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Blue Origin makes Bezos look like a sad little boy that wants to fit in with he big boys but fails miserably. BO feels like a cheap SpaceX knock-off. His ride o

Blue Origin makes Bezos look like a sad little boy that wants to fit in with he big boys but fails miserably. BO feels like a cheap SpaceX knock-off. His ride over the Karman line (which they tried to point out as the border to to space so bad on their channels) really convinced me of that. Bezos lacks a vision for space, it's just a hobby for him and he fails at executing the Amazon playbook there.

systemvoltage 5y ago
Just keep in mind that there are regular engineers like any of us working at Blue Origin and giving their best to achieve something, make a living and tackle really hard problems. Some viewpoints expressed on HN feel like social media fed hatred, people often forget that there is a massive army of brilliant people doing stuff that most engineers would dream of. There are Facebook/Google engineers working on advertisement tech and we generally don't scorn at them. Adtech is far more "uncool" than space exploration. I say kudos to Blue Origin to lift a building sized socket up to space with humans in it.
- __d 5y ago
  I agree that the current fanboi bucketing on Blue Origin is dumb, herd-mentality, kicking-the-weakest, bs. People need to grow up. I think it's genuinely interesting to compare two well-funded, privately-led space companies and their results. What is it that has allowed one to make such substantially better progress than the other? It's clear that SpaceX is a tough place to work, and Musk has very high expectations that go well beyond a hard-worked 9-5 5 days a week. That said, Amazon is not an easy place to work either ... so is Blue Origin a driven workplace culture? Perhaps it's just that BO got distracted by the sub-orbital hop goal, and should have ditched that (like SpaceX and the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5) and just gone straight into New Glenn? There's something to be said for aiming high. Perhaps it's just bad luck? BE3 seems ok, but BE4 appears to have some issues. Maybe SpaceX got lucky with Raptor? Or perhaps the difference is just the staff -- one good hire could be the difference between the fairly quick success of Raptor vs. the delays with BE4? Ironic as it is, I will give Musk some credit for keeping his ego out of the cockpit. Not that he's short of ego, but (so far) he's resisted the urge to launch himself.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    I could be wrong, but I suspect that a culture of eccentricity is a hard-to-quantify edge for any company in the space industry. Amazon certainly seems like a demanding place to work, but (and this could be an outsider's misperception but even that matters) I associate it more with consistency than celebrating outliers.
- dna_polymerase 5y ago
  Okay poor wording on my side. Obviously there are talented and great engineers working at BO, after all they successfully launched humans into space. However, the overall vision is lacking and this is Bezos' fault. He behaves like a child. This NASA contract thing right here is an example of that. It's just unprofessional.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Just keep in mind that there are regular engineers like any of us working at Blue Origin and giving their best to achieve something, make a living and tackle really hard problems. Some viewpoints expressed on HN feel like social media fed hatred, people often forget that there is a massive army of brilliant people doing stuff that most engineers would dream of. There are Facebook/Google engineers working on advertisement tech and we generally don't scorn at them. Adtech is far more "uncool" than space exploration. I say kudos to Blue Origin to lift a building sized socket up to space with humans in it.

__d 5y ago
I agree that the current fanboi bucketing on Blue Origin is dumb, herd-mentality, kicking-the-weakest, bs. People need to grow up. I think it's genuinely interesting to compare two well-funded, privately-led space companies and their results. What is it that has allowed one to make such substantially better progress than the other? It's clear that SpaceX is a tough place to work, and Musk has very high expectations that go well beyond a hard-worked 9-5 5 days a week. That said, Amazon is not an easy place to work either ... so is Blue Origin a driven workplace culture? Perhaps it's just that BO got distracted by the sub-orbital hop goal, and should have ditched that (like SpaceX and the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5) and just gone straight into New Glenn? There's something to be said for aiming high. Perhaps it's just bad luck? BE3 seems ok, but BE4 appears to have some issues. Maybe SpaceX got lucky with Raptor? Or perhaps the difference is just the staff -- one good hire could be the difference between the fairly quick success of Raptor vs. the delays with BE4? Ironic as it is, I will give Musk some credit for keeping his ego out of the cockpit. Not that he's short of ego, but (so far) he's resisted the urge to launch himself.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I could be wrong, but I suspect that a culture of eccentricity is a hard-to-quantify edge for any company in the space industry. Amazon certainly seems like a demanding place to work, but (and this could be an outsider's misperception but even that matters) I associate it more with consistency than celebrating outliers.
dna_polymerase 5y ago
Okay poor wording on my side. Obviously there are talented and great engineers working at BO, after all they successfully launched humans into space. However, the overall vision is lacking and this is Bezos' fault. He behaves like a child. This NASA contract thing right here is an example of that. It's just unprofessional.