well, maybe I should be more optimistic and someday businessmen will zip to their destinations on tickets of a couple thousand dollar, or in their own private spaceliners. But a real democratization? Okay, I'll leave that open as remote possibility :)
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    I suppose your view would be that air travel or vehicle ownership haven’t been “democratized” yet then?
    - Jetrel 5y ago
      Not the person you're replying to, but - I mean, I can (and did) buy a car for $30. No, we're not missing a zero there. That's what democratization means - it doesn't mean driving down the costs to some fictitious level of 'technically I could meet the loan payments'. Democratization means I can fish one out of the trash, and have it so reliably built in absolute terms that it still works pretty well. Real democratization happens when something is in "beg borrow and steal" territory. And I mean that in a profound way informed by the literal meaning of that term - the ability to break the rules, fudge the requirements, break the law, and just generally cheat your way into being able to do something you don't have the money to. If you're trying to fly cross country, you really just have the option of paying an air fare. That's it - either you have the cash, or you simply can't fly. But if I need gas money for a cross-country trip; I can steal gas; I can borrow some from a friend, I can mooch, etc, I can beg strangers at a gas station for a little bit - somehow I can weasel my way into having something which I can't officially afford. It's parasitic, but it relies on a host so ample, so resource rich, that "rats" can make a living there. That's real democratization - when the truly poor can get in on something because there are ways to make it happen that don't have an implacable, mandatory requirement of money.

fancymcpoopoo 5y ago

rich guy masturbates in space. great.

gregoriol 5y ago

Is there any interest in such kind of "flight" except from some kind of fun/tourism for rich people? Will it provide something in the future, like a first step to something or is it just that? It seems to me that this kind of activity has no scientific interest and no next step. Am I missing something?

mlyle 5y ago
Very little. SpaceShipOne/SpaceShipTwo/WhiteKnight* are interesting craft. Real commercial usage of a hybrid rocket engine is new. And 'LauncherOne' is slowly proving itself capable of orbital launch of small sats from a carrier aircraft, like Orbital did with Pegasus.
yarg 5y ago
Not really, Musk has won - this is just a second place dick swinging contest with Bezos.
- new_realist 5y ago
  If it’s all strictly about duck swinging, Musk has lost: he is not man enough to ride in one of his own rockets. Props to Branson and Bezos; it’s all about ego with them, but it does take some cajones to take the risk. Musk is more comfortable making hundreds of flights in his private jet, emitting prodigious amounts of CO2 when he could just use Zoom.
jasoncartwright 5y ago
Blue Origin is part of the NASA Artemis program that has the primary goal of returning humans to the moon.
- Cipater 5y ago
  1. Blue Origin's bid (and Dynetics') lost out to SpaceX. They have sued and a decision is expected by 4th August but they are not a part of the Artemis program as we speak. 2. Even if their bid had been successful, the Artemis program has nothing to do with the New Shepard project.

stuntkite 5y ago

I used to be so enthusiastic about space. I really hate the privatization of space. It makes me sick. Maybe they can just take their billions and do this shit and we can ignore them doing it or something? How am I supposed to get excited about anything related to space when private dickwheels have turned it into a fun ass roller coaster instead of exploration of what it means to exist?

fastball 5y ago
You don't think these "private dickwheels" are interested in space exploration?
- stuntkite 5y ago
  I think the US should subsidize NASA instead of Musk and Bezos. I think the privatization of space and the fanfare related to it is a huge problem. I don't even know what to say about Branson other than I just wish he'd chill out and go kite boarding with young models strapped to his back or whatever.
  - NavinF 5y ago
    Dude the article is about Virgin Galactic, not Musk/Bezos. There are no subsidies involved. Btw do you think the US should pay $400 million/launch for Crew Dragon or $1.5 billion/launch for the Space Shuttle? I know which one I'd pay :) How about SLS's $2 billion/launch + fixed costs vs Starship?
    - stuntkite 5y ago
      We fund Vigrin as well. I just dislike Musk and Bezos more. In general I think private space exploration is dangerous and stupid. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/5/21248289/virgin-galactic-q1-earnings-supersonic-travel-space-tourism-60-million-loss https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/5/21248289/virgin-galactic-q... https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/01/nasa-taps-virgin-galactic-and-a-peer-for-45-millio/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/01/nasa-taps-virgin-g...

frereubu 5y ago

For all that people are having a go at Branson and Bezos's dick-measuring contest, let's not forget that the original "space race" was to a large extent a dick-measuring contest between the USA and USSR. Yeah, there's been quite a bit of interesting science that came out of it, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that it was all, or even primarily, about lofty scientific goals.

test_epsilon 5y ago
It wasn't. The main purpose of the original space race was to develop capabilities to put satellites in orbit and to be able to deliver nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles, which both countries considered (rightly or wrongly) to be existential necessities.
- Niksko 5y ago
  Being a logical course of action and being a dick measuring contest aren't mutually exclusive. There was certainly lots of national pride and patriotism involved, in addition to it being a tactical necessity.
  - test_epsilon 5y ago
    > Being a logical course of action and being a dick measuring contest aren't mutually exclusive. They are by definition.
ImaCake 5y ago
It was as much about science as Napoleon's invasion of Egypt was. Sure, plenty of very important science happened. But that is not why Napoleon did it. The legacy of that invasion however is remembered in the West pretty much only for the breakthroughs in our understanding of history that followed it.

chroem- 5y ago

I'm surprised Virgin Galactic hasn't pursued the high speed VIP transport market. Point to point travel at extreme speeds, without sonic booms or significant aerodynamic drag, seems like a better use of this suborbital technology.

JulianMorrison 5y ago
Probably because their ship hasn't got the legs to do it. Even Starship needs a detachable first stage booster.
- chroem- 5y ago
  I could be wrong, but I thought Starship's booster is reserved only for orbital flights.
  - JulianMorrison 5y ago
    When they did the animation of intercontinental flight, they used it. There isn't that much difference between getting to orbit, and getting almost to orbit but falling back out and landing in Tokyo.

Jemm 5y ago

I fully support launching billionaires in to space.

SturgeonsLaw 5y ago

CTRL + F dick 15 matches

shoto_io 5y ago

The world lost an inspiring billionaire... for a minute.