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From the bottom of my heart: who cares. Stop glorifying celebrities. I’m not going to disparage their earned wealth like is so popular right now, but they are b
by btmiller 5y ago
From the bottom of my heart: who cares. Stop glorifying celebrities. I’m not going to disparage their earned wealth like is so popular right now, but they are billionaires and we shouldn’t be looking to them to solve all the world’s problems. So why should I, or anyone for the matter, care what these 2 do with their money. They’re playing with toys, let’s move along.
When their respective companies seriously contend with the likes of SpaceX, then maybe they can have some of my attention. But just like with SpaceX for me, I don’t give a shit about Elon, and no one should give a shit about Bezos and Branson. Congrats to them on their wealth, now let’s move on.
For good measure, maybe this post should just be replaced with the Wikipedia page for astronaut.
- peakaboo 5y agoWish I could upvote this a hundred times. People seem to be under a spell to look up to these billionaires who couldn't care less about them, and who is consistently abusing them.
- saas_sam 5y ago"Playing with toys" is a really dismissive way to describe the combined effort of 1000s of engineers and blue collar workers who innovated on a scale existing space companies haven't in decades to produce a service that will be utilized by millions in the near future for a fraction of the cost it once was.
- madeofpalk 5y agoYes, space engineering is impressive. Bezos and Branson, less so. They just have money.
- ekianjo 5y agothere are other billionaires who do nothing relevant at all with it.
- jrootabega 5y agoPerhaps they are treating the 1000s of engineers and blue collar workers as toys?
- nextaccountic 5y agoIt's like modern-day Pyramids: large scale engineering projects made for personal vanity. Which isn't to say they didn't advance engineering as a whole or weren't otherwise beneficial.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoSpeaking of vanity. How much thought did Bezos put into those Cowboy hats? It seemed like his was a calculated move? Single, and ready to mingle? "If I put them on everyone, I might come off better? I'm actually a fan of his rocket company. I did find it a bit sad we are so behind in terms of what I pictured the future to be when I watched Apollo land on the moon.
- jackvalentine 5y agoBefore he exited the ship someone outside is seen gesturing for him to put the hat on. It is 100% a calculated "I'm a space cowboy" image maker.
- gruez 5y agoWhat's the difference between them treating "1000s of engineers and blue collar workers as toys", and everyone else enjoying movies/games/trinkets made by humans?
- teslafire124 5y agoIt reduces the value of a human being? These billionaires are blowing money on their personal midlife crises when they could be raising worker wages and helping to end poverty with billions to spare. People were able to go into space before billionaires wanted to do it on a whim, you know.
- Guest42 5y agoCan you elaborate on “innovated on a scale existing space companies haven’t in decades...”? I’m not aware of anything they did that couldn’t have been done elsewhere provided the resources were dedicated and am curious of the significance. My position is more aligned with the parent post.
- sokoloff 5y agoReducing the cost of payload insertion by a factor of 100 qualifies in my book. People had transportation before Karl Benz and Henry Ford. I don’t think they did anything that couldn’t have been done elsewhere provided the resources were dedicated.
- ekianjo 5y agothe NASA has been blowing dozens of billions in the past 20 years and still has no rocket to show and certainly nothing reusable.
- throw0101a 5y ago> the NASA has … been throwing money at SpaceX since (at least) 2006: * https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/COTS_selection.html https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/COTS_selection.html The thing about R&D is that you do not know ahead of time what will work and what will fail. Some of NASA's programs failed and some have succeeded. But there was no way to know if SpaceX would be the winner, or SLS, or anything else. SpaceX itself nearly failed: * https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-9-years-ago-spacex-nearly-failed-itself-out-of-existence.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/elon-musk-9-years-ago-spacex... > … and certainly nothing reusable. Reusable was never done before (AFAICT). It turns out that it is actually technically possible and useful. But there was no way to know that ahead of time. It was a risk that SpaceX, and NASA by funding them, that just happened to work out.
- zeusk 5y ago1000s of engineers are also involved in Lego and other actual toys :) Racecars are my personal toys - only needed a few thousand from BMW for public production and a few hundred for the aftermarket support.
- alabamacadabra 5y agoYes it is, isn’t it? It should place into context EXACTLY how this behavior is seen by sensible people. You are plying with toys.
- kiba 5y ago"Playing with toys" is a really dismissive way to describe the combined effort of 1000s of engineers and blue collar workers who innovated on a scale existing space companies haven't in decades to produce a service that will be utilized by millions in the near future for a fraction of the cost it once was. On a competitive landscape, these companies are too late to the party with too little to show for it, and they are likely to be eclipsed by startups if they remain so slow in their progress. It would be great if Bezo has a real rivalry with Elon, but sadly that is not the case.
- roenxi 5y agoYou may be in for a surprise. Starting late and being "slow" aren't actually the big predictors for failure. Particularly in the tech industry we should all remember Apple, who was persistently identified as slow, late and only making incremental improvements until the ungodly profits and overwhelming success of their strategy forced all the grumpy types to quiet down. And it turned out that as long as there are consistent incremental improvements "slow" is very hard to judge. In hindsight, Apple was moving very fast. Not saying any particular venture will succeed, but the qualifications for success aren't speed nor earliness. Success comes from clear communication, solving a problem and correctly identifying opportunity.
- kiba 5y agoBlue Origin has twenty years plus to make their case. SpaceX is slightly younger, but about the same age. If anything, Blue Origin had a head start. They squandered it.
- rich_sasha 5y agoWho knows, Tesla was “late” to the car building gig, electric car research has been going on already. Now they seem to be ahead.
- ashtonkem 5y agoHow else would you describe a vanity trip in pursuit of being the “first billionaire in space”?
- hkt 5y agoPlaying with toys that they're destroying our (shared!) environment with, presumably in the hope they can make wads of cash in the future, potentially from people fleeing an increasingly inhospitable earth. Pretty gross.
- antonzabirko 5y agoGood stuff, if you need someone to glorify look to ancient philosophers like the Buddha. Bezos starts and ends at his business choices/fortune. Musk has that plus some innovative/meaningful business ideas, but neither are worthy of following per-se. Study their business choices, not their lives. =)
- alabamacadabra 5y agoWe should also be identifying modern people who deserve a role in philosophy and not relegate it to a “dead field” because it’s not economically focused (on the micro scale)
- krick 5y agoI'm struggling to decide if I should say I care less about what Bezos & Branson do, or about what is "US definition of astronauts", or if I should point out that your comment is countering its purpose of "giving less attention" to what these guys do, or if me answering your comment would be countering the purpose of saying that, or maybe if I should just drop all of that and start talking about how I'm an astronaut, since Earth is in space and I am sometimes kinda demonstrating activities that are essential to public safety during our flight... I guess I'm saying that both our comments are not very constructive and don't really affect anything. Maybe so is the "news", but it never has been different with the "news", people were talking about stuff like that long before steam engine was invented.
- btmiller 5y agoLet me know if you’re ever in the Seattle area, happy to grab a beer any time :)
- ashtonkem 5y agoThe level of coverage these two got is deeply embarrassing. If I were a journalist I’d be ashamed for my colleagues fawning over some rich <bleep> buying a space ticket.
- teslafire124 5y agoI think it shows why billionaires shouldn't own news outlets. They become their propaganda machines. Look at WaPo vomiting out puff piece after puff piece for their owner, Daddy Bezos.
- peakaboo 5y agoI think the problem is that money runs the world, so rich people run the world. What can we do about that without abolishing capitalism? It's a hard question to answer. Almost always, rich people are evil and don't care about other humans unless they can get some benefit from them. But I really hate how we are supposed to look up to them as well. They don't deserve fame. They are despicable human beings.
- ashtonkem 5y agoHistory has plenty of examples of the people wrestling some control back from the rich and powerful without resorting to a Revolution. The most recent example is certainly the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th century which gave us unions, 8 hour work days, and the weekend.
- staunch 5y ago> They’re playing with toys, let’s move along. "Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest." http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html
- rrss 5y agoI don’t care about Branson, but SpaceShipTwo and its pilots are pretty neat. As far as I know, SpaceShipOne and Two are the only vehicles that leave and reenter the atmosphere under manual control of the pilot since the X-15. the space shuttle had some manual control for landing, but was mostly autonomous otherwise.