Blue Origin first human flight
blueorigin.com
blueorigin.com
It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.
I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super underwhelming.
It's nowhere near orbit. Orbit is about 10km of delta-v, then there's the reentry problem.
Reaching the Karman line is about 2km of delta-v.
I very much doubt Blue Origin intends to freeze rocket development after this launch.
Blue Origin now has a successful manned flight under their belt, and a revenue stream.
While it might surprise some here, Amazon started by selling just books...
It feels like similar attitude comments on that would have been "They'll never compete with Walmart. Real retail stores sell all kinds of things."
While Amazon has stores for all regions of the world that count.
Walmart's affiliate program allows them to cater to the long tail market that Amazon has long dominated but that alone isn't going to convince people to switch to Walmart.com. Why not go to Ebay or Newegg instead?
Walmart+ costs 2/3 of Amazon Prime but doesn't offer any of the digital services available like Audiobooks, ebooks, Videos, Music, Gaming, and photo storage/backup. For many those services are more valuable than free shipping or pharmacy discounts.
What does Walmart.com offer that's going to convince people to shop their over Amazon, Newegg, Ebay or other online retailers?
Eh... that's not really true, it's about 1.45x the revenue, not 2x. And that's not the whole picture.
Revenue for 2020:
Walmart: $559 billion
Amazon: $386 billion
Walmart: $20.6 billion
Amazon: $22.9 billion
Walmart: $15.2/14.9 billion
Amazon: $22.1/21.3 billiona. Amazon solves brick and mortar b. Walmart solves online sales.
Given the way things are going with Amazon essentially throwing in the towel with counterfeit reviews and products, I would put my money on Walmart eating Amazon's lunch this decade.
Don't forget political influence as well. Walmart has a large fraction of congress on bankroll.
I don't think you understand just how insignificant the counterfeit issue is. Amazon reports it as 0.01% of sales, but even they're off by a factor of 100 that's just 1%. And 1% of their .com revenue is still less than 0.5% of their overall revenue because most of Amazon's profits come from AWS.
> Amazon solves brick and mortar
What is there to solve? Amazon has a logistics infrastructure that Walmart can't touch. If they decided to open a big box store do you really thing the counterfeit issues in their affiliate program would harm them? It's not like they'd put affiliate merchandise on the floor. I feel like they could figure out how to unload trucks to retail shelves and do in person payment processing at least as well as Walmart.
> Walmart solves online sales.
Walmart has been competing with Amazon in online sales for a decade, how's that going? Walmart has nothing to compete with Amazon's Audible, Echo, Ring, Blink, or Prime offerings. Sure they have free shipping with Walmart+ and an affiliate program but is that enough? They've tried countless times to compete against Amazon and failed, most recently they sold Vudo off. At the same time Amazon has launched countless brands and new products with great success.
Amazon.com's tone deaf Billionaire founder and their treatment of their workers are a far greater risk to them than Walmart. But bad reputation and consumer dislike aren't going to kill Amazon anymore than they've done so with Walmart who has infamy for destroying both small town America and America's manufacturing infrastructure.
Honestly I'm not sure why you'd want either of these companies to succeed.
I said "about" 2x. Ok, about doing some heavy lifting, so it's closer to about 1.5 for 2020, during a pandemic. What's a typical year? Ah but you are so focused on technically correct, you missed the forest for the trees. My point still remains. The gulf between what Amazon sells and Walmart sells is so wide, it's hardly seen as "competing". Amazon themselves have admitted to this fact (and have used this fact to shield themselves from anti-competitive legislation. One of their favorite moves is to point at Walmart and say "they are the big guys, not us") So these are just established facts, not moving any sort of goal posts. I am not here to defend a thesis or dissertation, we are having a casual conversation on the internet.
I guess you must be one of those guys who demands zero margin of error in their conversations? If so, you must be fun at parties.
> Honestly I'm not sure why you'd want either of these companies to succeed.
Speaking of fallacies, never did I say I want them to succeed, so here's your straw man back. I am observing the reality of what is, and what is likely to happen.
Your supporting arguments include counterfeiting and soon to be dead politicians as reasons why Amazon will fail but are reality based observations about what's likely to happen?
Also if you don't think Amazon/Bezos has any political sway then you're not paying attention to what's been happening with Pentagon or NASA contracts.
As a company that started a year before SpaceX and funded by the richest man in the world, the company should have no problem with being aggressive.
Yes, walk before you run. SpaceX did this too, but their leadership has a sense of urgency. Blue Origin don't.
New Glenn would be great if it existed. As it stands it's likely to be eclipsed by Starship. B.O. are going to have to change into a whole new gear if they want to compete. I have far more confidence in rocketlab scaling upwards from electron than in Blue Origin scaling anywhere.
Walking is a precursor to running, though.
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's current spacecraft are dead-ends. They can't ever go to orbit. New Glenn can, but it's vaporware thus far; if it sees a development schedule like New Shepard's there'll be a SpaceX Mars base before it manages its first hop.
You don't need to go all the way around to have a story. Low earth orbit is apparently around 84 minutes per revolution. There's a lot of space in the middle for ballistic orbits of 5-15 minutes, right?
We got in a rocket in Texas and had a light dinner on a yacht off Morocco 90 minutes later.
For a 2,400km downrange though you'd need 4.2k of delta-v (a Thor IRBM). You'll be reaching a 450km apogee too. Forget Hawaii and Morocco, you won't even make Seattle from Dallas.
You'll need 5.6k to get to places like Hong Kong and Israel, with an apogee of 1500km. That's 3 times the New Shepard.
(delta-v calc from https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABM/DeltaV_BMs.htm)
I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending money the way they want. I splurge on things sometimes as well. Unlike a lot of modern social media, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about being wealthy.
If someone has an argument about what these specific people did that was specifically immoral to achieve their wealth, then they should call that out specifically and suggest a systemic change.
I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
And I say all this even not being a fan of the way Bezos has sometimes falsely claimed credit for “firsts” that were not really firsts, like when they landed a rocket (propulsive landing) while pretending that SpaceX had not done so in a much more challenging way already.
> I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
To rephrase: I felt that the entire flight was a bit underwhelming, and that it felt more like an amusement park ride (with a very expensive ticket price) than an actual spaceflight with astronauts, even though it was communicated that way.
maybe it's the fact that a small school's population of people own 60% of all wealth on earth that gives these vanity shows of wealth a bad taste in their mouths.
Why?
Is it ok if I deride people who molest their own kids? I mean, it's how they choose to spend their time, who am I to judge right?
The way society works is by deciding collectively what's ok, and that's decided based on people's tastes.
My tastes are that no small group of people should have power over large groups of people without their ongoing consent. Any system that isn't like that is garbage and anyone interested in power over other people is human garbage.
Today's society is wage slavery in developed countries, colonialism and barbarism everywhere else - it is garbage and anyone with a modicum of power doing anything but attempting to change the status quo is clueless or human garbage.
Why would wage slaves not resent their masters, or people colonized, not resent colonialists? Anything but deep resentment and derision is surprising, frankly.
Blue Origin landed their booster 23 Nov 2015. SpaceX landed their first booster 21 Dec 2015.
It really is apples and oranges until BO or VG gets to orbit. Rocket Lab is likely much closer to orbital booster re-use than BO or VG are.
Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and landing horizontally was also done in 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
The acceleration on New Shepard is much lower and even the max acceleration experienced during landing should be in the same ballpark of <2 g but only once and for a very brief period of time only compared to the vomit comet.
This could be a factor for some people.
Translation: 'Other private companies building their own rockets and going into space is 'not good enough' unless it is by SpaceX' and doesn't count.
To SpaceX fanatics and downvoters: I'm sure you are deep fanatics of SpaceX but surely you have the funds and deep pockets to join Musk and friends on a space mission together right now? If not, just continue to watch livestreams of others going into space then.
It should not be just down to ONE company. Commercial space flight is going to get allot cheaper with the existence of more competitors and that should be welcomed. Even SpaceX welcomes this and so should you.
The excitement and noise over suborbital flight is good, but in terms of achievement, Blue origin has yet to deliver on their major promises. I have confidence they will get there, but credit where credit is due, Spacex is getting it done.
Dismissing the achievements of a certain project to only bring up somebody else's one and promote this clear bias is how flamewars start.
I'm only just putting out the fires and celebrating the achievements of every other company competing and launching their rockets into 'space'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've had to ask you repeatedly about this in the past. Would you please do a better job of sticking to the site guidelines? I don't want to ban you but some of these cases are pretty clear-cut.
Sure OK, I will do better at sticking to the site guidelines.
But what is also clear in the comments of the post and especially the top comment that most users were replying to, after reading the site guidelines they have completely violated this guideline in [0]:
> In comments:
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
You may disagree with this, but I see that as a known repeated symptom of creating 'flamewars' for other posts. I will be part of the 'good critical comment' club and do better at following the guidelines, rather than being the one posting shallow dismissals and flamebait at other people's work because they are a fan of someone else.
And as always, making my comment substantive. Not less.
However, i'm glad BlueOrigin did this and had a successful launch/landing. It certainly helps inspire others and is good for the industry as a whole.
Given Bezo's bank account, you don't think you could put together a team to get a rocket into space?
Let's be realistic, no one person built this or any other rocket. Apart from Money, and perhaps short/bald man complex, Bezo contributed little overall. Yet all of the media has been about Bezos going into space.
When Richard Branson came along to steal his thunder with the SpaceShipTwo launch just before him, Bezo showed his colors by dismissing the achievement as not "real space". I have doubt Bezos is still salty about it and planning to get back at him.
IMO, none of these billionaires should be celebrated for these achievements. We should be celebrating the people who put them there but those individuals receive almost no mention.
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.)
Saying that someone has to orbit the Earth or do something while in space in order to be an astronaut seems like changing the definition. That would mean Shepard wouldn't become an astronaut for another 10 years. (Of course, then he would be in a very select group of astronauts, because he had walked on the moon.)
These are both neat but the billionaire pissing contest nature of it really cheapens it. Blue Origin originally rushed out and crowed about 'beating' SpaceX in (I think) launch and land reusability and now Branson rushing out to beat Bezos to barely cross into space. I'd honestly thought the whole Virgin Galactic thing had been quietly canned years ago because nothing was happening till there was this little race.
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.
Now, the US military, on the other hand? Starship as a somewhat-disposable space truck makes a lot of sense. Then it comes down to how cheaply SpaceX can manufacture the things.
Irrespective of nukes, I shudder to imagine what the impact of an out of control de-orbiting Starship would do at ballistic reentry over a populace... .
Presumably, since I'm stinking rich to begin with, I'd have a fancy resort booked there for the next week.
I agree it's not a replacement for commercial jet flights.
A ballistic point-to-point tragectory is an orbit which intersects the surface.
If Starship manages to hit the price and performance targets Musk has set for it (~$2 million/launch[1], max of 1000 passengers[2]) you could get a ticket to orbit for around $2000. Throw in some extra for profit margin, a stay at an orbital space hotel, and a few additional expenses, and it might well be possible to take a vacation in space for less than $10k.
I really hope that happens within my lifetime; it'd be amazing to experience.
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/06/elon-musk-says-spacexs-sta...
[2]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1144004310503530496
The real magic of human spaceflight for me is the science that is done up there. Sending a bunch of untrained rich people into space for the fun of it is not especially inspiring. The idea of getting crammed like sardines into a giant rocket so I can experience this with the masses is just not a great dream.
For me personally? I just want to mess around in 0G for a day or two. That seems like it'd be a rather unique experience; well worth a few thousand bucks and a couple hours packed shoulder to shoulder in a ship with a thousand other people.
We are entering an age of global techno oligarchy
I want my masters to see the earth from space. Get a feel for the stakes, see the delicate ribbon of air, the vastness of space.
See it as the rare jewel we spent a short time on, and the obligation to treat it well
"It's small, I want to own the others" might be the Bezos response.
I’m more inclined to believe that there is something intrinsically profound in seeing all the known life in the universe in one field of view. I also am inclined to believe that billionaires are just the world’s most wealth-atypical people, not the world’s most neuro-atypical people, and thus would respond in the typical way to the overview.
But maybe that’s an optimism bias on my part.
I'm inclined to consider the Neil Armstrongs of the world more service-oriented than subjugation-oriented, as a general impression of their careers as astronauts.
It could end up being a very therapeutic endeavor for the average person if space-tourism becomes more accessible, putting people's problems in perspective.
If people are interested in going somewhere, who are you to denigrate their ambitions? What is wrong with dreaming of orbiting the planet? How does that dream fall short? Is it a weak dream for a midwestern child, landlocked a thousand miles in every direction, to want to see the ocean? Is it a weak dream for a city child, blocked by light pollution, to want to see the stars?
What kind of comment is this? What does it even mean to have a "better" dream?
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-blast-s...
It's an old story, as expressed by Dr. Seuss in his story Yertle the Turtle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_St...
If it makes everyone who can afford to go more circumspect about that, I think it’ll have been completely worth it, even ignoring all the useful stuff that’ll come out of it.
Also, off topic, but thanks very much for all the things you make, they’re wonderful.
There is something so unimaginative about this kind of thinking it's really off putting.
As a society one should always strive to do better in all areas, not only in the areas you deem worthy.
10k in space will get you what?
---
Random thought:
If they were able to get enough water into space such that one could swim through a sphere of water in a weightless environment, what would the sensation of being encapsulated in water while weightless feel like (clearly needing scuba or some other air connection..)
And what if you’ve already done all that?
Private jets (well, fractional ownership) gets boring after a few years.
Or you can stay here on earth, go scuba diving and experience the exact same weightlessness... :)
What would the difference in sensation be for one who is submerged on earth, versus one who is encapsulated in a floating sphere of water...
Is what we need to invent then...
lol you would have to pay me to go golfing
As the cost of spaceflight comes down and launch frequency goes up, I suspect we'll start seeing reusable launch systems emerge that have had thousands of launches across dozens of rockets. Once that happens I think spaceflight's safety record will improve significantly.
I would say some would but keep in mind that a few other things have to come together.
a) Willing to take the risk (non trivial example I would not do this no chance)
b) Your family/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend has to buy into the risk even if it's just you going into the orbit.
c) Potential negative publicity as in 'look how they are spending their money' since early adopters would most likely be publicized in some way.
d) Guilt maybe spending millions for a trivial short ride vs. other things you can spend money on.
Keep in mind with 'd' other things are considered more acceptable and have social proof. This seems (to me anyway) the ultimate extravagance and I am wondering if there is the classic difference between what people say they would do if given the chance and what they would actually do.
Add in the fact that you have a very viable competitor in Virgin Galactic and SpaceX who could leapfrog both and provide even better experiences, and I don't see how Blue Origin will ever be viable without government funding
I think the timing of the launch isn't coincidental - iirc, the investigation into the HLS decision is going to be done in early August, and it undoubtedly looks better for BO's case to have had a successful launch with humans onboard one of their rockets.
Not that it matters but I wonder which of these buys more social capital?
The construction of a massive space port in one of the more desolate places in America is a pretty damn good starting point. Doesn't take a magician to round that out with an airport, hotels, convention centers, restaurants, etc. I believe there is already an uptick in real estate on South Padre Island and talks about some bridge to better connect the island.
> A number of later studies have concluded that a global sea level rise of 200 to 270 cm (6.6 to 8.9 ft) this century is "physically plausible".[8][2][9]
Just probably not in our lifetimes. The maximum sea level rise will be hundreds, even thousands of years from now. In the absolute worst case scenario where all the ice melted, sea level would rise 230 feet. If we did nothing at all about climate change and kept burning fossil fuels until we ran out, that's actually a likely outcome. It has happened in the past when the earth was much warmer. It won't happen to us, because we're taking action. The final sea level rise would depend how we do with actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as it will keep rising long after we stop using fossil fuels.
7 feet by the end of this century is not impossible, but not in the conservative estimate. So far we've been tracking the aggressive estimates, not conservative ones.
I don't think any place on earth is a good spot to build when playing with geologic timescales.
I haven't done the math, but it seems like Starship is potentially an incredibly cheap heavy lift rocket even in total or partial expendable modes, e.g if SpaceX fails to realize their full reusability goals. At this point, I think BO and others are only falling further behind.
We aren't really sure exactly how far along a lot of their projects are other than "not really close".
So, IMO, you don't need to invoke Starship to illustrate the width of the current gap between SpaceX and a company like BO that has never flown substantial hardware in orbit or beyond, on their own launch vehicle or otherwise. When they do start delivering spaceflight systems, we can re-evaluate the competitive landscape. New Glenn could absolutely put some real pressure on Falcon 9, if they can deliver it before Starship eats its lunch.
"Launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, slightly earlier than the original announcement of the fourth quarter of this year. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for three days, flying in an orbit at the same inclination as the International Space Station — 51.6 degrees — but in an orbit as high as 540 kilometers, more than 100 kilometers above the station."
Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to the obvious feud with Jeff Bezos, I know he is friends with Richard.
In 2000, Dennis Tito paid $20M for 11,400 minutes in space or about $1750/minute ($2765 in 2021 dollars). The Branson and Bezos models 20 years later are much more expensive per minute and are so short there is no real time to absorb the experience.
My version would have blackjack and hookers, obviously.
I absolutely dont care about Bezos or Branson being able to do these stunts - SpaceX already docked with the IIS ffs.
It's like McClaren winning the Gran Prix, and then Toyota and Ford showing that their CEOs can finish a few laps in Monaco.
The VG and BO launches were both underwhelming for me - but it's still exciting to see the different engineering approaches, it's like hedging a bet, and I am sure each of them will pay dividends - one way or another.
We've had tourism that blows all these attempts into irrelevance, for thousands of years.
Take 5 grams.
i suspect the market will be less corporate leaders and more the family of corporate leaders (and saudi royals)
Also, SpaceX knows how to put on a show. In comparison this felt like an amateur video. (not to diminish the mission itself, just how it was filmed).
The first private manned suborbital flight occurred in 2004 with SpaceShipOne. It is 17 years later at this point and only now do we have paying customers for sub-orbital flight.
I also suspect the pool of people willing to pony up $250k+ for a few minutes barely in space is going to be pretty shallow. I'd sign up in a heartbeat for a space hotel trip in that price range though, so here's hoping Axiom Space delivers (and gets the price range below the current projection of tens of millions).
The person who won that seat didn't actually end up going on the first flight (will go on a later one). Some 18 year old with a dad who runs a hedge fund went. How much he paid was not disclosed.
The gap between the Wright Brothers' first flight and Apollo 11 was about 66 years. (I realize aircraft and spacecraft are not very similar).
I think almost everyone interested in space flight back then would be pretty disappointed by the slow pace of development since Apollo, until things picked up recently.
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.
Retrorockets fire immediately prior to impact to cushion the blow, but it's still a hard jolt.
Max altitude of about 100km? Alan Eustance managed half that with a balloon, and then he jumped out of his capsule like Master Chief and fell back to Earth.
They're planning to build a moon rover in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Three rivers, some department stores, a couple abandoned steel mills, more bridges than they can afford to maintain, and a mission control center.
I'm generally in favor of more people being involved in space technology and space travel; I still consider it a long-term existential need. But about this, it's just, kinda... Step it up or step out, Bezos.
It is nice to live in an era where this accomplishment feels mundane, though.
So much negativity in this whole topic, IMO due to Bezos's involvement.
Space is hard technically, politically, financially, so the more entrants in the space race the better. Every space program, government or private, has started off small and built on what they learn.
... but since we live in the era where multiple agencies have already done that, it's possible Bezos's dollars would be better spent on combined efforts with one of the front-runners to do something more ambitious than yet another capsule to high-altitude ballistic flight.
Also yeah they do also just barely make it to what the US had somewhat arbitrarily defined as space in the case of Branson's company.
It reminds me of what might happen on a tourist experience in Bali, where they have you hold a big spear and take a photo for Instagram as if you were a tribal hunter. I would take the Blue Origin flight if it was free, but I would wish they would treat me honestly: as a random schlub who knows how to sit in a seat and smile.
You know that NASA and other countries have been flying rockets and sending people and things to space before SpaceX, yes?
Virgin Galactic is an expensive carnival ride and has nothing close to orbital capability.
For those that don't know: getting to orbit (let alone beyond) requires way more delta-V (energy) than getting past the Karman line. The German V-2 is (I think) the first vehicle to do that, but it was nowhere even near orbit capable. The first photo from space was done by the USA with a captured and modified V-2.
They launched satellites earlier this year.
The space tourism thing is just a part of what the company does.
SpaceX is still way ahead though.
That's like saying Lockheed Martin (maker of the F-35) is "way ahead" of Textron (maker of the Cessna). They have different goals entirely.
I think you mean "Grasshopper" (the Falcon 9 VTOL test mule from a few years back). New Shepard is less than half the size of Starhopper, and the BE-3 engine has ~25% of the thrust of the Raptor engine.
Winner of the race will be the dominant company in said community of 100,000 or the most socially influential person.
Bezos, Musk and Branson won't be alive to see that, so they are shooting for George Washington type influence, the one reserved for the founder, the guy who was at the beginning of it all and gets remembered .
Nation states -> wealthy bigco -> billionare's pet project -> ????? -> normal people
(some steps omitted for brevity)
The wealthy early adopters provide the capital to refine and scale up the industry to make it practical and affordable for less wealthy late adopters.
Even in smaller time frames, I read somewhere that one of Bezos' plans is to move manufacturing into space.
And if/when we do get colonies on other planets and moons, some people would want to live there.
In, what, five billion years? I’m not sure we need Bezos to be focusing all his money on that timeframe.
I am also sure that you could do cool sports events on the moon or a big space station.
Maybe Electron and Virgin Orbit are in the race, but these hop 100km (or 80!) up and about 5 miles downrange are nowhere near the same league.
Especially since blue origin has a design that can scale up quickly, as SpaceX did with falcon 1 to 9
For myriad reasons Blue can't just "scale up quickly" in any meaningful way from NS to New Glenn, hence why it's going to take them 8+ years between the first NS and first NG launches. Being realistic about this is not cynical and negative.
Certainly applies to the operational launches of all their rocket vehicles, however they've also done suborbital test flights with with Grasshopper, F9R, Starhopper, Starship (and maybe Super Heavy soon as well depending on if they do a sub-orbital with that first).
The important difference is that SpaceX has never considered the Karman line as a target in its own right (somewhat rightly, its only value is for "whelming" space tourism).
So you're saying that after say the initial 100 launches
Launch 100-199 would have 5 failures
Launch 200-299 would have 7 failures
Launch 300-399 would have 10 failures
Why?
Generally doing more of something reduces the cost per something. Why do you think the inverse will hold with spacex?
You need the demand to make that worthwhile though.
https://twitter.com/Charly923407591/status/14162863209561210...
Bezos is smart and talented... but it's hard to overcome a lead like that.
Sure, he studied electrical engineering in the 80s, but I don't think that's going to help Blue Origin catch up with it's main competitor.
Bezos’s big contributions will be leadership, creating efficient processes, etc. He’s good at those things. You don’t need to be able to build the product to run a company.
These two flights were ~60mi altitude. The ISS, for reference, is at 250mi. We've launched people there more than a hundred times, never mind having to put it there in the first place. The moon, which we landed and recovered people from in 1969, is 240,000mi away.
This is a hobby project, which is totally fine in that it's their money to spend, and it's kind of neat that we can generate enough wealth that private individuals could even imagine doing this, but let's not dress it up as more than that.
Edit: Musk/SpaceX is definitely in a different category. That actually seems to be shooting for space exploration, which is pretty neat, though I still think there are earthly priorities that we'd see much higher ROI from.
Not everyone agrees.
But why is it anyone's choice? People are already taxed disproportionately, why can't Musk spend his money, or the money people invest in him?
The US is free to outlaw large accumulations of wealth, it would just lose a lot of people in the process (assuming emigration wasn't also outlawed).
People in the US are, equally, free to move to places with fairer tax laws.
A couple vaporized high profile customers will have a massive chilling effect on the industry.
I think Musk's "we are going to Mars, people will die" is the most sober/realistic take. This messaging will do a much better job eliciting a customer base that understands the product and that will lead to sustainable industry someday.
Hasn't Branson essentially cashed out of Virgin Galactic for a huge payday? Even his flight was just a stunt to sell 500 million in stock.
With government-sponsored exploration, you at least ended up with public research and development that resulted in spinoffs that are useful on land. With a private space race, technologies like these seem more likely to remain a trade secret.
Also, when it comes to 'hard problems', physics is pretty predictable. Humanity has all kinds of social problems, which I'd argue are harder than these tech problems. For example, we'd have the capacity to eliminate hunger if it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that.
Much of what is developed is in the public domain. Patents and trade secrets only go so far. You can't patent or keep secret the concepts that these trials prove out.
The satellite of industries that develops to support space flight is also not affected by whether the fights they're supporting are private vs government, and neither are the skills developed by the engineers working these projects.
Private also has one distinct advantage: it can be self-sustaining, in being managed by an owner with a strong stake in the venture as a business unit.
I'd argue this is, if we're talking about practicality, is just crumbs though.
For example, scratch-resistant lenses were developed at NASA. Proving that it could be done wasn't the important factor that brought it to everyone's homes. What brought it to everyone's homes was the fact that NASA licensed
As another example, single-crystal silicon solar cells were first developed after NASA sponsored a 28-member coalition to develop an unmanned, high altitude aircraft. Private companies don't create coalitions like this and are much less likely to license or waive patents.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies#Scra...
And proving it can be done is aside from proving how it can be done. Once the general principle is proven out, competitors find ways to apply it that avoid infringing on the patent. The process of discovering the how involves expensive trial and error, that a large private sector can greatly accelerate.
I agree that publicly funded technology initiatives have their own strengths, but private technology provide far more than crumbs. Much of an industry's development is in the form of mundane, that is too unremarkable to be patented or held in secret, and for that, it makes no difference what the source of the funding is.
And you (the public) pay for it. With the Musk's of the world paying, the gov has more money for social causes.
If the public can't consistently support these kind of projects without constantly threatening their budgets, maybe they are better in the hands of private benefactors that value them.
> it wasn't for the pesky problem of inequality, and billionaires aren't exactly lining up to help out with that
How can they help? There's enough money to eliminate hunger and keep billionaires. Hunger isn't just about who has money, it's about who could have money and maintain it.
Hunger is basically a non-issue in all developed nations. See all the gray and purple nations on this map. In the US, for example, deaths from malnutrition are ~,1% of all deaths annually. Any money the billionaires might put into it would be better spent on traffic safety, reducing cardiovascular diseases, or researching cancer, and those are all by several orders of magnitude. https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrit...
Also, aid sent to the countries that do have hunger problems (like much of sub-Saharan Africa) has simply crashed their agricultural economy, making the issue even worse. Local farmers can't really compete with free, after all.
…doesn’t that suggest it would be worth a billionaire trying to find an answer for the latter? A way to help local farmers feed their population? It seems like an interesting problem space to me. Certainly more interesting than replicating space flights NASA already did decades ago.
- anyone can spend money on things, if enough sub-billionaires spend money on something the same amount can be raised - there's no reason a billionaire needs to do it. On the other hand, large focused projects like this are arguably harder to crowdfund from a management perspective.
- The governments is richer than Musk. Taxation brings in more money, and is a much fairer way to contribute to these problems.
- the government is more empowered to deal with social issues. There are some things a private corp/citizen cannot do, at least without government approval anyway. The issues being tackled here are mainly engineering, that is "free" to solve. The items that they would "better" to fix are highly political, with a heavy side of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
- throwing money at something can make it worse. A pipedream has no metrics that could prove this, so they can always be optimistic. When a "clothe the poor" drive kills local tailoring businesses, for example.
- Billionaires pay taxes, usually more than most (generally, though they have more leverage to bargain for lower taxes. unfair? sure, but that's global free trade gets you). What remains is income - why should they fix the problems government could, but won't?
- A major component of this is envy/belittling effort (Musk looks too happy in PR pics, so he's "playing around") or belittling the goal (spaceflight is useless) - i.e. grievance from the ignorant. There are a bajillion "useless" pastimes and occupations relative to some rando's pet social cause, yet billionaires are easy individual targets when everyone is equally to blame - at least Musk probably works hard.
Life expectancy is dropping, climate change is accelerating and while we can't solely blame any individual billionaire, they have as a group profited astronomically [:)] from the collapse of our institutions and middle classes, and from the wholesale destruction of livelihoods during the pandemic.
The government is more corrupt, more attuned to the needs of the rich than ever, so you don't need to wonder why the government has failed to attend to the needs of the majority. The same class of people currently culminating in rockets launches toward space have been directing the flows of tax dollars for decades.
How are billionaires on the hook for these things?
Theses newcomers have drawn in attention and effort and are trying to reframe space as a business being funded by revenue - which has trade offs but in general is a positive development. The really challenging work without the glamor is still being down by the scientists and research agencies with the government. I do tip my hats to the accomplishments of all three of the new comer organizations. I just dispute that the narrative that they are driving the future. I think they are complementary.
To be clear - they don't have enough money to "solve" space exploration - it takes deeper capital than they have - though they are bringing a new business model to potentially stretch their capital deployments.
Privatization helps because NASA cannot afford failures today, but private companies can. And since space is a new and risky frontier, failures will happen. That's why I believe that privatization is a good thing overall
It's not dissimilar to how most energy technology makes its way to the private companies. DOE research labs do most of the work with college collaboration and then it gets released through private equity into the public domain.
But are they "hard" problems to solve? Most of the projects Gates takes on have already been solved in the developed world. He's primarily trying to distribute those successes to the developing world.
In any case, we can have both: rich people building the tech of tomorrow, and rich people trying to apply existing tech to the underserved. Both are good; both have utility.
I always thought that Amazon was just the way to make his space dream possible.
Jeff Bezos' company has contributed significantly to the problem, I get his plan is to manufacture things in space, but who is that really designed to benefit.
The real hard thing to do would be to invest his personal billions into the issue, today.
(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!
That booster isn't capable of orbital launches.
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.
We can tax billionaires so that they pay their fair share for the public resources they use without it going full gulag.
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.
Okay, so these launches aren't amusement rides for billionaires, they are marketing stunts to advertise amusement rides for other billionaires? Hard to see the difference tbh
Democratization of space FTW!
And like all things, the price will go down. Not as fast as I'd like for these specific crafts, but they seemed like a good target at the time their development began.
straight up, no. they're using your tax dollars because they aren't taxed
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.
Is it though? I don't see how.
I just saw four pretty regular people - including one I believe subbed in at the last minute - take a trip and it cost a fraction of what it used to. The high price tag means it’s still nowhere near accessible to most people as flying in a plane or taking a train, but it’s a lot more accessible than it was when I was a kid, and by the time my kids are adults it is likely to be more than just a pipe dream.
I still remember what it was like to catch a plane for the first time and how I would count the number of trips I would take on a plane because it was just so outside my normal experience. Maybe one of my kids will have a chance to feel the same way about flying to space.
Is it that Branson should be moving faster? Taking more risks? Even after a test pilot was killed?
Why should they go faster? Because SpaceX does? Why should everyone copy SpaceX?
Should they do more frequent PR and show incremental developments/achievements? How is that any less of a PR stunt than shooting the CEO into space?
Why are we impressed by SpaceX PR (they don’t have to invest so much in coverage) but not by anything else?
If these companies were making breakthroughs in making space long term habitable I’d be excited. But I’m yet to see that.
That not the case. Suborbital space flight of the model BO or Virgin do is, but that simply not generally true.
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...
I'm curious if it's a hat that means something to him for some reason.
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.
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"?
I’m under no obligation to recognize anyone as anything but an average human without proof they’re actually skilled as they claim.
Titles are political euphemism. I want to know someone’s profile to know who I am dealing with. You’re a doctor? Of ants. Not helpful when I need someone that studied human anatomy.
None of these titles explain the training involved. The honestly gained skill set based on direct learning.
Bezos isn’t a genius; he’s a politically elevated person due to financial success. Humans will never live among the stars as the meat bags we are; far more likely we etch a simulated human consciousness into a new medium than adapt this biology. We’re just watching one guy get his jollies off at our political expense.
Titillate the masses to keep them politically disorganized. Humans used to wage holy wars, invade other nations to do that. Now it’s engineering and economic spectacle.
What a trivial and boring people I live among. Collectively setting themselves aside to ogle this stuff.
But still for the sake of discussion, I would argue that their mission required only 1 responsibility - that you be there. Even if they orbit around the Earth, modern spacecrafts are designed in such a way that crew member input is almost unnecessary. I wonder how much crew input is needed to dock on ISS in modern crafts...
But he had a role other than just being a passenger. He was there to make observations on the performance of the rocket and the spacecraft, as well as himself throughout the mission. There's a clear scientific role here that the Blue Origin tourists do not have. And while the controls were locked, Gagarin had the code to unlock them and was to take over the spacecraft in the event of automation failure or another manually recoverable emergency.
Throughout Mercury, the astronauts had to fight for control elements to even be included in the spacecraft because automation was considered the safer option.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan and these steps were incredible milestones, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to switch seats with anyone.
Here, I am sure Bezos can/would argue that "someone had to make observations on the performance of the rocket and the spacecraft, as well as himself throughout the mission". Sure, the goal here is commercial, but it's hard to argue that Gagarin's flight was made to gain pure scientific knowledge to finally answer the pressing question of how humans react to spaceflight, rather than political/technological.
"Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists and tourists."
I'm definitely on-board with calling Bezos a passenger.
When I'm on a flight I'm called a passenger, for example. They were passengers.
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.
I suspect that decision making process was dramatized in The Right Stuff. Test pilots make sense for several reasons: they already understand aeronautical concepts, are used to g-forces, have experience with state of the art machines, have a high risk tolerance, and are already familiar with following orders.
Probably more than this, following protocols but having an ability to think for themselves on their feet (as opposed to a grunt following minutia orders).
The storyline also involves the political reasons for putting people into space, asserting that the Mercury astronauts were actually a burden to the program and were only sent up for promotional reasons. Reasons for including living beings in spacecraft are barely touched upon, but the first option considered was to use a chimpanzee (and, indeed, chimpanzees were sent up first).
Another option considered was using athletes already accustomed to physical stress, such as circus trapeze artists. Wolfe states that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, insisted on pilots, even though the first crew members would not actually fly the spacecraft.
So the gatekeeping can go away
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_status_in_United_States...
[2] https://www.maritimeinjuryguide.org/maritime-lawsuit/qualifi...
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.
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.
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.
Christa was legit trained how to spacewalk.
Sure, McAuliffe trained to do so much more, but all of them fulfill the criterion you gave of what an astronaut is.
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.
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.
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 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.
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure "sluggish" is an adverb I would use to describe space launches.
Why does it matter who does it though? It’s a great achievement and could lead to great things. I’d much rather people like Bezos were spending money on this than mansions, supercars, and other crap that doesn’t benefit anyone.
Right? I don't get the guy's appeal. Yes, SpaceX and Tesla are doing neat things and I love that. But Musk is literally the last person I want to hear from, or about. Despite all the cool stuff Tesla is doing, he really makes me not want to buy anything from Tesla ever just because he's associated with it. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I really can't stand the guy.
I had long suspected that he's on the spectrum, and earlier this year he came out and openly talked about his Asperger's diagnosis.
That's not to say that excuses his terrible treatment of other people, but it sure explains it.
Either way. He's super polarizing. Some people love him. Some people totally despise him. It's probably clear which side I'm on lol
I don't think that confirms he has Asperger's. He said it on SNL as a joke.
Source?
EDIT: they start talking about it at the 7:00 mark
I suspect there's a level of vicariousness for some fans, some shade of "He's a nerd like me - it could have been me if I caught a lucky break. Hell, I can still be something like him if I found/get RSUs in a rocketship SaaS startup and have multiple recurring successes after that". Elon seems to have settled into that "friendly, relatable neighborhood billionaire who memes-and-does-crypto just like you" persona
You could be talking about some politicians and I'd feel similarly. I think it says much more about society that these are the folks we hold up on a pedestal than it says about the people themselves.
It's not even clear to me that that is their objective.
These sub-orbital flights are not interesting - scientifically nor engineeringly.
Though as far as I know, the Crew Dragon vehicle has been new every launch, with re-used Dragons being used for future missions. I don't know if this was the first flight of that particular New Shepard Crew Capsule though.
So many ways that this could have been an ego / company boosting event and it was not.
Branson, take note.
Always check the fine print.
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.
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.
New Shepard can kind of be thought of as a prototype of the second stage to their new (bigger) rocket, New Glenn.
Blue Origin is a serious company and New Shepard is greatly overly engineered for joyrides. That's because the goal of Blue Origin and New Shepard is bigger than just space tourism.
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?
Practically speaking, if you have enough thrust and delta-v to achieve a suborbital flight of more than a few tens of minutes, you also have the ability to reach orbit, so why bother?
Just to make it official, they should have two circular blast deflectors, on opposite sides of the gantry.
Are you using math to plan capacities and growth rates?
Do you push your services to 1000k+ QPS of sustained traffic to see how it handles or falls over?
Are you developing DR scenarios and training people and performing live exercises? Designing systems to fail open or closed appropriately, to gracefully handle missing dependencies, not cause a thundering herd upon restart, etc.?
Are you performing security analysis, STRIDE, etc.?
Is your data model active-active, have redundantly striped caching, and use vector clock consolidation, consensus?
This skill set is software engineering. It's not configuring a Drupal or Wordpress install.
Don't downplay it.
Edit: That being said, depending on who I am talking to it ranges from "I do computers" to "I am a computer programmer", and very rarely use "engineer" unless I am referring to my actual degree (BSCpE).
The B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science are actually amongst those degrees that allow you to call yourself an engineer. If I remember correctly, my diploma specifically says "This diploma permits you to use the job title 'engineer'." (loosely translated).
Of course, the legal definitions are unrelated to whether or not it's sensible to use that title. Honestly, I think it depends on the kind of programming you're doing. If you're designing new systems, for example, it seems to fit.
Granted in my job it's so strict/refined... tech designs, unit/visual regression testing/QA/TA that sort of thing... it's not like I can just write code on the fly/release it out there without it going through the tests and several people.
I'm definitely not the caliber of a developer that thinks of tasks in Log N or something. Least path algos and what not I'm a typical dev and I'm alright with that ultimately I am a tinkerer and end goal is FIRE.
So I have no qualms about having "engineer" in my job title, even if I still view myself as a programmer (I'm still not accustomed to having "senior" in my job title even though I've been a programmer longer than some of the readers of this comment have been alive).
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27894728.
Great , but now can you guys do something about reducing human suffering due to climate change? Like potentially developing technologies for sucking off CO2 and other harmful gases off our atmosphere? Or how about cancer cure or anti aging or something that helps humanity?
It's named after Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut to fly in space.
SpaceX is definitely a lot further down the road, and what Blue Origin is doing currently is much easier. The energies involved in suborbital flights are much lower, and the fact that the rocket has a thrust-to-weight ratio low enough that it can hover makes the landing process a lot simpler.
SpaceX launches people and cargo to the ISS, just completed the first shell of a nearly worldwide satellite internet network using reused boosters many of which approaching 10 flights, and is a few months out from test launching a fully reusable rocket with twice the thrust of the Saturn V using a novel-full flow staged combustion rocket engine of their own design.
And now Blue Origin is seemingly dragging down ULA with them because of the constantly delays of the BE-4 engine ULA selected for Vulcan.
I just don't understand how Bezos can find this progress acceptable. I want Blue Origin to succeed. Having SpaceX as the only US launch provider is not the future we want.
Bezos is showing where he does know things. He knows what works (spacex design and vertical landing), so copy that. Amazon didn’t invent books, they just sold it cheaply and on the internet.
It’s interesting, I think Musk and Bezos would make a good team, especially on something like Tesla.
Second, New Shepard is massively over engineered for what it is. The reason for that is that they plan on using it to learn how to make much bigger rockets. Though, I suppose you could reasonably argue that the delays of New Glenn means that wasn't a smart tradeoff.
Lastly, Blue doesn't have the same laser focus SpaceX does. I think this is most likely the biggest contributor. They've made all kinds of different engines, they designed their own lunar lander, then they designed another one with Northrop, Lockheed, and Draper for NASAs HLS project.
My understanding through people I've talked to with connections to Blue, is that Blue operated more as an R&D lab for the first several years of it's existence.
I, like a lot of people, suspect now that Bezos is more focused on Blue they will start making bigger waves in the industry. At least I hope so, because I'm really excited to see competition in the space!
Obviously an orbital class booster is a different challenge than a suborbital booster, but the idea that Blue is copying SpaceX is just wrong.
Four dingbats going for a 10min joyride in a mobile lounge strapped onto a dick-shaped rocket.
Still, I'm all for billionaires pursuing daft dreams like this rather than just buying big yachts like Larry Ellison, or not much of anything like Bill Gates. At least Bezos is putting on a mildly entertaining show for us to watch.
So if the mafia did it, it'd be fine because government didn't pay for it? I'm not saying that Bezos is a mafioso, but this is a false dichotomy. There are also good reasons to think that all "legal" businesses aren't legit and with litttle political oversight, maybe the profit of giant companies like Amazon shouldn't be deemed 100% deserved.
This comment is related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27893518