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The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System
- closewith 9mo agoThe age of plausibly buying a legacy is gone, so these vanity projects inspire more cynicism than anything else.
- amelius 9mo agoWell, this is better than what Bezos is using his surplus money for.
- coderjames 9mo agoYou don't support trying to save the planet? The Bezos Earth Fund: https://www.bezosearthfund.org/ https://www.bezosearthfund.org/
- adventured 9mo agoThe planet will be just fine. It measures consequential time in many millions of years. You mean: support saving humanity.
- RealityVoid 9mo agoI mean, yeah. When people way saving the planet they mean saving humanity. That's exactly it. A barren rock does no one no good. I don't get it why people hang onto this expression, it's as if you heard that George Carlin bit and now that's your anchor to reality.
- leoc 9mo agoFor the past 50+ years there really has been a somewhat significant and quite influential body of people who genuinely want to preserve the planet’s ecosystem even at the expense of the people living on it.
- dylan604 9mo agoIt's not like the dinosaurs had a save the earth campaign. Yet, before humans the rock had life forms that died out while the rock itself continued being a viable planet supporting life. If humans die off, the planet will continue on with life continuing in new ways.
- A_D_E_P_T 9mo agoBezos is one of the best, though? Blue Origin, the Long Now foundation, and I could go on all day. I don't know of too many other billionaires so willing so spend vast sums on the Heinleinian dreams of their youth.
- skeeter2020 9mo agoI don't believe it's a net benefit to the world when a single person fundamentally changes entire economies, captures a significant portion of the resource stream and then maybe a some point redirects a portion of of it to their pet projects. Although I strongly support shooting tech bros and politicians into space (one way; even better)!
- motoxpro 9mo agoI am not understanding how this is bad. Other than a guy made a bunch of money and is spending it how he wants. Or is that the whole reason?
- closewith 9mo ago> Other than a guy made a bunch of money and is spending it how he wants. A guy has woken up to the fact that he'll be remembered as a villian and is trying to whitewash his reputation.
- ggggffggggg 9mo agoI don’t know that the vast majority of Americans know who Eric Schmidt is. And unless they find little green men, no one will care about this project, so it won’t affect his (essentially nonexistent) reputation. It’s not unlike if you had a blog post about a gardening project in your backyard. Perhaps interesting to gardeners, but approximately no one cares. Low effort cynicism.
- bongodongobob 9mo ago[dead]
- BigTTYGothGF 9mo agoIt worked for Alfred Nobel.
- dlevine 9mo agoIt seems to have worked for Bill Gates as well. He definitely did some not so nice things when starting and running MS - I think it unfortunately goes with the territory of running a successful company at scale. But subsequently he has become more know for his philanthropy.
- melling 9mo agoI forget why he’s a villain. Did he do something at Google? He’s sort of a lesser known figure to me.
- black_13 9mo ago[dead]
- everfrustrated 9mo ago[flagged]
- defrost 9mo agoIt's a shame they're taking advice from leading astro project groups about the globe rather than yourself. Still, I'm suprised to hear from you that the Lazuli Space Observatory will apparently operate from ground level.
- terminalbraid 9mo agoBut that's objectively not true unless you're just trolling or being sarcastic? The cost and reach of ground based systems still has a considerable amount of use, still have many projects of those types ongoing. There's been a ton of great work on things like adaptive optics and laser guides have been excellent breakthroughs in extending that reach.
- niemandhier 9mo agoFrom the website: “The Lazuli Space Observatory is a 3-meter–class space-based astronomical facility designed for rapid-response observations and precision astrophysics across optical and near-infrared wavelengths.” And we wall should be happy he doesn’t want to put a swarm of micro telescopes into the sky to mimic his approach for the ground based telescopes. The last thing astronomy needs is even more satellite constellations polluting the night sky.
- BurningFrog 9mo agoSatellites are only visible when it's dark on the ground but sunlight at their orbit. Which is for a short time around sunset and sunrise. During the actual night sky, you don't see satellites. As civilization moves into space, it will have to be visible! Imagine if cities were only allowed it they were invisible. Let's not be this stupid! That said, I'm sure a lot can be done to minimize reflections using paint and materials.
- defrost 9mo ago
- pama 9mo agoThe broader availability of data from astronomical observations starts to become relevant in the present time of coding agents that can help hobbyists.
- benburleson 9mo agoInteresting. Wayne Rosing (Silicon Valley pioneer and early engineering lead at Google) has been working on a global telescope project for a long time now also. https://lco.global/ https://lco.global/
- WD-42 9mo agoBen you still have code running here.
- benburleson 9mo agoHa, thanks for letting me know! I hope it's not causing too many problems out there :-)
- wittyusername 9mo agoAs you can see by the name of the thing, they are married
- halfmatthalfcat 9mo agoTell that to Bill and Melinda.
- dylan604 9mo agoAt the time the foundation was formed, they were married
- knorker 9mo agoNot sure why that's relevant. But if that's interesting then it's probably also relevant that it's an open marriage. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-13439603/eric-schmidt-former-google-ceo-wife-wendy.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-13439603/eric-...
- jacquesm 9mo agoBesides the quality of the source, that's been slightly overtaken by more recent events: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-20/former-google-chief-accused-of-spying-on-employees-through-account-backdoor https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-11-20/former-goo...
- DetectDefect 9mo agoLikely Schmidt's repentance for his unbridled Burning Man trips.
- WD-42 9mo agoLots of weird marketing speak on here for an astronomical observatory. “Modular design that leverages economies of scale” what? These are telescopes, not telephones. There’s a very small amount of scientific grade ones in existence and they are all different. Best of luck to them anyway. Edit: it looks like the Argus array at least is a project out of Chapel Hill. Better info here: https://argus.unc.edu/specifications https://argus.unc.edu/specifications Schmidt probably helping fund it.
- reportingsjr 9mo ago> what? These are telescopes, not telephones. There’s a very small amount of scientific grade ones in existence and they are all different. Have you not been following modern satellite and telescope bus architectures? Both planet and spacex have been using this model to great effect over the last decade.
- WD-42 9mo agoNeither of those companies are producing astronomical telescopes as far as I can tell.
- oulipo2 9mo ago[flagged]
- 84729839278392 9mo ago[dead]
- tectonic 9mo agoThe level of negativity in these comments is surprising. We can certainly debate whether billionaires should exist at all, but given that they do, here’s one who’s putting his money towards advancing cutting edge science instead of buying a third mega yacht. I am strongly in favor.
- jacquesm 9mo agoSchmidt has done more damage than he ever will undo with his philanthropy. And one yacht should be enough, especially if it is like this: https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/eric-schmidt-and-his-wifes-superyachts.php https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/eric-schmidt-and-his-wi...
- omoikane 9mo ago> The level of negativity in these comments is surprising Maybe not so surprising: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46512881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46512881 "65% of Hacker News posts have negative sentiment, and they outperform" (2026-01-06, 456 comments)
- ojo-rojo 9mo agoI agree with you. I clicked into this hoping to hear what new things we could learn or discover with the new observatories. Commenting on the more positive and informative side would be a better use of time and energy I think :)
- xqcgrek2 9mo agohttps://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/former-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-accused-of-rape-surveillance-by-exmistress/news-story/cc5947d2828ec3dc7a343ebec5a33151 https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/former-google-ce...