Jeff Bezos will fly on the first passenger spaceflight of Blue Origin in July
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
I dont see how Jeff or Elon are oligarchs in the sense of russian oligarchs.
The Intercept isn't exactly known for... neutral... reporting.
"Agency managers originally hoped to award follow-on HLS contracts to two of the companies to encourage competition and protect against the possibility of major problems or delays that might affect one company but not the other.
But Congress only allocated $850 million in NASA's fiscal 2021 budget for lander development, about one quarter of the amount the agency said it needed to have a new vehicle ready by 2024.
Given the available money and projected future spending, NASA "down selected" to a single contractor — SpaceX — deciding the California rocket builder offered the most attractive combination of cost, technology and management expertise."
Neutrality may always have some element of manufacture, but that doesn't mean it's equivalent to intentionally trying to generate partisan outrage. This isn't a "bailout fund for Jeff Bezos" — word-for-word quote from the headline of the Intercept article! — it's just NASA continuing to try to get budget for the projects it wanted all along, so it can have redundant contractors like it did with the commercial crew program and avoid getting stuck with monopolist pricing (and monopolist poor performance) like it nearly did with Boeing.
While it’s a fun jibe to throw at them it’s a completely different thing to just being insanely wealthy through actually doing something effectively (if sometimes immorally)
Still, the term implies politics... not just money. I would also hazard that it implies hereditary power. You could argue that dynastic politicians are oligarch. I'm not really disputing, just pondering.
Ultimately, for both Russians and Americans, oligarch is a (usually derogatory) analogy. It's not a formal oligarchy. We could also say aristocrats, which is more appealing to me.
Also, there's an idea that all governments, or systems of power are oligarchies. No matter what the formal system of government, some group of powerful people wield a lot of power. Rich people, religious leaders, senators, backscene power brokers, generals...
Bezos or Koch or Hamm or DeVoss can't move their American levers as far, but the overall output is quite substantial compared to what Abramovich can achieve with his.
SpaceX gets almost $900 million in federal subsidies to deliver broadband to rural America https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/tech/spacex-starlink-subsidie...
SpaceX just won $885 million in federal subsidies to expand Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite-internet project https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-just-won-do...
In addition to that SpaceX is government contractor.
SpaceX and Blue Origin are the next Boeing/Lockheed. Government gives them both money to R&D so that they don't have just one innovative supplier.
Tesla is a great example of government project. Tesla has received $3-4 billion in subsidies.
edit:
SpaceX has received other direct subsidies. NASA has given seed money and development funding for Dragon, Falcon 9, engines and demonstration launches ($248M at least) https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/453605main_Commercial_Space_Minutes...
$3-4 billion = 3 weeks of federal food stamps spending
I know which I think is the better government expenditure
A hand out is bailing out failing auto makers, forgiving debt arbitrarily, etc, etc.
We're in a "Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" type hypothetical now.
People are engaged in heated normative[1] discussion with little or no facts. I am not. Even saying Tesla is a great example of a government project does not mean it's good or bad. Just a great example.
I just wanted to add some facts to the discussion. Not enough, but some. I think it would be great to find out the total indirect and direct subsidies these companies receive, but I could not find it.
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1: Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible.
It's important to note that SpaceX is different from most space-related government contractor in that they mostly sell a packaged service, whereas other contractors before it had development contracts. Boeing / ULA etc were paid to develop launchers, SpaceX sells launches. (I know that SpaceX benefited from subsidies towards achieving that, but their competitors did not achieve that or even tried.)
The key difference is that they are not (entirely) incentivized on sucking on the subsidies teats. That the US government pays them to provide a public service makes them more akin to any utility than to typical government contractors.
I think this is the same way as Boeing and others get their money for development.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, New Horizons, Starliner crew capsule ... basically all NASA and DoD launches come from ULA.
There's no guarantee that taxpayers money would be used for a better endeavor if it was used otherwise.
And the very definition of better endeavor is pretty shaky in any case.
So one can debate on whether optimal resource allocation is done by the government or private individuals, but it is not 'surely' better to have the government allocate the resources.
Will there be any element of cheap subsidised access to space in return for the government's investment?
Or is it exactly what it seems to be - a no-strings handout?
As for better endeavours - perhaps you're underestimating the economic utility of a single payer health care system which wouldn't bankrupt 500,000 individuals a year. (For example.)
Even if you think they shouldn't gamble with their money I find it hard to argue there was no damage done.
Propping up a bubble destined to pop is bad too, so why get involved?
To the second point, you should look into the definition of monopoly. Amazon is a behemoth, not a monopoly. And they have created immense value.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)#Controversies
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Lawsuits_and_contr...
I did not request every incident, but just one concrete example that would validate the quite strong characterization.
In the United States being sued is not a proof of guilt, it's just a proof of being sued.
This is unlike in some other countries, where the guilt of the person is presupposed and the purpose of the court ruling is just to make it official.
She’s a super hero in my book. Musk had the dream but she’s turning it into reality which is the hard part.
The people who make it happen are the ones i most admire. It takes a village, i mean you're not getting anywhere without the vision and foresight of people like Musk. You're also not getting anywhere without a leader assembling the right team (which i think is Musk's real talent) but, to me, i most admire the people on the ground making plans, managing/coordinating, and turning wrenches.
In case of SpaceX and Tesla they claim outrageous things with every intention to deliver.
Sometimes they are right, sometimes not. It's up to investors to know the difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#/media/File:Jeff_Be...
Doesn't really look that different?
Also looks like he gained weight, at least in the face.
PS: It is disappointing when people use services that don’t let you skip back and forth in video.
Would not be surprising given the divorce.
I do not believe it's possible to decide whether he's swollen from corticosteroids, or because he's bulking up in a gym, he's just just eating more because he's happy or because he's sad.
I hope he's fine, time will tell.
Anyone have a study or article of this phenomenon?
Enjoying life with a partner includes fine dining and relaxing more (less sport).
How would this be distinguished from people simply having the desire to orgasm which unintentionally causes reproduction? At least for males, I can see a case for the machine’s goal to spread the seed as far and wide as possible, so there need not be any biological imperative to stop at one mate.
That's reverse causality. Evolutionary fitness is a strong driver of human behavior. There's plenty of incidental behaviour, but in terms of baby making it's clear cut.
> so there need not be any biological imperative to stop at one mate.
It's more efficient when you consider humans have a long maturation time. Reproductive success is also greater when grandparents are involved with child rearing, implying that a strong family unit leads to better outcomes. Promiscuity is definitely favorable if the rearing duties can be foisted onto someone else, though paternity tests and prophylactics have changed the landscape somewhat.
There's a lot more to it, and much of what I've learnt is from an old Stanford lecture series by Robert Sapolsky called human behavioural biology. Worth a watch if you're interested
That does not seem to be consistent with declining birthrates in developed countries. By and large, the more freedom and self sufficiency women have, the lower the birth rate (not a scientific conclusion, but what I see so take it with a boulder of salt).
I often wonder if we went back in time and asked all the women who had 3, 4, 5+ children, how many of those were wanted pregnancies versus how many of those were due to “pressure” of some kind from the father or society.
> It's more efficient when you consider humans have a long maturation time. Reproductive success is also greater when grandparents are involved with child rearing, implying that a strong family unit leads to better outcomes.
I would also guess tribes that prioritize monogamous relationships with multiple generations cooperating with each other outlast tribes that do not. But I would also guess that the biological (or “machine” aspect of it) is for males to be promiscuous. The tribes that fight this biological urge by whatever means (even just keeping it hush hush so it allows for peace) would be more successful long term than those that do not?
> There's a lot more to it, and much of what I've learnt is from an old Stanford lecture series by Robert Sapolsky called human behavioural biology. Worth a watch if you're interested
I’ll check it out. Here’s a link for anyone else interested:
I have read this before and I think it's an accurate phenomenon. There's some amount of 'evolutionary warfare' between sexes. I think the biological mechanism for it is called 'imprinting'. Also women have preference for someone who will help with the cost of pregnancy (which can be fatal) and rearing, as for men, they might not include this in their calculus.
> I would also guess tribes that prioritize monogamous relationships with multiple generations cooperating with each other outlast tribes that do not.
The picture is, of course, complicated. Societies/tribes have varied between polygamy and monogamy, and a number of factors are involved, including culture. All better explained by that lecture series. Though keep in mind is over a decade old
Taking the flight this early before more testing may also indicate that he is not well. It might also explain him leaving Amazon.
It's fun, he's got the resources, and there's a relative goal on the near-term.
I don’t keep up with Blue Origin, have they demonstrated the ability to do this safely?
They just don’t have the marketing skills of someone like a Spacex.
Each BO test I've watched has been very well presented and seemingly marketed - it's just that at this point, frankly, what they're doing is of less interest than that what SpaceX has accomplished.
The rationale for getting into the game seemed more like, "Well, this space thing seems like an emerging market, and we can't be a true monopoly unless we have a tentacle in it, too."
Blue Origin are very far away from achieving anything comparable to even SpaceX first Falcon-1 flight from 2008.
On the other hand, Blue Origin's competitor Virgin Galactic isn't automated and looks a lot more dangerous.
I thought that the failure rate for manned missions was accepted to be around 1 crew loss in several hundred flights. That seems much worse than typical mountain climbing, with Everest and K2 being somewhat riskier than space flight on a per-attempt basis.
That said, suborbital flight is substantially safer.
[1] 0.54 fatal incidents per 100,000 flight hours and decreasing year on year: https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2...
Sources: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/logyear.html
Everest: https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/08/26/mount-everest-sum...
SpaceX: https://spacex-info.com/stats/
They're required to have contingency plans in case something happens to him, but they can't keep him from going. Not that they would if they could.
> Zero-G will begin from the third minute into flight, and then at some point between and the flight’s highest point, or apogee, at four minutes, Bezos and the others onboard will officially pass into space. Gravity will return at approximately six minutes post-launch, with the parachutes deploying at nine minutes, and finally a landing at around 10 minutes after takeoff.
So this is a 10 minute flight with 2 minutes of zero G.
It came as a surprise to me to learn that Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and SpaceX was founded in _2002_. SpaceX recently celebrated 100 successful Falcon 9 launches _in a row_. It's fair to say that Blue Origin at this point has... under-delivered.
I can't find a definitive list of commercial launches (which, presumably, would be for New Shepherd) but it seems to be a handful at best. And just how many billions has Bezos poured into this?
I do wonder if Bezos's retirement as Amazon CEO will lead him to taking a more active role in Blue Origin going forward. This flight is probably meant to bring attention to the company and maybe put the pressure on. It seems like quite a risk though for something still so relatively unproven. I mean Musk hasn't gone up on a SpaceX launch yet. To be fair, his contract with Tesla probably forbids it (as, I suspect, Bezos's with Amazon does as well).
Oh and to anyone commenting on billionaires flexing at each other and otherwise competing this is nothing new. I suggest you look back at the history of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and JP Morgan (to name a few). This is nothing new.
[1]: https://www.slashgear.com/jeff-bezos-is-going-to-space-07676...
As exciting as it is to experience space I could imagine the environment cost is far from ideal.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-air-poll...
In general you are of course right. The top 1% will slightly increase their already large carbon footprint by a small amount.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-gas_shift_reaction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
The days of hydrogen being an efficient storage medium for solar or nuclear energy through electrolysis are far in the future.
Elon Musk has promised to eventually fuel Starship with synthetic "green" methane. Green hydrogen is a much simpler problem, so if Blue Origin hasn't yet made that promise, it's quite likely they will soon.
Just so I can pencil this on my calendar, where does this fit on the timeline relative to full self-driving and the hyperloop?
Generally it drives practical use cases, has a clear revenue model (which is really, really important to keep any complex financial and technical project honest) and drives popular demand for "space" in general. Having rich and famous tweeting orbital and translunar updates would do more for image of space travel than 50 years of science fiction and state advertising combined.
For example, low gravity has lots of well documented side effects. Even though short term microgravity is not too bad, having a constant stream of rich people travel there will create more demand for space medicine, which will probably drive innovation to improve the lot of all space travelers long term.
Launching stuff to orbit will have a carbon cost. And it should be tallied. But it's a cost we have to pay ANYWAY to become an interstellar species.
The environmental cost of doing anything is far from ideal, but in the case of space tourism the impact is minimal. A 777-300 flight from New York to London outputs about 1,261KG of CO2 per passenger.[1] In British Airways configuration there are 299 seats on a plane like that, which is 377,039KG in total. There are 28 direct NY-LDN flights daily.
If the goal is to reduce the amount of high atmosphere CO2 then persuading 300 fewer people to fly across the Atlantic would have a larger impact.
It's also worth pointing out that Jeff Bezos owns two Gulfstream G650ER private jets, which will be putting a lot more CO2 in to the atmosphere than his day trip to space.
[1] From https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/
EDIT: It turns out that Blue Origin's rocket exhaust is water, so all the CO2 is retained at ground level. I guess that's good news.
In terms of carbon it's not even that bad, a spaceflight is roughly comparable to an airliner crossing the Atlantic. Of course it puts other pollutants in more layers of the atmosphere, something we definitely have to study as spaceflight becomes more common.
Anyway the question is if 2-3 minutes are enough to have it kick in.
Imagine something as serious as a spacecraft.
But this is about as much as a journey into "space" is as a high altitude plane flight.
I still remember the months of watching "go for throttle up" explosion footage in 1986 (it was the 9/11 before 9/11) the few tv stations at the time would not stop playing it. I think we all became numb to it.
Similarly Branson would be expected to have a go on his space tourism thing once it opens up to the public.