This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. They got about two minutes of zero G and came down immediately. You can experience that for much longer with a regular plane, for much less money.
It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.
The thing that amuses me is that if SpaceX can make Starship and the Heavy booster work, they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance.
If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.
Then they'd just need to get environmentally-friendly methane production going and we can all be a bit happier.
> It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.
So, Alan Shepard would not be the first American in space? Gus Grissom's first flight wouldn't count, either? I'm all for making a distinction between space tourists and astronauts; but, I don't know if orbiting the Earth is the distinction. (Yes, I know Shepard and Grissom orbited the Earth on subsequent space flights; but,those first flights have to count for something.)
Getting rocket working correctly is never easy. Just like in IT when things work smoothly, it doesn't look amazing but it takes a tremendous amount of work to get things work correctly and seemingly smooth. A smooth operation is always amazing.
The booster landing looks pretty amazing. The capsule landing went without a problem. The deceleration when the braking chutes deployed looks a bit fast, from 205mph to 150mph in couple seconds. Must be hard on the body.
Edit: Ok, in the post-flight briefing, they mentioned that they didn't anticipate the 5G deceleration on descent and it was pretty hard. Must be when the braking chute was deployed.
Agree re: being underwhelmed, but in fairness, your typical "vomit comet" parabola flight only gets you about 25 seconds of weightlessness at a time. Although you can repeat this several dozen times per flight pretty easily.
Seems that between Musk, Bezos and Branson, we have in essence restarted a space race but this time it's billionaires in the private sector versus governments. Some will surely say that they have better things to spend their money on (Bezos for sure) but I gave to say it's still mindblowing. I would imagine if you're one of those guys, you've basically have enough money to solve any problem, so these guys it seems are chasing harder and harder problems, space exploration seems to be top of mind among these problems.
Obviously everybody (Branson/Bezos) is entitled to spend their cash in whatever way they want. But, if they are making a spectacle of it, publicise it and promote it like some big achievement, then those people should be prepared to take some criticism. And in my opinion, I see the last two launches as indeed amusement rides for billionaires and a strong argument for better taxation policies. In contrary, what Musk does with SpaceX ( and I'm not a fan of Musk as a person), can be classified as technological development as he actually sends satellites, deliveries to ISS.
> I see the last two launches as indeed amusement rides for billionaires
I see this take a lot, and I strongly disagree.
These launches are marketing events for their space tourism businesses! The billionaire CEOs go up to prove they personally trust the tech is safe. If they won't go, who else would?
Now they can start selling trips to paying customers, and hopefully build genuinely sustainable space tourism businesses. The fairly minimal experience of these short jumps will be improved gradually, and that future is impossible to predict, as it is completely novel territory.
Most billionaires build mansions and buy islands and offshore their money. Bezos and Branson are doing R&D. Bill Gates does philanthropy. There's a spectrum of wastefulness, and I wholeheartedly applaud billionaires doing R&D that our governments seem to have lost interest in.
> And in my opinion, I see the last two launches as indeed amusement rides for billionaires and a strong argument for better taxation policies.
How would different taxation policies prevent Bezos from spending a very modest share of his wealth on what he wants to do? He has $204 billion. What he has done with Blue Origin can be replicated for 1-3% of that.
Is the plan to take 99% of the Bezos fortune through government confiscation and forced sales of Amazon stock? I ask because only a small number of nations have ever behaved with that level of brutality toward private wealth, all were - without exception - totalitarian genocide machines with zero human rights. How about we not keep repeating the mistakes of the past.
Even Scandinavia - the region that arguably created the highest standard of living in world history - would never dare to behave that way toward private wealth (Scandinavia is overflowing with billionaires and adores private wealth). Nor would Germany or France.
What's the premise then, no fun if you're rich? Which board of comrades is going to be responsible for dictating who gets to do what? Are we abolishing the bourgeois, 20th century style? I think I've read this story before. There's only one way to prevent someone like Bezos from doing Blue Origin, only one approach politically that can be utilized to accomplish that (skeptics will argue there are utopian approaches to mass property confiscation that are humane; there aren't, once you uncork that genie, extreme violence and genocide always follow).
So if you've got $N wealth, you're not allowed to own a boat. If you've got over $1 million you're not allowed to fly in a plane for fun or convenience, nor may you experiment with creating new types of planes.
Perhaps if you've got over $250,000 you may not experiment with new types of technology period. That includes software and hardware. No fun for you. I say so. I have decided to draw the line there and my Socialist board of comrades will enforce it. I have no interest in only restricting the fun Bezos is allowed to have, it should be taken to its logical conclusion, so everybody gets to enjoy how the system will really work in the end.
I had to catch myself as, at first, I was thinking “10 minutes? That’s it? And in space for a lot less than that?”. Quickly reminded myself that in the history of the world hardly anyone has gone where they have gone - 10 minutes isn’t much, but if I could I would.
I agree - it's incredible. First flight of Wright Brothers lasted about 8 seconds. For initial flights, I would not consider time spent in space as the most important metric.
Comments in this thread complaining that the rich get to do whatever they want are forgetting that the wright brothers (and others) enabled flight for all of us even though most people during that time could only dream about it. It might not happen for you and I, but let's think about the bigger picture.
I want to be excited but I keep coming back to confusion over what the actual purpose of this will be. Flight has very clear benefits: getting you from A to B way faster than was ever possible before. With space flight there is no B to go to. You go up, you come down.
If these companies were making breakthroughs in making space long term habitable I’d be excited. But I’m yet to see that.
Firstly, I'm against corporate welfare and I don't care how people spend their money. But, damn... the people who ushered powered flight into the realm of possibility? That is a ridiculous analogy.
SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are incorporating scientific advancements and modern engineering into an industry that has been making orbital flights for over 50 years. We are not going from horses to cars... We are going from a 1920 Cadillac to a 2021 Toyota. Maybe it's a childhood dream and they have lofty goals to guide humanity into space... or it's a lucrative long-term investment... or a little of both. But, the technology has been there, we've had an active presence in space, and the modern space race will not provide us a huge leap in technology like we saw from the cold war. [1]
Space tourism isn't going to move society forward. The "big picture" benefit of space tourism is reducing the cost of payloads which will continue to drop for NASA and telecommunication demand anyway. Space tourism will not substantially improve the quality of life for humanity, it will not provide breakthrough technology (outside of things like human life support systems), and it will not significantly enrich our collective culture. The median quality of life will not benefit from space activities until they bring us some cheap platinum and other precious materials.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer... I just hate the romanization of this whole thing.
Wright brothers were certainly not dirt poor, but they weren't barons either. They were only able to build their planes because of their experience building other mechanical things.
As the owner of several western hats, I'm curious about Jeff Bezos' hat. What's the story behind it? It does not fit him well. He obviously has the money to have whatever kind of crafted, perfectly styled hat he wants. Maybe something from his family?
I find strange that line of thinking. That NASA and other space agencies use highly trained personnel like military pilots for space missions seems largely a historical accident.
In "The Right Stuff", there is discussion on this topic, initially trapeeze artists were thought to be the ideal personnel for the space program due to the high dynamic forces they routinely experience. Another opinion being considered was to use death row prisoners. Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view.
"An astronaut (from the Greek "astron" (ἄστρον), meaning "star", and "nautes" (ναύτης), meaning "sailor") is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft."
They were trained (not as well trained as NASA astronauts, but still trained well enough for such a short mission)
They were equipped with whatever equipments they needed for this flight.
They were deployed by a human spaceflight program.
So by definition, shouldn't they classify as "astronauts"?
Honestly these days even the “real” astronauts are basically passengers. The systems are so heavily automated, including anomaly response, and the parts that aren’t are mostly done by ground operators. Crew Dragon doesn’t even have a stick. It’s not the ‘60s anymore, which in many ways is good. But glamorous it ain’t. Let’s not forgot that the end result of all this will be to make spaceflight as pedestrian as air travel, an activity that hasn’t had a shred of its initial sparkle for decades.
I think w0de0 got to the heart of the matter (elsewhere in this thread) with their comment about astronauts being associated with public service. That rings true for me as to the source of the insult.
> I found it annoying, even a bit insulting, that they kept referring to the people in the capsule as "astronauts".
This is all about poking at Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic cleared 80km, which is the height that earns you astronaut wings in the USA. Blue Origin clears the Kármán line (100km), which is the internationally recognized standard for human spaceflight. So they're digging in hard on, "Jeff Bezos has been to space, Richard Branson hasn't," in an effort to imply that Virgin Galactic's flight from earlier this month doesn't count, theirs is the real first.
And how about Christa McAuliffe? She was a career school teacher who had the opportunity to fly on the Challenger. But she was also titled an astronaut.
Your critical responses focus on parsing the meaning of "astronaut," or on the true utility of the job with respect to other non-human test pilots.
I leave all of that aside, and agree with you on egalitarian and emotional grounds. The term in America rightly has implications of public service - of deserving the fantastically unique opportunity of exploring space on behalf of all Americans by virtue of intelligence, diligence, and impeccable ethics. Topically, this might be compared to Olympians: though all extreme athletes perform extraordinary feats, Olympians carry an extra responsibility to represent us as a nation. So too with people called "astronauts."
Whether or not one agrees with this understanding, I believe it is the practical understanding underlying your (and my) insult at the use of this term.
Looking up the definition of astronaut, I'm inclined to agree with you. They weren't crew, the flight was autonomous. It's unclear what if anything they could do should there have been a problem.
Shuttleworth and Tito underwent a year of training, including 7 months at Star City. They also conducted scientific experiments while on the station. They are formally considered Spaceflight Participants by Roscosmos, the FAA and NASA. They weren't considered Cosmonauts or Astronauts, but that seems to be solely due to their non-professional status rather than their training or operational duties.
> I found it annoying, even a bit insulting, that they kept referring to the people in the capsule as "astronauts".
When you reach a certain threshold of wealth, you get access to an unbelievably efficient PR machine and you can become basically whatever the hell you want and rewrite reality to suit your imagination. Hell, you'll even get people to believe it and ruthlessly defend your reality.
Its the same with pilots. Early on only pilots flew at all. Currently anybody who crosses a certain line is considered an astronaut.
There will be some shakeup in the is there clearly is a different between the type of astronaut that is trained to do experiments in space and repair a space station, and somebody who just sits in his seat and lets the space-craft fly.
I'm not interested in the semantics of outer space or the competition to see who can meet the terms of one of those arbitrary definitions first. More than one corporate/government entity making progress in rocketry and space-faring technology is a good thing for humanity.
I'm thinking that there should be plenty of incentive here for billionaires: it's conceivable that whoever gets there (where? I don't know) first will be running the show in 50 or 100 or 500 years. There are worse bets for establishing your legacy.
Mixed feelings. I suppose it's important to have competition/alternatives to SpaceX, but does it have to be done in such a sluggish manner by one the most unlikable people in the world?
Really clean launch! I think this was the first time a reusable rocket was landed with humans onboard? It must’ve fell 100k feet at the end in less than a minute which must’ve been nuts.
a privately developed powerful reliable human rated rocket engine and a vertical booster landing - that were big deal just 10 years ago. Today - nah. That's called real progress, and i think we should be happy that it is happening.
Private people, even if billionaires for now, starting to pop into space as a routine occurrence looks to me like very early days of aviation, and we all know the explosive development after that.
How long before people record it and post it on social media?
Cool experience for the first few people, but once everyone has been there, it is just a vomit comet to nowhere for the price of a car -- sort of like the world's most uncomfortable cruise ship.
As an FYI: the Concorde wasn't actually all that nice inside -- food was excellent, but unless you really needed the extra 3-4 hours, first class conventional was a much nicer trip.
The latest of the rich man roller coasters. Biggest windows in space... Cool. I cannot wait to see the first Champaign cork opened in zero gravity. At least spaceX's efforts have some none-entertainment uses. This rocket is nothing more than a pleasure craft.
Both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin offer you ~4 minutes of weightlessness.
Can this sub-orbital model scale in such a way to have, say, 60 minutes of weightlessness? Or is the "straight up, straight down" model such that sub-orbital flight has a cap at 4?
Did anyone get the feeling that this was a "MVP" style launch? It looked more engineering oriented with its very firmly functional-only everything. Or maybe, Virgin Galactic pushed so far towards the other end that this pales in comparison.
[+] [-] marshallbananas|4 years ago|reply
It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.
[+] [-] detritus|4 years ago|reply
If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.
Then they'd just need to get environmentally-friendly methane production going and we can all be a bit happier.
[+] [-] 5555624|4 years ago|reply
So, Alan Shepard would not be the first American in space? Gus Grissom's first flight wouldn't count, either? I'm all for making a distinction between space tourists and astronauts; but, I don't know if orbiting the Earth is the distinction. (Yes, I know Shepard and Grissom orbited the Earth on subsequent space flights; but,those first flights have to count for something.)
[+] [-] ww520|4 years ago|reply
The booster landing looks pretty amazing. The capsule landing went without a problem. The deceleration when the braking chutes deployed looks a bit fast, from 205mph to 150mph in couple seconds. Must be hard on the body.
Edit: Ok, in the post-flight briefing, they mentioned that they didn't anticipate the 5G deceleration on descent and it was pretty hard. Must be when the braking chute was deployed.
[+] [-] Clewza313|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstsch|4 years ago|reply
I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super underwhelming.
[+] [-] _fat_santa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethbr0|4 years ago|reply
(Posted by many others, but this is what made the front page)
Update 1: Successful booster touchdown (admittedly, they probably had a lot larger fuel budget than orbital launches)
Update 2: Successful touchdown of capsule
Congrats to Blue Origin for success in tossing people through space!
[+] [-] sega_sai|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|4 years ago|reply
I see this take a lot, and I strongly disagree.
These launches are marketing events for their space tourism businesses! The billionaire CEOs go up to prove they personally trust the tech is safe. If they won't go, who else would?
Now they can start selling trips to paying customers, and hopefully build genuinely sustainable space tourism businesses. The fairly minimal experience of these short jumps will be improved gradually, and that future is impossible to predict, as it is completely novel territory.
[+] [-] thehappypm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] animalgonzales|4 years ago|reply
straight up, no. they're using your tax dollars because they aren't taxed
[+] [-] adventured|4 years ago|reply
How would different taxation policies prevent Bezos from spending a very modest share of his wealth on what he wants to do? He has $204 billion. What he has done with Blue Origin can be replicated for 1-3% of that.
Is the plan to take 99% of the Bezos fortune through government confiscation and forced sales of Amazon stock? I ask because only a small number of nations have ever behaved with that level of brutality toward private wealth, all were - without exception - totalitarian genocide machines with zero human rights. How about we not keep repeating the mistakes of the past.
Even Scandinavia - the region that arguably created the highest standard of living in world history - would never dare to behave that way toward private wealth (Scandinavia is overflowing with billionaires and adores private wealth). Nor would Germany or France.
What's the premise then, no fun if you're rich? Which board of comrades is going to be responsible for dictating who gets to do what? Are we abolishing the bourgeois, 20th century style? I think I've read this story before. There's only one way to prevent someone like Bezos from doing Blue Origin, only one approach politically that can be utilized to accomplish that (skeptics will argue there are utopian approaches to mass property confiscation that are humane; there aren't, once you uncork that genie, extreme violence and genocide always follow).
So if you've got $N wealth, you're not allowed to own a boat. If you've got over $1 million you're not allowed to fly in a plane for fun or convenience, nor may you experiment with creating new types of planes.
Perhaps if you've got over $250,000 you may not experiment with new types of technology period. That includes software and hardware. No fun for you. I say so. I have decided to draw the line there and my Socialist board of comrades will enforce it. I have no interest in only restricting the fun Bezos is allowed to have, it should be taken to its logical conclusion, so everybody gets to enjoy how the system will really work in the end.
[+] [-] docdeek|4 years ago|reply
I had to catch myself as, at first, I was thinking “10 minutes? That’s it? And in space for a lot less than that?”. Quickly reminded myself that in the history of the world hardly anyone has gone where they have gone - 10 minutes isn’t much, but if I could I would.
[+] [-] AlexanderTheGr8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokai|4 years ago|reply
Is it though? I don't see how.
[+] [-] arriu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afavour|4 years ago|reply
If these companies were making breakthroughs in making space long term habitable I’d be excited. But I’m yet to see that.
[+] [-] Meandering|4 years ago|reply
SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are incorporating scientific advancements and modern engineering into an industry that has been making orbital flights for over 50 years. We are not going from horses to cars... We are going from a 1920 Cadillac to a 2021 Toyota. Maybe it's a childhood dream and they have lofty goals to guide humanity into space... or it's a lucrative long-term investment... or a little of both. But, the technology has been there, we've had an active presence in space, and the modern space race will not provide us a huge leap in technology like we saw from the cold war. [1]
Space tourism isn't going to move society forward. The "big picture" benefit of space tourism is reducing the cost of payloads which will continue to drop for NASA and telecommunication demand anyway. Space tourism will not substantially improve the quality of life for humanity, it will not provide breakthrough technology (outside of things like human life support systems), and it will not significantly enrich our collective culture. The median quality of life will not benefit from space activities until they bring us some cheap platinum and other precious materials.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer... I just hate the romanization of this whole thing.
[1] https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.net/original_images/infogr...
[+] [-] FredFS456|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AmazonPacker|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] davidw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjlars|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtkwe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mendigou|4 years ago|reply
I could understand if they did it for Wally Funk, as she actually did the training back in the day, but the rest?
When rich people were allowed in the ISS they were called "tourists", which is befitting.
[+] [-] publicola1990|4 years ago|reply
In "The Right Stuff", there is discussion on this topic, initially trapeeze artists were thought to be the ideal personnel for the space program due to the high dynamic forces they routinely experience. Another opinion being considered was to use death row prisoners. Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view.
[+] [-] AlexanderTheGr8|4 years ago|reply
They were trained (not as well trained as NASA astronauts, but still trained well enough for such a short mission)
They were equipped with whatever equipments they needed for this flight.
They were deployed by a human spaceflight program.
So by definition, shouldn't they classify as "astronauts"?
[+] [-] baus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _moof|4 years ago|reply
I think w0de0 got to the heart of the matter (elsewhere in this thread) with their comment about astronauts being associated with public service. That rings true for me as to the source of the insult.
[+] [-] mumblemumble|4 years ago|reply
This is all about poking at Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic cleared 80km, which is the height that earns you astronaut wings in the USA. Blue Origin clears the Kármán line (100km), which is the internationally recognized standard for human spaceflight. So they're digging in hard on, "Jeff Bezos has been to space, Richard Branson hasn't," in an effort to imply that Virgin Galactic's flight from earlier this month doesn't count, theirs is the real first.
[+] [-] jb1991|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goshx|4 years ago|reply
noun a person who is trained to travel in a spacecraft.
They were trained, and they traveled in a spacecraft.
This is such a historical moment and this is what people are focusing on?
What difference does it really make to you or to anyone? Who the hell really cares?
And this is the top comment here. Come on people. Enjoy things for a change.
[+] [-] w0de0|4 years ago|reply
I leave all of that aside, and agree with you on egalitarian and emotional grounds. The term in America rightly has implications of public service - of deserving the fantastically unique opportunity of exploring space on behalf of all Americans by virtue of intelligence, diligence, and impeccable ethics. Topically, this might be compared to Olympians: though all extreme athletes perform extraordinary feats, Olympians carry an extra responsibility to represent us as a nation. So too with people called "astronauts."
Whether or not one agrees with this understanding, I believe it is the practical understanding underlying your (and my) insult at the use of this term.
[+] [-] cptskippy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] decebalus1|4 years ago|reply
When you reach a certain threshold of wealth, you get access to an unbelievably efficient PR machine and you can become basically whatever the hell you want and rewrite reality to suit your imagination. Hell, you'll even get people to believe it and ruthlessly defend your reality.
[+] [-] nickik|4 years ago|reply
There will be some shakeup in the is there clearly is a different between the type of astronaut that is trained to do experiments in space and repair a space station, and somebody who just sits in his seat and lets the space-craft fly.
[+] [-] tqi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trey-jones|4 years ago|reply
I'm thinking that there should be plenty of incentive here for billionaires: it's conceivable that whoever gets there (where? I don't know) first will be running the show in 50 or 100 or 500 years. There are worse bets for establishing your legacy.
[+] [-] madjam002|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] admissionsguy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Axsuul|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markx2|4 years ago|reply
So many ways that this could have been an ego / company boosting event and it was not.
Branson, take note.
[+] [-] trhway|4 years ago|reply
Private people, even if billionaires for now, starting to pop into space as a routine occurrence looks to me like very early days of aviation, and we all know the explosive development after that.
[+] [-] gbronner|4 years ago|reply
Cool experience for the first few people, but once everyone has been there, it is just a vomit comet to nowhere for the price of a car -- sort of like the world's most uncomfortable cruise ship.
As an FYI: the Concorde wasn't actually all that nice inside -- food was excellent, but unless you really needed the extra 3-4 hours, first class conventional was a much nicer trip.
[+] [-] ninjamayo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crb|4 years ago|reply
Can this sub-orbital model scale in such a way to have, say, 60 minutes of weightlessness? Or is the "straight up, straight down" model such that sub-orbital flight has a cap at 4?
[+] [-] astatine|4 years ago|reply