Why Richard Branson’s flight matters
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
While an accomplishment no doubt, the utility and difficulty of achieving orbital speeds is not even in the same ballpark as simply flying above the Karman line.
I used to think differently also but then I learned from KSP how incredibly more difficult achieving orbital velocity(and surviving deceleration from such) is than simply going up and back down.
New Shepard looks like an orbit rocket but is not even close in cabability. SpaceShipTwo would burn up on re-entry if it ever reached orbital speeds.
Years ago when they took the X-prize it was explained as something groundbreaking how they folded the wings for re-entry. I, along with probably the vast majority of the public, equated this re-entry to the same re-entry that the Space Shuttle experiences and felt this was some monumental achievement and advancement of the art.
Again, not to belittle the accomplishment, as it is definitely in an elite realm, but not even close to what is accomplished by Boeing, Lockheed, NASA, SpaceX, and all the other entities actually achieving orbit.
18 years later notsomuch. SpaceX have eclipsed it with the F9 and Crew Dragon, let alone the progress they're making on starship.
Virgin Orbit is interesting though. Electron is good too. F9 is great. Starship will be shocking if it works. Bezos and Branson though? It's nearer youtuber stuff than grown up rockets.
Make that days - 29 September and 4 October 2004.
Our biggest problem with space is having engines good enough. We have nothing that comes close to being remotely adequate.
With a decent sci-fi-grade engine, we don't need to use the atmosphere to turn speed into heat - we can just point the engine in the right direction and step on it until we get a manageable speed, then point it down to slow the fall.
Again, nothing we have comes even close to this.
Sure. I mean the 0.0001%ers. Yay for them. So while they're slapping each others' backs, there are people who are just trying to do their best to feed their family. These "accomplishments" mean nothing to them.
And this billionaire worshiping really needs to just end. It's so pathetic.
There are many ways seemingly unrelated technologies can enable new developments. For example, without orbital rockets, smartphone navigation wouldn’t exist, as we wouldn’t have GPS.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/dsppi6/a_ques...
The same is true to an even greater degree for mobile phones.
Joy rides to the edge of space however are neither new (Dennis Tito went all the way to the ISS back in 2001 and jet planes to the upper stratosphere could be booked for decades as well) nor in any way pushing progress.
Nonsense like this doesn't have to be stopped - everyone's free to spend their money however they wish - it's the glorification of the ultra-rich and their playthings (especially in the face of pending global ecological and social collapse) that's is being criticized.
What is your basis for claiming that these developments will have no useful secondary or tertiary spillover effects for society? Many space developments have created new technologies that are useful back on the surface.
I. Don’t. Care.
Space is cool.
Noted.
A majority of people (these days) see the benefit for a wide spectrum of folks this modern space race is producing. What no one gives a shit about is the ego driven, "I was first" billionaire crap that the media is focused on. It's like people who post, "first" on youtube videos. Sure, helps the video's algorithm stance a bit, but a useless attempt to feel important over something silly is annoying as hell.
Is there a regulatory reason that everybody on board had to be some kind of specialist?
If Jeff Bezos were testing a new Amazon product, would he not be a specialist evaluating the customer experience?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AHDRLTPKOLOH...
The page says "9 reviews" but shows only six, four of which are for books. The most recent is from 2006. One is an endorsement for the product category, not the specific product.
So we're left with a single recommendation from 2000, and it reads like it was written by the manufacturer who paid a lot of money for the review. Or maybe Jeff really did like the product.
My guess is that it's an insurance thing.
Conan summed it up nicely...
"I dream of a day when space travel is available not only to billionaires, but to any person with a net worth of over $500 million."
[1] https://twitter.com/ConanOBrien/status/1415372778358951936
Climate change prevention is a meme for rich countries. It's an unwinnable battle.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be paying attention. We absolutely should. But humans follow gradient ascent and won't be willing to handicap every area of life to make modest gains on the climate front.
Paper straws don't even make a dent.
It's happening, and we'll just have to adapt. Sucks immeasurably for the current biodiversity, but life has adapted to much warmer climate in the past. We should catalog what we can while we can.
To address your comment, I think you'll find greater success in extending the lives of rich and powerful people. Once they realize there's a long term ahead, they'll adjust their thinking and time horizons.
It seems potentially worthwhile to fight a figurative battle for stemming climate change in order to try and reduce the risk of setting off a chain of events that could lead to a literal war.
That said, I suspect that fretting about space tourism also wouldn't make much of a dent. Maybe more than worrying about straws, but I bet we would get a lot more out of, e.g., allowing the real price of meat to rise back up to what it was 50 years ago.
Frankly, I continue to find this ideology perplexing. Particularly at a time when, quite literally, everyone reading this likely owes their very lives to the fruits of capitalism.
Before you say "Government funded the vaccines!". Sure. And the companies that were ready --with technology, know-how, people, equipment, laboratories, systems, software, etc.-- were ready, at that precise moment in time, because of decades upon decades of developing products for profit. From the pharmaceutical companies to the makers of the chips in the machines they used to do the work to the machining equipment that manufactured the components of the lab equipment and the injection molding systems that made the plastic parts and the computers software engineers used to write the code that ran all of it. And more. Much more.
Quite literally, from birth until you the moment you are sitting in front of your computer reading this comment, everything that has touched your life and surrounds you has been the product of capitalism. Need I list it all? Imagine everything in that hospital where you were born. From the very materials and components used to construct the building to the equipment in the rooms, the drugs and the accumulated knowledge stemming from decades of advancements.
And now, today, everything on your desk, the room you are in, your home, office, car and more. All of it is the fruit of capitalism. Which, from one perspective, is people at all levels --from small entrepreneur to multi-billionaires-- risking their money and reputation to go after a dream or a need. And that's how we've pushed forward.
Is capitalism and for-profit enterprise the best? Who knows? Likely not. Yet it is the best humanity has come up with so far. And the results are hard to argue against.
The standard of living of the average person in the world has risen considerably --and continues to do so-- for centuries. Nothing has elevated more people out of poverty than this approach. Yes, we still have more work ahead of us, but the solution isn't to hand everyone fish. The solution is to collectively solve problems through risk-taking and, yes, profit motive. We have mountains of evidence to show that this approach is the best way to raise people from poverty.
I truly can't comprehend people who have this ideological hatred or disdain of business, profit and capitalism. At a very minimum the hypocrisy that is their very lives runs far, deep and thick. Now, if they all rejected the products of capitalism and for-profit business and lived in an ideologically pure condition where they lived their lives where their mouths tend to go, well, then they would at least deserve some respect for not being hypocrites.
Richard Branson risked it all. Not just his money. His life.
He has it all. And yet he strapped himself into a rocket.
None of his critics (or critics of capitalism) would even consider being inconvenienced in support of their ideology, much less risk their lives for it.
It's perfectly reasonable to support something and to be critical of it. It could be argued this is how most progress happens -- by critically evaluating, changing and continuing to do so.
Also, the thread seems pretty tame -- not sure what you're reading but it's mostly on-point.
You could make the same argument during feudal times. "All you see before you is because of the king! Give praise to the king for all you have!"
But in reality, everything you would care to list is a product of worker labor, not capitalism or capitalists. It's the worker who deserves our praise and attention -- and especially the rewards of our modern time -- not Richard Branson and people like him.
Compare the standard of living of the average person when, as you say, everything was provided by the one and only ruler to BILLIONS of people being elevated by capitalism.
As I said, not perfect by any means, but nothing anyone has come-up with has ever come close.
"Look at your standard of living and how great it is! Do not be envious of the king's standard of living, for you have only him to thank for your material comfort. Instead, be thankful you do not have to live like your ancestors, who were slaughtered and raped and starved to death. The king has protected you and your family from slaughter and rape and provides you food and shelter. This system is not perfect, but nothing anyone has come up with has ever come close to the greatness of our king and what he has done for you."
It's not persuasive.
> when, as you say, everything was provided by the one and only ruler
I did not say that. In fact, during feudal times everything was still provided by workers. Workers farmed food, raised families, built houses, served in the armies, and did the work required to run society. Without workers society would collapse. Without kings (or billionaires, our modern kings), society would barely notice their absence.
> As I said, not perfect by any means, but nothing anyone has come-up with has ever come close.
I noticed in another reply you said
Today the average worker in most economies has as much freedom as they want (they can quit and go get a different job and even make more money) and tons of protections (rightly so)."
The cherry on top is that the growth mindset at the center of modern capitalism (fueled by industrialism) is extremely unsustainable, due to capitalists' myopic decisions and the relevant economics' inability (or unwillingness) to calculate environmental costs as part of the profit equation. Sure, a couple centuries of explosive growth and innovation is cool, but tragically pointless when the system collapses under its own weight after it exhausts all reasonably-extractable resources. And no, space mining is not going to save it. Even oil is already becoming unprofitable to extract in many areas on our own planet, how do you expect anything involving spaceflight to be? Even events like this Branson party wouldn't exist if the companies involved didn't believe they were turning a profit (in this case, by fleecing would-be space travelers).
This is the kind of thing someone who has never run a non-trivial business of any kind might say.
I'll concede that during the dark ages of the industrial revolution workers needed help. That's the history of humanity. We suck at things until we figure out the right way to do it. Today the average worker in most economies has as much freedom as they want (they can quit and go get a different job and even make more money) and tons of protections (rightly so).
"exploit others to turn a profit"? Hogwash. Please. You might not understand any of this until you are personally responsible for making payroll.
Everybody loves a startup/small business.
When it grows then people still appreciate the quality of life that the growing company provides.
At some point though the startup becomes a behemoth and the rate of improvement in quality of life provided by the behemoth slows down. It's natural, S-curves rule the world.
But the hedonistic treadmill has already took hold of the population and all of a sudden with the rate of improvement in quality of life slowing down they all take a long and hard look at the monetary rewards reaped by the company and the entrepreneur.
All that can be summed up with:
"What have you done for me recently?"
If the population think that the answer is "not enough" then the next logical step to extract quality of life out of the company is to break it up and expropriate the entrepreneur.
That way you'd get yet another boost in your quality out of past purchases of products and services by de-facto retroactively stealing them. That's a good way to beat the hedonistic treadmill, to get one last hit out of the bong...or in this case out of Windows 95.
On top of that you also get the huge quality of life boost of seeing somebody richer than yourself getting down at your level or even worse.
So it's useless to try and reason with people. The heart wants what it wants.
There is some equilibrium though . Under the current system the limit was tested most recently by Microsoft and Bill Gates.
It took:
a) 160B personal wealth back in 1999 = 262B today equivalent
b) Total domination in a newborn sector of the economy which everybody wanted to have a foot in.
c) Not wanting to talk with politicians and bend to play the D.C. lobbying games.
d) Lots of angry competitors who actually did bend and went to cry to D.C. and accepted to play their games.
e) But all of the above wouldn't have mattered if Windows 98 was as big of a leap in quality of life provided as Windows 95.
So the lesson here is:
1) You would not have to worry about the haters until you are disgustingly rich, they can moan and cry but they can't do anything.
2) If you reach a stage where your company is exceptionally powerful and you are disgustingly rich and you want to keep going for more then you have to keep taking risks like you were poor and the company was a startup company. That's the only way to beat the S-curve and avoid the "what have you done for me recently?" question.
I truly can't comprehend people who have this ideological hatred or disdain of business, profit and capitalism.
It is a fairly well known statistic that the rate of sociopathy we see in CEOs is much higher than the average population, potentially by orders of magnitude. The reason is simple enough. For-profit businesses don't have any rule or ideal to care about humans beyond what it takes to make a profit. If it is ever found to be profitable to throw bodies into the furnace to keep the wheels churning then many members of a company will do just that, even people who aren't pathological, because power and money corrupts many people who even have the best intent.
This as opposed to non-profit or governments, which is a very different set of ideals, established for people, not for profit, by definition. This isn't to say that these are perfectly implemented, pure, un-corrupted. Fair from it. The point is that at the very least the ideals exist.
Sorry, that's just crazy. Of the billions of businesses that exist world wide, the only "business" that has ever gone that far has been government, the Nazi's.
This reduction of all business under the sky to a single variable, where everyone is evil as a function of profit is just silly. Also, businesses don't have to be outwardly visible in their kindness like Branson in order to be a force for good in the community. These are stories that never make the mainstream and yet, on the aggregate, are much larger than anything Branson has done on this front. A simple local example: Our largest boat dealer/manufacturer in the area pays for and supports all local aquatic programs for kids.
> This as opposed to non-profit or governments
The day you can name ten such organizations who have lifted billions of people out of poverty is the day this statement stops being silly. Until then. No. It's a fantasy.
Sure, the ideals exist. Great. They have done nothing (or very little) for the billions of people who have improved their lives because entrepreneurs, large, medium and small, have risked life, limb and treasure to chase a dream and, yes, profit.
Again, every time anyone has these thoughts they need to look around the room, what they are typing on, where they live and everything that has touched their lives (and, in some cases, kept them alive) and come to the realization that this stuff was not the product of a benevolent king, government or non-profit. So, how about we are a little honest about this?
Nobody said "everyone is evil as a function of profit." Where is this coming from?
You seem deeply affected by this for some reason, and it's pretty difficult to have a conversation from a place where my message is being this severely caricaturized and distorted. Not seeing a way forward with this discussion until we can make it a little less personal.
How many people did cigarettes bring an early death to, while the tobacco companies hid and fought the evidence that they're awful for health? How is that appreciably different than literal gas chambers?
The X Prize was publicly funded big whoop.
I’m all for subsequent efforts using no public resources aside a regulatory agency curbing the excesses of privatized space efforts.
This was not, to my understanding, connected to the X Prize. Also they didn't win the X Prize according this article [0].
[0] > A team led by Burt Rutan would [claim the X Prize eight years later](https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/06/3908-2/), barely within the deadline. Rutan’s team built SpaceShipOne, a small rocket-powered vehicle dropped from an aircraft.
There will always be naysayers, detractors, and people who will always question the value of exporation and human inventiveness.
Like in business, if it was obvious, it would have long been done. Yes, it does tak ea bit of brashness and self serving to do new things. and their practically is seldomly obvious at the beginning.
But this is EXACTLY how humanity moves forward!!! The crazy ones, the selfish ones. The ones that sometimes do it for the glory, or just because its' hard.
It's very easy to critique, but in the words or someone else... "what have you done that is so great?"
" In 2004, it signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to develop the Virgin SpaceShip, a suborbital spacecraft, for space tourism. Virgin Group and Scaled Composites have subsequently formed a joint venture, The Spaceship Company, to manufacture the spacecraft."[0]
I’ll use it against cynicism in the future!
"The billionaires see a future in which humanity, constrained for resources such as water, food, and energy, fights ever harder for a more meager share. “We really could go down one of two paths,” Garriott said. “In a few decades we could reach a point where we have to ration birth rates, energy, food, and more in a stark way. Or, we could bring back the bounty of resources in space, and now is the time to start that process."
It's good that billionaires are looking into a distant future, I can't fault them for that. It surprises me that they're not also looking at the present and wondering how they can also have a meaningful and large impact on problems we have right now that are going to impact that future they see. Those hundreds of millions of dollars and huge number of people working on going into space could be doing some serious work on the ground here.
I get it, I really get what they're going after here, but I can't help but think there are really truly better things to do with all that money and time.
When they buy a yacht it feeds that entire supply chain. not to mention all the other things along the way like docking fees, maintenance, insurance, etc...
Holding significant amounts of Amazon stock for example only benefits the billionaire, whereas if they sold the stock it could democratize ownership and allow many more to benefit from Amazon's growth.
By contrast, if you just hoard it, Warren Buffett style, none of that wealth is doing anybody any good.
Charity, building parks, funding research, giving out scholarships, are all ways of stocking rich peoples egos that are also beneficial to society.
Even if you look at adrenaline pumping adventures, you can do helium balloons, sailing yachts, or submarine voyages to the deep ocean. These do not create much pollution.
Perhaps, but I'm not really seeing it. This looks to me like it's about equally valuable, but comes with the downside of further increasing the number of launches -- and launches are pretty terrible, environmentally speaking.
In any case, here's hoping that the future will prove me wrong, since it's pretty clear that we have no choice. This is the path we're going, regardless of whether it turns out to be good or the opposite of good overall.
I haven't looked into it, but I'd guess those from yachts and the like are far less substantial.
> launches are pretty terrible, environmentally speaking
Individual launches are quite bad when compared to things like a single car. But on a macro scale, my understanding is that they are a rounding error on a rounding error.
I've heard the statistic that each orbital launch is the equivalent to the emissions of the cars of a few hundred people. There are currently about 100 orbital launches per year across the world. So even if we increased the number of launches by 100-fold (which would be absolutely bonkers -- feasible, but bonkers), it would a very small fraction of all non-commercial auto emissions in the US alone, for example.
Of course, this is only looking at greenhouse gas emissions, which I think is the most pressing issue. I'm less familiar with broader potential environmental issues with launches, so perhaps I'm missing something important there.
Edit: Fix a math error and cleaned up the comment in general.
This is true, and I'm not arguing that there's no value in space exploration. I'm arguing that making going into space something that is common is a highly questionable goal, and isn't necessary in order to get the technological advancements that come with learning how to operate in space.
And, more to the point of the topic at hand, there is no value to sending business executives into space at all.
> I've heard the statistic that each orbital launch is the equivalent to the emissions of the cars of a few hundred people.
That may be -- but an orbital launch can't carry anywhere near as many people as a few hundred cars, even if there's one driver per car.
The proper way to measure this isn't to compare # of launches with # of cars, but the amount of pollution and fuel use per a standard unit mass of payload.
And cars (as well as airplanes) are actually good examples of why the increase in space launches concerns me. Both planes and cars are very harsh on the environment. But that wasn't a real issue until using them became possible to untold millions of people.
Inb4 fumes from the ship killing earth.
Branson is doing this because he thinks there is money to be made flying rich people to space. Spaceport America was funded because the funding entities thought there was money to be made by doing it. The majority of the investment for virgin galactic’s program was private, and a lot came from people who already booked flights to space.
The interesting turning point will be when one of these guys doesn't make it back, how will the public react? Surely not the same way we did back when Challenger exploded.
Even if you search Space Shuttle Challenger now you instantly get crud content.