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I don't think it's really fair to lump Bezos, Branson, and Musk into the same bucket. Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and fr

I don't think it's really fair to lump Bezos, Branson, and Musk into the same bucket. Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War? SpaceX has been around for two years less and has accomplished orbital missions. Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies.

boringg 5y ago
Just a minor correction here- SpaceX has been around for 20 years as well.
- LukeShu 5y ago
  Unless it's been edited, the comment says that SpaceX has been around "for two years less"; as in 2 fewer years than Blue Origin, which is essentially true (Sept 2000 vs May 2002; so really more like "a year and a half less").
nyokodo 5y ago
> Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies. In defense of Branson his other space company Virgin Orbit now does orbital launches also, and has cool capabilities that genuinely differentiate it from other providers. We'll see if Bezos catches up, he's personally focusing on it more now and may make faster progress on New Glenn etc.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I agree, I have a friend who worked on early designs for Virgin Galactic and he talks about many of the differences (and benefits) of the Virgin design over Blue Origin and SpaceX.
aeternum 5y ago
Did we have fully reusable rockets during the Cold War? Even though it's suborbital, Blue Origin's re-use is still a pretty impressive achievement. Spaceplanes are also interesting tech. Maybe not the best choice for earth but could prove useful on other planets with different atmospheres.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  No, but nobody had any interest in creating a reusable suborbital rocket. Hobbyists can do that, it just isn't very hard. The reason why what Falcon9 does is hard is the margins are so slim, to be able to get big payloads to high orbits, and still have fuel left to land from that speed and altitude, usually on a boat! What blue origin is doing is vastly simpler.
- Retric 5y ago
  Yes, going back to WWII many aircraft have been reusable rockets. In 1963 the reusable X-15 broke the same 330,000f (100km) barrier at 353,200 ft using a nearly identical approach, 3 aircraft 199 flights, zero crashes. Blue Origin only nominally beat that at 367,490 ft, but was optimized for altitude rather than extreme speeds of the X-15 @ Mach 6.7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 Blue Origin is an awesome amusement park ride, but not particularly interesting in terms of space exploration. Air launched anti satellite weapons for example are actually the most common approach. The main issue with air launching is scaling problems as you need to support the weight in multiple directions.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    Sadly there were X-15 crashes: "On 15 November 1967, U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Michael J. Adams was killed during X-15 Flight 191 when X-15-3, AF Ser. No. 56-6672, entered a hypersonic spin while descending, then oscillated violently as aerodynamic forces increased after re-entry."
MikeHolman 5y ago
They definitely aren't all at the same level right now, but I'm happy for the competition. Hopefully it will drive innovation.
- Layke1123 5y ago
  Since when has competition ever spurred innovation?
staunch 5y ago
There's no reason to get into comparisons, except to the extent that it helps push them to compete harder, and make more progress. A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. They can leverage their relatively small funding to push much larger government funding in productive directions. They're better than most government administrators and don't have as many constraints, so they can take more risks and pay experts what they're worth on the open market. The public should be calling for more of this kind of thing across all major areas of civilization. Let's get a public race among billionaires for curing cancer, HIV, and poverty. If it feeds their egos, all the better. Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals, even among the greatest and most "pure" scientists. They want to win a Nobel, for the money and the recognition. Or they're doing science because it's just extremely pleasurable for them, which is not a selfless reason at all. The sooner people realize that base motivations aren't a sin the better we'll all be. And in reality, motivations are always a mix of (mostly) selfish and selfless reasons. Motivations aren't what matters. What matters is making progress that can (eventually!) benefit everyone.
- kylestlb 5y ago
  "Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals" [citation needed]
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    More like find one that isn't. I bet you can't :-)
    - agrover 5y ago
      Salk and Polio vaccine.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Salk said: "It's brought me enormous gratification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
superfrank 5y ago
> Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I'm not sure why people feel this need to draw this weird line in the sand and say that SpaceX is okay because Musk built a business, but Blue Origin and Virgin are bad because... reasons? Technology advances for all sorts of reasons. Lamborghinis exist because a farmer was pissed at Ferrari. Motorolla made the first cellphone to steal the thunder from AT&T. Hell, the first space race back in the 60s was basically done to flex on the USSR. If this is all a massive dick measuring contest, I honestly couldn't care less. It's advancing space exploration and providing competition in the space. Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy. When I hear people complain about this being a vanity project like that somehow taints the accomplishment, all I can think about is a particularly on the nose quote from the TV show Community. "Who cares if Troy thinks he's all that? Maybe he is. You think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No, they're trying to impress their high school's prom king."
- geocrasher 5y ago
  Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy. False. I hate to be "that guy" but neither Bezos or Branson made it to orbit. Those were sub-orbital flights with parabolic trajectories. To use your analogies: If Tesla were the Ferrari, then Virgin Galactic and friends would be the kit cars that look like a Ferrari but have a typical muscle car under the skin. That's not to say that neither is impressive. They are definitely impressive. But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves.
  - superfrank 5y ago
    You're correct, but that doesn't really change the point I was trying to make Since you've edited your post, I'll respond to the rest. > But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves. If Bezos or Branson had sent someone else up in their place, does that really change anything? Sure, it's expensive and only the super wealthy can afford to go into space right now, but there are plenty of technologies in our past that only the wealthy could afford at first, but as time went on, they became more affordable.
fbelzile 5y ago
I agree, Blue Origin at least was thoughtful enough to use fuel that doesn't emit CO2. Branson is more likable but does seem like he's just trying to defend his title of being the eccentric billionaire, rather than thinking too hard about the future.
- xxpor 5y ago
  >I agree, Blue Origin at least was thoughtful enough to use fuel that doesn't emit CO2. I thought that too, but apparently the BE-4 engine uses LNG :/
- soperj 5y ago
  Where do you think the H2 comes from?
  - erik_seaberg 5y ago
    They could always electrolyze seawater. We need to deter large-scale greenhouse gas venting, not energy uses of all kinds.
    - soperj 5y ago
      they could, but that's not where it comes from.
varispeed 5y ago
Especially the Bezos one also feels unethical, when you take into account tax avoidance, poor wages and working conditions. It feels like he skimmed money from the workers and tax payer to give himself a trip to space. He deserves ostracism rather than recognition.
Channel11 5y ago
You're a disrespectful troll. The board admins here suck to tolerate these kinds of sh!t posts.
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
> I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War? Blue Origin's is reusable. That's a huge difference.
- alttab 5y ago
  SpaceX has already done that, in less time, and took humans to the ISS.
  - what_ever 5y ago
    I don't see the point of this comment. The parent comment didn't talk anything about SpaceX. Also, since SpaceX did it already, in less time, should others just close the shop and not try to do the same?
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    So we should stop? SpaceX did it first, everyone else can just fold up shop? C'mon. Blue Origin has a proper rocket, it seems very capable. They even land the booster like SpaceX does. To be unimpressed with their achievements seems like sour grapes.
    - serf 5y ago
      >To be unimpressed with their achievements seems like sour grapes. Carlin says something similar to what I was going to say, but he's better at saying it. " The phrase sour grapes does not refer to jealousy or envy. Nor is it related to being a sore loser. It deals with the rationalization of failure to attain a desired end. In the original fable by Aesop, "The Fox and the Grapes," when the fox realizes he cannot leap high enough to reach the grapes, he rationalizes that even if he had gotten them, they would probably have been sour anyway. Rationalization, that’s all sour grapes means. It doesn’t mean deal with jealousy or sore losing. Yeah, I know you say, "Well many people are using it that way, so the meaning is changing." And I say, "Well many people are really fuckin’ stupid too, shall we just adopt all their standards?" " [0] - George Carlin [0]: https://www.sense.net/~blaine/funstuff/carlin.html https://www.sense.net/~blaine/funstuff/carlin.html
Causality1 5y ago
Seconding this. Musk is a workaholic who happens to be a total jackass on Twitter but his employees are well paid and to the best of my knowledge aren't forced to piss in bottles at work.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  I thought Tesla and SpaceX famously underpay and overwork compared to most of the big Tech firms?
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Quick Googling gave me values of 92K for the average SpaceX employee and $18.37/hr for Tesla's lowest unskilled labor rate.
fnord77 5y ago
> Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. there's nothing that spacex has done that's "new tech". VTVL rockets were worked out in the 60s and the 90s spacex does a good job of making it seem like what they're doing is new, though.
- dpcx 5y ago
  Do you have some examples of VTOL rockets from the early days? I can't find much online other than the Lunar module, and that was designed for VTOL on the moon...
  - fnord77 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X I also believe that Blue Origin had VTVL working before space-X in the early 2000s there were one or two other scale VTVL projects that were working, I can't find info on them now. also Masten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5b9LnzjGgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5b9LnzjGgU
- sli 5y ago
  Musk's MO in general is to make tech look new when it's not. Most of his ideas (that seemed have petered out, strange) are just worse versions of what we currently have. The Hyperloop in particular was a laughing stock of an idea. Nothing but an amusement park ride. We already have something that works better for transit, and so much better than it's ridiculous: trains.
kube-system 5y ago
> Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies. Like this?: https://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/2021-07/richard-branson-space-07.11.21.jpg https://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/2021-07/richard-brans... I honestly don't think it's something bad to praise when only a handful of organizations have ever done it. [0] Thousands of people have climbed Everest, but it is still a commendable achievement. > Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War? Plenty of other nation-states have been working on spaceflight longer than that and accomplished less. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights#Summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights#Sum...
- peteretep 5y ago
  > nation-states You mean "countries", right, or are you trying to make some point about nationalism?
  - YuriNiyazov 5y ago
    No, he means “governments.”
    - OJFord 5y ago
      I can't think of any country that would try to run such (decades long) projects under the remit of a few years' government. They would report to but be independent of government ministers, and likely span multiple governments. 'State' is what was meant. (Country, nation, fine; bit less accurate perhaps? But I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.)
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
    No, "nation-state" is trying to make about about someone's smartitude. It's like "thread actor" in that regard, i. e. its a big word that important people use in their CNN interviews. The racing strip of sentences, basically.
  - kube-system 5y ago
malwrar 5y ago
I don't think distinguishing them is really useful. For Bezos at least, it's worth noting he's an ex-ceo of one of the most successful companies in the world and now seems to be spending a lot of his time on this project. I think it's more fun to be optimistic that this will contribute towards a more interesting future where humans in space is just kinda normal.
pbreit 5y ago
I don't think that's true at all about Branson. Almost all the Virgin companies are non-vanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group#Subsidiaries_and_investments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group#Subsidiaries_and_...
jpgvm 5y ago
Also if anyone should get the credit for Virgin Galactic it should be Burt Rutan and the folks at Scaled Composites whose blood sweat and tears made this happen.
Aerroon 5y ago
>SpaceX has been around for two years less and has accomplished orbital missions. And if they didn't get government contracts, then where would they be right now? If those contracts had landed in the lap of other companies, maybe they'd be the more successful ones?
machinelearning 5y ago
The truth is that there 100% isn't anything morally wrong with: 1. Building a rocket company 2. Being a billionaire 3. Going on a flight on a rocket your company built The issue stems from how the optics of these 3 lumped together appears to the masses. To the people who are struggling everyday to make a living, it says: "Hey look at how much of a baller I am, I just went to space and you didn't" Obviously, investing many personnel hours, pain and billions of dollars into a venture just for a "personal vanity project" is absurd and key driver behind these ventures is probably a desire to build the future. However, most people don't have the luxury to worry about building the future when they're living paycheck to paycheck. It is difficult to explain how the pie grows and everyone is better off (even if the inventors are the best off) as we invest in technology. The only solution to prevent public backlash to innovation is to make everyone well off enough to want to invest in building the future (and better PR, Jeff Bezos shame on you).
- thn-gap 5y ago
  You give as truth that #2 is not 100% morally wrong. I am not so sure, and many other people would also disagree.
  - machinelearning 5y ago
    The implicit assumption in what you're saying that the only way to obtain a billion dollars is by immoral means. There is no proof that this is always the case.
    - ijcaatst 5y ago
      As someone who thinks it's morally wrong to have billionaires in a society let me try to make an argument why I think so. If a person has a billion dollars it does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts heavily within the economy in which it exists and more importantly with the people who participate in that economy. Think for example the amount of people employed to do work in order to service a billionaire. A vast estate requires 24 hour staff, a sports car fleet requires thousands upon thousands hours of labor to produce. The logistics of a private jet demands a lot of effort from a lot of people. In order to service a single individual we require, in aggregate, countless of human lives spent toiling. I am not arguing that the effect of increased economic activity and employment are not desirable. And one can make a decent case that a billionaire's time is incredibly valuable which to an extent may justify spending larger resources in service to this lifestyle. I just think the idea of many humans spending their lives in order to satisfy a single human is absurd no matter which societal model organizes this arrangement. It can be argued that the people who service the billionaire are better off having found employment within or in relation to someones billion dollar estate. Though I think it is even easier to argue that we can find many hypothetical arrangements that are far more just and moral for these people. There is also an argument to be made about the large amounts of undemocratic power that a billion dollar in private wealth entails. If the billionaire holds majority stakes within prominent industries we are delegating important decisions to opaque power with unknown agendas that we can not hope to influence in meaningful ways. As I firmly believe that a moral society is actively democratic this feels deeply wrong. With that said, I do not have any good quick fixes. Because the reasons I outlined I feel that the presence of billionaires reveal that human society has yet to reach its moral potential. I have no illusions that reaching that goal will be either a simple or fast process. I prefer billionaires to having a nobility class. Though I hope that we as a species recognize that deeply inequitable social arrangements is something we want to move away from.
sidcool 5y ago
I think Bezos and Branson are just lagging Musk in execution. But that does not mean theirs are vanity projects. In the long run, Bezos plans to create a platform like AWS for space launch. And it's OK if it happens by 2025 or 2030. SpaceX, for all the wonderful things it has achieved, won't be able to cater to all space launch requirements. There needs to be a competition.
lwhi 5y ago
Bezos: "How can I improve the chances of positive press?" "I'll encourage journalists to say nice things by letting them believe there's a chance they'll become insanely rich if they do." ... Such a cynical move.
dumpsterdiver 5y ago
A spaceship is only a vanity item until you actually need it. Who knows when you might need to spend a few years in orbit waiting out a nuclear winter? I’d be interested to see more progress made toward long term space habitats. You don’t need reusable rockets when you don’t plan on coming back anytime soon.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  You need reusable rockets and space resources (Moon, asteroids) if you want to do space habitats at any reasonable scale.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dumpsterdiver 5y ago
    To be clear, it wasn't my intention to trivialize the amazing accomplishment of reusable rockets, and your point is perfectly valid. I should have left it at me being excited for long term space habitats, and not even mentioned reusable rockets. As you've pointed out, of course reusable rockets will provide immense value to any space habitat. My unspoken position was that there are other ventures worth pursuing aside from the great leaps that leave us all in awe. The little things, like growing space lettuce, intelligent augmented reality to assist astronauts, etc.
rhizome 5y ago
>Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Isn't is an amazing coincidence that Elon was able to find so many rocket engineers with ideas just as NASA was being starved of funding? Just lucky I guess! anotherwinformilos.gif SpaceX is a privatization that enjoys plenty of easy funding from the government, it's just that spaceflight staff aren't paid via the federal HR department anymore. Frankly, I don't see the benefit of Elon getting any of my tax dollars.

boringg 5y ago

Just a minor correction here- SpaceX has been around for 20 years as well.

LukeShu 5y ago
Unless it's been edited, the comment says that SpaceX has been around "for two years less"; as in 2 fewer years than Blue Origin, which is essentially true (Sept 2000 vs May 2002; so really more like "a year and a half less").

nyokodo 5y ago

> Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies. In defense of Branson his other space company Virgin Orbit now does orbital launches also, and has cool capabilities that genuinely differentiate it from other providers. We'll see if Bezos catches up, he's personally focusing on it more now and may make faster progress on New Glenn etc.

jimkleiber 5y ago
I agree, I have a friend who worked on early designs for Virgin Galactic and he talks about many of the differences (and benefits) of the Virgin design over Blue Origin and SpaceX.

aeternum 5y ago

Did we have fully reusable rockets during the Cold War? Even though it's suborbital, Blue Origin's re-use is still a pretty impressive achievement. Spaceplanes are also interesting tech. Maybe not the best choice for earth but could prove useful on other planets with different atmospheres.

gameswithgo 5y ago
No, but nobody had any interest in creating a reusable suborbital rocket. Hobbyists can do that, it just isn't very hard. The reason why what Falcon9 does is hard is the margins are so slim, to be able to get big payloads to high orbits, and still have fuel left to land from that speed and altitude, usually on a boat! What blue origin is doing is vastly simpler.
Retric 5y ago
Yes, going back to WWII many aircraft have been reusable rockets. In 1963 the reusable X-15 broke the same 330,000f (100km) barrier at 353,200 ft using a nearly identical approach, 3 aircraft 199 flights, zero crashes. Blue Origin only nominally beat that at 367,490 ft, but was optimized for altitude rather than extreme speeds of the X-15 @ Mach 6.7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 Blue Origin is an awesome amusement park ride, but not particularly interesting in terms of space exploration. Air launched anti satellite weapons for example are actually the most common approach. The main issue with air launching is scaling problems as you need to support the weight in multiple directions.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  Sadly there were X-15 crashes: "On 15 November 1967, U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Michael J. Adams was killed during X-15 Flight 191 when X-15-3, AF Ser. No. 56-6672, entered a hypersonic spin while descending, then oscillated violently as aerodynamic forces increased after re-entry."

MikeHolman 5y ago

They definitely aren't all at the same level right now, but I'm happy for the competition. Hopefully it will drive innovation.

Layke1123 5y ago
Since when has competition ever spurred innovation?

staunch 5y ago

There's no reason to get into comparisons, except to the extent that it helps push them to compete harder, and make more progress. A public space race of billionaires is exactly the kind of thing we should all be hoping for. They can leverage their relatively small funding to push much larger government funding in productive directions. They're better than most government administrators and don't have as many constraints, so they can take more risks and pay experts what they're worth on the open market. The public should be calling for more of this kind of thing across all major areas of civilization. Let's get a public race among billionaires for curing cancer, HIV, and poverty. If it feeds their egos, all the better. Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals, even among the greatest and most "pure" scientists. They want to win a Nobel, for the money and the recognition. Or they're doing science because it's just extremely pleasurable for them, which is not a selfless reason at all. The sooner people realize that base motivations aren't a sin the better we'll all be. And in reality, motivations are always a mix of (mostly) selfish and selfless reasons. Motivations aren't what matters. What matters is making progress that can (eventually!) benefit everyone.

kylestlb 5y ago
"Almost all progress is connected to selfish goals" [citation needed]
- WalterBright 5y ago
  More like find one that isn't. I bet you can't :-)
  - agrover 5y ago
    Salk and Polio vaccine.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Salk said: "It's brought me enormous gratification" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

superfrank 5y ago

> Bezos and especially Branson's ventures feel much more like personal vanity projects than something that will actually push space exploration. I'm not sure why people feel this need to draw this weird line in the sand and say that SpaceX is okay because Musk built a business, but Blue Origin and Virgin are bad because... reasons? Technology advances for all sorts of reasons. Lamborghinis exist because a farmer was pissed at Ferrari. Motorolla made the first cellphone to steal the thunder from AT&T. Hell, the first space race back in the 60s was basically done to flex on the USSR. If this is all a massive dick measuring contest, I honestly couldn't care less. It's advancing space exploration and providing competition in the space. Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy. When I hear people complain about this being a vanity project like that somehow taints the accomplishment, all I can think about is a particularly on the nose quote from the TV show Community. "Who cares if Troy thinks he's all that? Maybe he is. You think astronauts go to the moon because they hate oxygen? No, they're trying to impress their high school's prom king."

geocrasher 5y ago
Even Bezos and Branson stopped right now, they've still proven that it's possible for a company other than SpaceX to put a man in orbit and dumped billions of dollars back into the economy. False. I hate to be "that guy" but neither Bezos or Branson made it to orbit. Those were sub-orbital flights with parabolic trajectories. To use your analogies: If Tesla were the Ferrari, then Virgin Galactic and friends would be the kit cars that look like a Ferrari but have a typical muscle car under the skin. That's not to say that neither is impressive. They are definitely impressive. But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves.
- superfrank 5y ago
  You're correct, but that doesn't really change the point I was trying to make Since you've edited your post, I'll respond to the rest. > But they're also just carnival rides for Billionaires, and that's what gets on peoples nerves. If Bezos or Branson had sent someone else up in their place, does that really change anything? Sure, it's expensive and only the super wealthy can afford to go into space right now, but there are plenty of technologies in our past that only the wealthy could afford at first, but as time went on, they became more affordable.

fbelzile 5y ago

I agree, Blue Origin at least was thoughtful enough to use fuel that doesn't emit CO2. Branson is more likable but does seem like he's just trying to defend his title of being the eccentric billionaire, rather than thinking too hard about the future.

xxpor 5y ago
>I agree, Blue Origin at least was thoughtful enough to use fuel that doesn't emit CO2. I thought that too, but apparently the BE-4 engine uses LNG :/
soperj 5y ago
Where do you think the H2 comes from?
- erik_seaberg 5y ago
  They could always electrolyze seawater. We need to deter large-scale greenhouse gas venting, not energy uses of all kinds.
  - soperj 5y ago
    they could, but that's not where it comes from.

varispeed 5y ago

Especially the Bezos one also feels unethical, when you take into account tax avoidance, poor wages and working conditions. It feels like he skimmed money from the workers and tax payer to give himself a trip to space. He deserves ostracism rather than recognition.

Channel11 5y ago

You're a disrespectful troll. The board admins here suck to tolerate these kinds of sh!t posts.

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago

> I mean Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War? Blue Origin's is reusable. That's a huge difference.

alttab 5y ago
SpaceX has already done that, in less time, and took humans to the ISS.
- what_ever 5y ago
  I don't see the point of this comment. The parent comment didn't talk anything about SpaceX. Also, since SpaceX did it already, in less time, should others just close the shop and not try to do the same?
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  So we should stop? SpaceX did it first, everyone else can just fold up shop? C'mon. Blue Origin has a proper rocket, it seems very capable. They even land the booster like SpaceX does. To be unimpressed with their achievements seems like sour grapes.
  - serf 5y ago
    >To be unimpressed with their achievements seems like sour grapes. Carlin says something similar to what I was going to say, but he's better at saying it. " The phrase sour grapes does not refer to jealousy or envy. Nor is it related to being a sore loser. It deals with the rationalization of failure to attain a desired end. In the original fable by Aesop, "The Fox and the Grapes," when the fox realizes he cannot leap high enough to reach the grapes, he rationalizes that even if he had gotten them, they would probably have been sour anyway. Rationalization, that’s all sour grapes means. It doesn’t mean deal with jealousy or sore losing. Yeah, I know you say, "Well many people are using it that way, so the meaning is changing." And I say, "Well many people are really fuckin’ stupid too, shall we just adopt all their standards?" " [0] - George Carlin [0]: https://www.sense.net/~blaine/funstuff/carlin.html https://www.sense.net/~blaine/funstuff/carlin.html

Causality1 5y ago

Seconding this. Musk is a workaholic who happens to be a total jackass on Twitter but his employees are well paid and to the best of my knowledge aren't forced to piss in bottles at work.

nebula8804 5y ago
I thought Tesla and SpaceX famously underpay and overwork compared to most of the big Tech firms?
- Causality1 5y ago
  Quick Googling gave me values of 92K for the average SpaceX employee and $18.37/hr for Tesla's lowest unskilled labor rate.

fnord77 5y ago

> Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. there's nothing that spacex has done that's "new tech". VTVL rockets were worked out in the 60s and the 90s spacex does a good job of making it seem like what they're doing is new, though.

dpcx 5y ago
Do you have some examples of VTOL rockets from the early days? I can't find much online other than the Lunar module, and that was designed for VTOL on the moon...
- fnord77 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X I also believe that Blue Origin had VTVL working before space-X in the early 2000s there were one or two other scale VTVL projects that were working, I can't find info on them now. also Masten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5b9LnzjGgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5b9LnzjGgU
sli 5y ago
Musk's MO in general is to make tech look new when it's not. Most of his ideas (that seemed have petered out, strange) are just worse versions of what we currently have. The Hyperloop in particular was a laughing stock of an idea. Nothing but an amusement park ride. We already have something that works better for transit, and so much better than it's ridiculous: trains.

kube-system 5y ago

> Lumping them all together feels like we're giving out participation trophies. Like this?: https://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/2021-07/richard-branson-space-07.11.21.jpg https://kstp.com/kstpImages/repository/2021-07/richard-brans... I honestly don't think it's something bad to praise when only a handful of organizations have ever done it. [0] Thousands of people have climbed Everest, but it is still a commendable achievement. > Blue Origin has been running for 20 years and the best we have from them is flights that were accomplished in the Cold War? Plenty of other nation-states have been working on spaceflight longer than that and accomplished less. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights#Summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights#Sum...

peteretep 5y ago
> nation-states You mean "countries", right, or are you trying to make some point about nationalism?
- YuriNiyazov 5y ago
  No, he means “governments.”
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I can't think of any country that would try to run such (decades long) projects under the remit of a few years' government. They would report to but be independent of government ministers, and likely span multiple governments. 'State' is what was meant. (Country, nation, fine; bit less accurate perhaps? But I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.)
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  No, "nation-state" is trying to make about about someone's smartitude. It's like "thread actor" in that regard, i. e. its a big word that important people use in their CNN interviews. The racing strip of sentences, basically.
- kube-system 5y ago

malwrar 5y ago

I don't think distinguishing them is really useful. For Bezos at least, it's worth noting he's an ex-ceo of one of the most successful companies in the world and now seems to be spending a lot of his time on this project. I think it's more fun to be optimistic that this will contribute towards a more interesting future where humans in space is just kinda normal.

pbreit 5y ago

I don't think that's true at all about Branson. Almost all the Virgin companies are non-vanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group#Subsidiaries_and_investments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Group#Subsidiaries_and_...

jpgvm 5y ago

Also if anyone should get the credit for Virgin Galactic it should be Burt Rutan and the folks at Scaled Composites whose blood sweat and tears made this happen.

Aerroon 5y ago

>SpaceX has been around for two years less and has accomplished orbital missions. And if they didn't get government contracts, then where would they be right now? If those contracts had landed in the lap of other companies, maybe they'd be the more successful ones?

machinelearning 5y ago

The truth is that there 100% isn't anything morally wrong with: 1. Building a rocket company 2. Being a billionaire 3. Going on a flight on a rocket your company built The issue stems from how the optics of these 3 lumped together appears to the masses. To the people who are struggling everyday to make a living, it says: "Hey look at how much of a baller I am, I just went to space and you didn't" Obviously, investing many personnel hours, pain and billions of dollars into a venture just for a "personal vanity project" is absurd and key driver behind these ventures is probably a desire to build the future. However, most people don't have the luxury to worry about building the future when they're living paycheck to paycheck. It is difficult to explain how the pie grows and everyone is better off (even if the inventors are the best off) as we invest in technology. The only solution to prevent public backlash to innovation is to make everyone well off enough to want to invest in building the future (and better PR, Jeff Bezos shame on you).

thn-gap 5y ago
You give as truth that #2 is not 100% morally wrong. I am not so sure, and many other people would also disagree.
- machinelearning 5y ago
  The implicit assumption in what you're saying that the only way to obtain a billion dollars is by immoral means. There is no proof that this is always the case.
  - ijcaatst 5y ago
    As someone who thinks it's morally wrong to have billionaires in a society let me try to make an argument why I think so. If a person has a billion dollars it does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts heavily within the economy in which it exists and more importantly with the people who participate in that economy. Think for example the amount of people employed to do work in order to service a billionaire. A vast estate requires 24 hour staff, a sports car fleet requires thousands upon thousands hours of labor to produce. The logistics of a private jet demands a lot of effort from a lot of people. In order to service a single individual we require, in aggregate, countless of human lives spent toiling. I am not arguing that the effect of increased economic activity and employment are not desirable. And one can make a decent case that a billionaire's time is incredibly valuable which to an extent may justify spending larger resources in service to this lifestyle. I just think the idea of many humans spending their lives in order to satisfy a single human is absurd no matter which societal model organizes this arrangement. It can be argued that the people who service the billionaire are better off having found employment within or in relation to someones billion dollar estate. Though I think it is even easier to argue that we can find many hypothetical arrangements that are far more just and moral for these people. There is also an argument to be made about the large amounts of undemocratic power that a billion dollar in private wealth entails. If the billionaire holds majority stakes within prominent industries we are delegating important decisions to opaque power with unknown agendas that we can not hope to influence in meaningful ways. As I firmly believe that a moral society is actively democratic this feels deeply wrong. With that said, I do not have any good quick fixes. Because the reasons I outlined I feel that the presence of billionaires reveal that human society has yet to reach its moral potential. I have no illusions that reaching that goal will be either a simple or fast process. I prefer billionaires to having a nobility class. Though I hope that we as a species recognize that deeply inequitable social arrangements is something we want to move away from.

sidcool 5y ago

I think Bezos and Branson are just lagging Musk in execution. But that does not mean theirs are vanity projects. In the long run, Bezos plans to create a platform like AWS for space launch. And it's OK if it happens by 2025 or 2030. SpaceX, for all the wonderful things it has achieved, won't be able to cater to all space launch requirements. There needs to be a competition.

lwhi 5y ago

Bezos: "How can I improve the chances of positive press?" "I'll encourage journalists to say nice things by letting them believe there's a chance they'll become insanely rich if they do." ... Such a cynical move.

dumpsterdiver 5y ago

A spaceship is only a vanity item until you actually need it. Who knows when you might need to spend a few years in orbit waiting out a nuclear winter? I’d be interested to see more progress made toward long term space habitats. You don’t need reusable rockets when you don’t plan on coming back anytime soon.

m4rtink 5y ago
You need reusable rockets and space resources (Moon, asteroids) if you want to do space habitats at any reasonable scale.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dumpsterdiver 5y ago
  To be clear, it wasn't my intention to trivialize the amazing accomplishment of reusable rockets, and your point is perfectly valid. I should have left it at me being excited for long term space habitats, and not even mentioned reusable rockets. As you've pointed out, of course reusable rockets will provide immense value to any space habitat. My unspoken position was that there are other ventures worth pursuing aside from the great leaps that leave us all in awe. The little things, like growing space lettuce, intelligent augmented reality to assist astronauts, etc.

rhizome 5y ago

>Musk, for all his flaws, started an actual rocket company with new and frankly insane tech. Isn't is an amazing coincidence that Elon was able to find so many rocket engineers with ideas just as NASA was being starved of funding? Just lucky I guess! anotherwinformilos.gif SpaceX is a privatization that enjoys plenty of easy funding from the government, it's just that spaceflight staff aren't paid via the federal HR department anymore. Frankly, I don't see the benefit of Elon getting any of my tax dollars.