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Has he some how gone bankrupt? I can't help but feel if he wants to keep Blue Origin running, he could use a handful of the cash he has laying around one of his

Has he some how gone bankrupt? I can't help but feel if he wants to keep Blue Origin running, he could use a handful of the cash he has laying around one of his mansions. or one of his yachts. or his Texas launch complex. Pretty sure he could bank roll Blue Origin for decades without seeing any significant hit to his personal wealth.

dionysus_jon 5y ago
He can keep spending, that by itself won't make it a successful business.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Define success. Jeff can define success however he wants. He can define it in terms of making money, or in terms of successful launches. Making money is hard - there is only so much demand for things in space, and some competition - making it questionable if the investment will pay off. However launching isn't as hard, and he can define metrics in that way and be successful for his purposes. How is launching things into space any different from paying composers to write much, or painters to paint pictures - two things that rich people regularly did 300 years ago.
  - dionysus_jon 5y ago
    Success could be many things: * Like delivery of engines to customers. * Getting to orbit. * Winning large contracts. * Putting amazons internet satellites into LEO. etc... Space demand will grow incredibly fast very soon as SpaceX leads the incredible prices drops in $ per KG to orbit. I'd love for them to be successful, and its great to see so many space companies being created, testing, and launching. And it's very important for the future of civilisation. That doesn't mean that you can't ask questions about the health of a particular company.
- laurowyn 5y ago
  My point is he could buy a lot of time to save the business. He's not "running out of time". The entire article just feels like: woe is the billionaire's pet project failing because it's not profitable in an unreasonably short amount of time despite plenty of cash availability if said billionaire wants to continue and achieve their original goals.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Equity in Amazon is not the same as cash.
    - LightG 5y ago
      Come on, cut it out ... I've heard this time and time and again in relation to billionaires. It might as well be. It doesn't take a genius to leverage equity ... and Bezos will have effective financial genius working for him.
      - robertlagrant 5y ago
        I disagree. This is worth saying because: 1) time and time again, particularly in the media, I hear net worth bandied about as though it's the same as cash. Bezos is worth X billion - think what that cash would pay for! 2) billions in equity can't be translated into billions in cash. Millions, for sure. But not billions. 3) any statements that talk about taxing the rich inevitably seem to come down to transferring equity to the state over time based on a current stock market valuation. All of the above seem misinformed and/or a bad idea, and worth trying to establish fundamental understanding in this area. If you already have that understanding then that's fantastic.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Several million stock investors would beg to differ.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      Well luckily we have markets that can quickly turn equity in Amazon into cash. Bezos has in fact been doing that to the tune of billions of dollars a year to fund Blue Origin. I don't see him stopping any time soon.
- imglorp 5y ago
  He needs to get something in orbit, anything. Once he has a single win, he can start scoring launch contracts and competing in the launch provider market. He should end up more profitable than every provider with disposable launchers. New Glenn should be that vehicle, if they ever finish it.
  - dionysus_jon 5y ago
    I really hope they do.
whiddershins 5y ago
Isn’t almost all of his wealth in Amazon stock? Regardless, no one is wealthy enough to keep a business of this scale going just as a hobby project.
- simplicio 5y ago
  He's said he plans to sell 1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund Blue Origin. That seems like enough to keep it going, and as long as Amazon continues at or above its current share price, Bezos does appear to be wealthy enough to keep this going as a hobby project for at least a few decades.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    One billion is not a lot for rocket R&D.
    - simplicio 5y ago
      Per year? According to SpaceX, they burned through a billion dollars in funding over their first decade. The development costs for the Falcon 1 were ~100 million, for Falcon 9 about 300 million. So a billion/year seems adequate.
  - e40 5y ago
    Wasn't there a recent controversy about him asking for a $10B US grant/loan/whatever?
    - wmf 5y ago
      A fake controversy.
PaulHoule 5y ago
It's not about the money. It's about mental focus. Elon Musk is "all in" on making mankind an interplanetary species. He is not cruising around the world on a yacht but holing up in a cheap house in Texas. He went at an "impossible" goal by finding specific markets for launch services and satisfying them with Dragon. Starship is a bit ahead of the market, but the success with Dragon bodes well. Looking at the big picture I wonder if Amazon succeeded (post-2005 or so) despite Jeff Bezos instead of because of him... That is, the systems he created at the beginning might have outgrown him.
- mimixco 5y ago
  The goal of making man an "interplanetary species" comes from religion, specifically the religion of Transhumanism to which both Bezos and Musk subscribe. There is nothing in our history or present day evolution that would suggest people can or should live on other planets. Absolutely nothing. We are not even remotely close to such a "goal" when today people live barely below the threshold of space (LEO) and not in space at all. Religious goals and magical thinking have driven human society for hundreds of thousands of years (see the fascinating and recent post here on HN about The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind). Jeff and Elon's fantasies about human habitation in space (or somehow improving life on this planet by leaving it) are more of the same.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    I would go back to Gerard K O'Neill who didn't indulge in the full-fledged transhumanism of Timothy Leary, et al. (e.g. if you're grown-up you don't need personal immortality) I think Mars is for the birds, cutting up a carbonaceous or wet asteroid to construct a solar-sail factory that can deliver sunshades to earth-sun L1 is a more interesting project. Something halfway to Niven's ringworld seems like a possible endpoint. (see https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487) As I see it the problems are half chemical engineering, half "building a ship outside a bottle from the inside of the bottle" and half "what do you do with the gas before you take the asteroid apart?" You might wind up with a structure that can hold a few trillion people, but you start with maybe 40 hardcore Zeons and a few million eggs because I don't see how you build and operate the factory or the factory factory with a 20 minute time delay.
bob33212 5y ago
I know someone that refuses to shutdown his startup. He loses 500-900k/year on it with no end in sight. His other company makes 3M/year. So he can go on for quite a while.

dionysus_jon 5y ago

He can keep spending, that by itself won't make it a successful business.

bluGill 5y ago
Define success. Jeff can define success however he wants. He can define it in terms of making money, or in terms of successful launches. Making money is hard - there is only so much demand for things in space, and some competition - making it questionable if the investment will pay off. However launching isn't as hard, and he can define metrics in that way and be successful for his purposes. How is launching things into space any different from paying composers to write much, or painters to paint pictures - two things that rich people regularly did 300 years ago.
- dionysus_jon 5y ago
  Success could be many things: * Like delivery of engines to customers. * Getting to orbit. * Winning large contracts. * Putting amazons internet satellites into LEO. etc... Space demand will grow incredibly fast very soon as SpaceX leads the incredible prices drops in $ per KG to orbit. I'd love for them to be successful, and its great to see so many space companies being created, testing, and launching. And it's very important for the future of civilisation. That doesn't mean that you can't ask questions about the health of a particular company.
laurowyn 5y ago
My point is he could buy a lot of time to save the business. He's not "running out of time". The entire article just feels like: woe is the billionaire's pet project failing because it's not profitable in an unreasonably short amount of time despite plenty of cash availability if said billionaire wants to continue and achieve their original goals.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Equity in Amazon is not the same as cash.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Come on, cut it out ... I've heard this time and time and again in relation to billionaires. It might as well be. It doesn't take a genius to leverage equity ... and Bezos will have effective financial genius working for him.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      I disagree. This is worth saying because: 1) time and time again, particularly in the media, I hear net worth bandied about as though it's the same as cash. Bezos is worth X billion - think what that cash would pay for! 2) billions in equity can't be translated into billions in cash. Millions, for sure. But not billions. 3) any statements that talk about taxing the rich inevitably seem to come down to transferring equity to the state over time based on a current stock market valuation. All of the above seem misinformed and/or a bad idea, and worth trying to establish fundamental understanding in this area. If you already have that understanding then that's fantastic.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Several million stock investors would beg to differ.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Well luckily we have markets that can quickly turn equity in Amazon into cash. Bezos has in fact been doing that to the tune of billions of dollars a year to fund Blue Origin. I don't see him stopping any time soon.
imglorp 5y ago
He needs to get something in orbit, anything. Once he has a single win, he can start scoring launch contracts and competing in the launch provider market. He should end up more profitable than every provider with disposable launchers. New Glenn should be that vehicle, if they ever finish it.
- dionysus_jon 5y ago
  I really hope they do.

whiddershins 5y ago

Isn’t almost all of his wealth in Amazon stock? Regardless, no one is wealthy enough to keep a business of this scale going just as a hobby project.

simplicio 5y ago
He's said he plans to sell 1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund Blue Origin. That seems like enough to keep it going, and as long as Amazon continues at or above its current share price, Bezos does appear to be wealthy enough to keep this going as a hobby project for at least a few decades.
- colordrops 5y ago
  One billion is not a lot for rocket R&D.
  - simplicio 5y ago
    Per year? According to SpaceX, they burned through a billion dollars in funding over their first decade. The development costs for the Falcon 1 were ~100 million, for Falcon 9 about 300 million. So a billion/year seems adequate.
- e40 5y ago
  Wasn't there a recent controversy about him asking for a $10B US grant/loan/whatever?
  - wmf 5y ago
    A fake controversy.

PaulHoule 5y ago

It's not about the money. It's about mental focus. Elon Musk is "all in" on making mankind an interplanetary species. He is not cruising around the world on a yacht but holing up in a cheap house in Texas. He went at an "impossible" goal by finding specific markets for launch services and satisfying them with Dragon. Starship is a bit ahead of the market, but the success with Dragon bodes well. Looking at the big picture I wonder if Amazon succeeded (post-2005 or so) despite Jeff Bezos instead of because of him... That is, the systems he created at the beginning might have outgrown him.

mimixco 5y ago
The goal of making man an "interplanetary species" comes from religion, specifically the religion of Transhumanism to which both Bezos and Musk subscribe. There is nothing in our history or present day evolution that would suggest people can or should live on other planets. Absolutely nothing. We are not even remotely close to such a "goal" when today people live barely below the threshold of space (LEO) and not in space at all. Religious goals and magical thinking have driven human society for hundreds of thousands of years (see the fascinating and recent post here on HN about The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind). Jeff and Elon's fantasies about human habitation in space (or somehow improving life on this planet by leaving it) are more of the same.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  I would go back to Gerard K O'Neill who didn't indulge in the full-fledged transhumanism of Timothy Leary, et al. (e.g. if you're grown-up you don't need personal immortality) I think Mars is for the birds, cutting up a carbonaceous or wet asteroid to construct a solar-sail factory that can deliver sunshades to earth-sun L1 is a more interesting project. Something halfway to Niven's ringworld seems like a possible endpoint. (see https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487) As I see it the problems are half chemical engineering, half "building a ship outside a bottle from the inside of the bottle" and half "what do you do with the gas before you take the asteroid apart?" You might wind up with a structure that can hold a few trillion people, but you start with maybe 40 hardcore Zeons and a few million eggs because I don't see how you build and operate the factory or the factory factory with a 20 minute time delay.

bob33212 5y ago

I know someone that refuses to shutdown his startup. He loses 500-900k/year on it with no end in sight. His other company makes 3M/year. So he can go on for quite a while.