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Comment by marshallbananas | Hacker News Reader

This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. They got about two minutes of zero G and came down immediately. You can experience that for much longer with a regular plane, for much less money.

It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.

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The thing that amuses me is that if SpaceX can make Starship and the Heavy booster work, they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance.

If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.

Then they'd just need to get environmentally-friendly methane production going and we can all be a bit happier.

You can also land on the other side of the planet within... I want to say an hour?

I must admit, that's the usage scenario for Starship that I don't particularly see much benefit in. I may well be short-sighted, but given how far away from cities the launch centres for these things would need to be, it strikes me that traditional travel infrastructure suffices.

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.

Yeah I don't think it makes much sense, at least not for a long time. Odds of a plane crashing are on the order of 1 in 10^7. On the other hand, it was a major accomplishment that the Falcon 9 was able to perform 100 successful missions in a row. Rockets have to be safer by many orders of magnitude before they move from the realm of thrill seeking to commercial travel.

I am more concerned about nuclear war as a result of mistaken identity since it's the same technology used to launch ICBMs.

Not sure why you were downvoted - for sure, we have alert systems these days so that test ICBMs and rocket launches aren't misinterpreted by foreign actors, and we would in any future where there were tens, hundreds, thousands of launches a day - but as-equally, it would be a lot easier to mask nefarious intentions in such traffic.

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... .

If I'm paying for a space tourism joyride, I would definitely be extra thrilled if we took off from California and landed in Fiji within the hour.

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.

You make the mistake of assuming the uber-rich want to get to Fiji as soon as possible, when in reality they would rather spend the 8 hrs in their private Gulfstream in a cocaine fueled orgy while the pilot does barrel rolls and loops. Flying is one of the few times that the Uber rich can really disconnect and be alone and relax, why would they want to get to Fiji in an hour in a super stressful flight?

Well, this raises the cost of capsule reuse because of transport back to the launch point.

Why not also have a launch facility at fiji? You could even book a return trip.

I imagine the geopolitical efforts involved in coordinating to allow passenger ICBM launches at major cities in the industrialized west is on the same order of the effort involved in designing and building starship itself.

Ballistic free path is 45 minutes. A single LEO is 90 minutes, no place on Earth is more than a half-orbit distant.

A ballistic point-to-point tragectory is an orbit which intersects the surface.

That's the dream; affordable space tourism for the masses.

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

I hope people have better dreams. That is my dream.

For real, people straight up fetishize the experience of "going to space", but the reality is that you're crammed in stinky tin can for a while, and eat preserved food.

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.

Space is inspiring to a lot of people because it represents both the the peak of human achievement, and humanity's future. Space is the final frontier; the next logical step in humankind's unending quest to explore the universe.

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.

If you cant dream beyond what you eat and the distance you can go in each direction its totally fine but dont impose it to other people

I actually think space tourism for the rich is very important.

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

I don't know why this is being downvoted since it makes total sense to me. It's not a good thing that the mega rich have an absurd amount of power over society, but it's a fact for the foreseeable future. There is precedent for people becoming much more conscientious about the planet after returning from space, so it's certainly possible that billionaires playing with rockets will have some positive second order effects.

It is indeed a phenomenon that others have experienced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

Most of the folks who've been up so far are military and science oriented folks; there's a bit of an existing tendency to think in that direction. I'm not sure the personality required to become a billionaire is necessarily going to result in the same feelings looking at Earth from orbit.

"It's small, I want to own the others" might be the Bezos response.

Perhaps, but I think that’s speculation based in cynicism. By the same reasoning, wouldn’t a military person look down and say, “I want to subjugate the others by force?”

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.

There are indications psychopathy is substantially more common in CEOs than the general population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace

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.

On the contrary, it could also be a universal human emotion in the same way that people are awe-struck when they visit the Grand Canyon or Redwood Forest.

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.

Oh man, struggling to channel dang here. How to respond constructively. Probably the best thing to do is flag and ignore, but I can't pass this up.

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?

Oxfam’s Deepak Xavier vented about the billionaire-hobbies issue early this week.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-blast-s...

Everyone is required to fix the worlds problems before doing anything else. At least that is how the thinking goes, which is absurd in most cases. Though there is some nuance here considering Bezos' absolute detestable behavior climbing on the backs of abused workers to get to this point.

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...

Maybe Jeffrey Bezos will return a changed man and give his warehouse staff proper piss bottles instead of used drinking water bottles.

it's an entirely appropriate dream for a child. for a society with enormous intractable problems such as global warming, income inequality, and fascism, it's pretty lame.

It's lame to dream of space until utopia is achieved? Until life is perfect, NASA should be shut down? Do all 7.5b people on earth need to dream of solving the same problems? Is eliminating diversity of dreams constructive? If your teenage daughter told you she wanted to go to school to be an astronaut, would you tell her that was lame?

Well, I’d say that few things are likely to really drive home to people how insignificant the little power struggles we spend so much of our life obsessing about as going up into space and looking down on everything, and then looking out into the infinite void.

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.

It is a quirk of evolution that this kind of thinking is around. This defeatist unwillingnes to do. Imagine if man had never ventured from Africa, or from the trees to the savannah - I bet even back then there were those who chose to stay behind. Where are they now?

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.

i hope people quit being insufferable downers

where's the steering committee for quality of dreams? I am still waiting on feedback for my dream of a loving family and no more nightmares.

But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed, order room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show, etc.

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..)

> But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed, order room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show, etc.

And what if you’ve already done all that?

Private jets (well, fractional ownership) gets boring after a few years.

Random reply:

Or you can stay here on earth, go scuba diving and experience the exact same weightlessness... :)

It's not the same - that's buoyancy, not weightlessness. Gravity still exerts force on your body and internal organs, and you feel orientation, i.e. up and down. It's a very different feeling.

That's why I was asking!

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...

There’s no buoyancy without weight so it wouldn’t feel like anything until you moved. Then you’d have the same drag forces you would on Earth. It’s unlikely the sphere would stay together very long with nothing to hold it together.

SCUBAG

Is what we need to invent then...

>go golfing

lol you would have to pay me to go golfing

Retarded response... you know what I meant. Go to the pub and wait for this to all blow over.

1000 passengers, really? Just imagine the possible loss of life if something goes wrong. We are still counting 100 successful launches in a row as an unprecedented success - whereas in commercial airplane flights airlines with less than 1 incident per 5000000 flights are considered 'poor safety record'.

There aren't many rocket designs in use right now that have had more than 100 flights _total_. It's hard to properly evaluate the safety of a system when it only gets tested once a month.

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.

Cheaper and safer to just drop some acid.

> rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.

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.

The publicity aspect would deter some, but it would attract others. By the time even 20 people have gone up, it won't be newsworthy, and then it will just be like buying a yacht. There are about 1.5 million people in the US worth $10 million or more, which is about where you need to be to comfortably afford this type of thing now, and another 10 million or so single digit millionaires, many of whom would take a significant hit to net worth to go up. So I think the odds that you can get > 10K takers just in the USA are pretty much 100%. If you can put 10K people up with a solid safety record, then that number would probably go up to 100K to 1 million potential customers. The economy of scale at that level would probably drop the price to where most of the upper middle class is a potential customer. So I think this can work. Safety record is the key.

The economics are just silly. 4 passengers at $250k each is only $1M in revenue per flight. Between fuel costs, rocket costs (even assuming 10x reuses per rocket, you'd need to build the rocket for significantly under $10M to have a chance at profitability, could you imagine building a rocket for under 10M?), engineer and employee salaries and benefits, advertising, liability, etc.

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 suspect their end goal is other funding whilst using the consumer space to launch their program and establish credibility.

I think BO's game plan has been to become something along the lines of a traditional aerospace contractor, and SpaceX has made that very hard.

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.

I'm surprised we haven't heard of that scammer Blizarian trying to get on one of these flights yet...

How many amateurs pay a lot of money to be able to say they went to the top of mount Everest, which is probably a lot more risky?

Good point but a bit different. People view climbing Everest as an achievement as opposed to going up in a rocket which even though you need to prepare seems less daunting and a different type of risk.

Not that it matters but I wonder which of these buys more social capital?

Exactly. As a pilot, I find both of these rides uninspiring. Now if I could strap myself to the top of a Titan II in a Gemini capsule and do some piloting… now that would be an experience.

Keep in mind that the fortune of those millionaires might collapse if they die in the adventure. Or insurance cost might might make the trip much more expensive than just the ticket.

Out of all of these space-faring corporations, SpaceX has orders of magnitude more aerospace infrastructure and assets to work with. Their entire ethos since inception was getting humanity to Mars, not sending a handful of wealthy people into suborbital trajectories. Elon/SpaceX have certainly participated in a lot of PR throughout, but it always seemed to be along an engineering axis, not some feel-good emotional axis (although many were moved by witnessing double booster landings regardless).

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.

Not sure a tiny island that’s 6-7’ above sea level is such a genius investment these days.

Do you think the ocean is going to rise SEVEN FEET?

Maybe!

> 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]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Yes. Much more, even by very conservative estimates.

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.

The construction of most buildings along these coastal regions is expressly considering these kinds of concerns. Storm surge during a hurricane is an excellent facsimile for this scenario and encourages compensation on the engineering side. I haven't been down to South Padre Island in a long time to confirm, but I know for a fact that no beachfront property in Galveston has a meaningful first floor layout. Every one of these homes is constructed with the expectation that the first floor will flood, so everything important starts on the 2nd floor and up. Ground floor is typically just parking/storage/stairs/elevator.

I don't think any place on earth is a good spot to build when playing with geologic timescales.

By far small enough that you could easily protect it if need be.

You mean like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America?

BO has plenty of funding, and lofty ambitions far beyond New Shepard, but they just haven't made much progress toward achieving them.

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.

It's worth noting that BO is much less open (pretty much the other end of the spectrum as SpaceX) about its progress.

We aren't really sure exactly how far along a lot of their projects are other than "not really close".

Exactly this. SpaceX and Blue Origin take the opposite approaches when it comes to PR. You can see the results in this thread; people comparing BOs current tech with a hypothetically functional Starship.

A lot of people seem to make the mistake of identifying SpaceX with Starship alone, forgetting that they've also achieved effective dominance of the commercial orbital launch market with Falcon 9, broken into the heavy lift game with Falcon Heavy, and recently delivered the only operational manned orbital launch capability in the western hemisphere.

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.

There is a SpaceX private Crew Dragon mission scheduled: https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-announces-crew-for-privat...

"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."

The best part is that while these two billionaires do their 'space hop', Elon is laughing the whole time and probably texted Jeff Bezos asking 'Hey have you seen my car? NVM, sorry, you probably were not close enough to see it.'

Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to the obvious feud with Jeff Bezos, I know he is friends with Richard.

He was actually at the Virgin Galactic launch and is good friends with Richard Branson. He was having fun, but not for the reason you suggest.

I'm mostly referring to Jeff, who he has an extremely public feud with.

No he doesnt

I'm pretty sure Elon thinks Jeff's Blue Origin is impotent in delivering the technology needed to progress the return to the Moon https://twitter.com/kchangnyt/status/1386787651412451329?s=1...

https://www.whereisroadster.com

Yeah, the sub-orbital is a harder sell. When you are the only one or one of a few, the benefit/cost is perceived to be higher. After a dozen or so of these flights much of the cachet will be gone. Can they (Bezos/Branson) bring the cost down fast enough to transition to a sustainable model?

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.

I think a lot of people might be willing to pay for 4 days in orbit for $2M.

My version would have blackjack and hookers, obviously.

Honestly, I wish Branson and Bezos would have just put their dicks back in their pants and just fully got behind spaceX

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.

Doesn't blindly ceding to the industry leaders ultimately result in stagnation?

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.

> they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance.

We've had tourism that blows all these attempts into irrelevance, for thousands of years.

Take 5 grams.

There will be an inevitable crash/failure resulting in a mass casualty event where many industries will lose their leaders (the only people that could afford a spaceflight for fun), and that's very bad for PR and could sink the whole company as a result.

>the only people that could afford a spaceflight for fun

i suspect the market will be less corporate leaders and more the family of corporate leaders (and saudi royals)

> It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.

So, Alan Shepard would not be the first American in space? Gus Grissom's first flight wouldn't count, either? I'm all for making a distinction between space tourists and astronauts; but, I don't know if orbiting the Earth is the distinction. (Yes, I know Shepard and Grissom orbited the Earth on subsequent space flights; but,those first flights have to count for something.)

Maybe you were just told they counted as going into space because otherwise the first American to orbit earth only did so a full 10 months after Gagarin, which looks worse than saying “oh we launched an American into space less than a month after the Russians did”.

Huh, I remember learning Yuri Gagarin as the first person to space. I don't think I even remember learning/reading about Alan Shepard.

I always learned Gagarin was first into space first. Likewise, I learned Shepard was the first American and Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. (I always have to stop and think about Grissom, since the fire of Apollo 1 is the always first thing that comes to mind.)

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.)

Personally I think there's a difference when the thing is completely new like when the space race first launched and now when it's decades on and we have continuously occupied the ISS for just over two decades. I might take one of these suborbital hops for fun but mostly because I have doubts it'll be reasonable to do a full orbit in my lifetime.

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.

Getting rocket working correctly is never easy. Just like in IT when things work smoothly, it doesn't look amazing but it takes a tremendous amount of work to get things work correctly and seemingly smooth. A smooth operation is always amazing.

The booster landing looks pretty amazing. The capsule landing went without a problem. The deceleration when the braking chutes deployed looks a bit fast, from 205mph to 150mph in couple seconds. Must be hard on the body.

Edit: Ok, in the post-flight briefing, they mentioned that they didn't anticipate the 5G deceleration on descent and it was pretty hard. Must be when the braking chute was deployed.

It looked like they were going about 15-16mph when they hit the ground. That looked a bit rough as well. They seem to have done fine, but I can't imagine that it was comfortable.

I watch it and slowed the clip and it seems there's a rocket boost just before touchdown, if the seats have shock absorbers they probably felt little of the touch down.

They mentioned on the stream the capsule has cushions that deploy at around 6ft. I couldn't see them on the video feed but they might be underneath the capsule.

That's roughly the speed of a Soyuz landing, which has been described as a "low speed car crash".

Retrorockets fire immediately prior to impact to cushion the blow, but it's still a hard jolt.

Bezos mentioned there's a pocket of air that forms a cushion underneath just before it hits, slowing it to 1 mph at impact. The older woman said she didn't even feel it.

Interesting. As other said, there were retro-rockets that fired. I guess I was just assuming the retro-rockets would be more pronounced - like the gentle landing that the rocket motors perform. Good to know that this wasn't as jarring as it looked.

Agree re: being underwhelmed, but in fairness, your typical "vomit comet" parabola flight only gets you about 25 seconds of weightlessness at a time. Although you can repeat this several dozen times per flight pretty easily.

25-30 seconds, with https://www.gozerog.com/ offering 15 parabolas totalling 6.5-7.5 minutes for $7500+tax. Much better total zero-gee time at much cheaper rates. Of course, you don't get the view above the atmosphere...

I don’t think it’s the weightlessness as much as it is the view. That’s the part that i would like.

And that’s how you make a one take music video: https://youtu.be/LWGJA9i18Co

And you are ignoring the 1.8 g part after each parabola - the zero g don't come for free.

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.

Agreed. This really felt like an amusement park ride for rich people. Like a throw towards the edge of orbit.

I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super underwhelming.

> Like a throw towards the edge of orbit.

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.

Walk before you run.

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."

Well to be fair, they don't compete with Walmart. Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year, and that was during the height of a pandemic, which naturally steered people towards more online orders, something you think would tip the scales in Amazon's favor.

have you _seen_ walmart.com? their online store rivals amazon easily.

Walmart.com ships only in the US. Not in Europe, Asia.

While Amazon has stores for all regions of the world that count.

Walmart.com is an extension of their retail services. There's some overlap with Amazon.com but both offer services and features the others don't and neither fully supplant one another.

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?

> Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year,

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

Operating income for 2020:

    Walmart: $20.6 billion

    Amazon: $22.9 billion

Net Income (business/total) for 2020:

    Walmart: $15.2/14.9 billion

    Amazon: $22.1/21.3 billion

Which one seems more likely to you:

a. 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.

You started out by claiming "they don't compete with Walmart" because "Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year". But since that's not true you've moved the goal post and now you're claiming "Walmart eating Amazon's lunch this decade" is the most likely scenario because Amazon has a counterfeit product problem and Walmart has political connections.

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.

> But since that's not true you've moved the goal post

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.

> 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.

Blue Origin don't need a revenue stream. They need Jeff Bezo to light fire under their ass.

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.

20 yeas from founding to a suborbital demo flight, 15 years of development for the rocket itself. New Shephard will never make orbit, it's a dead end.

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.

I mostly agree but BO does at least plan a variant of the New Shephard engine for New Glenn's upper stage.

> Walk before you run.

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.

What are the delta V's for a ballistic trajectory taking off in Texas an landing off the coast of Morocco? France? Western Australia? Hawaii?

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.

If that's your goal than Virgin Galactic, which can take off from far more places in more weather conditions, is more attractive. Or you could use a Dragon capsule on an F9 which can do the job reliably today.

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 agree that there's no scientific or engineering achievement here and that this ride is essentially joyriding.

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.

It’s remarkable that such a mature, sane, and rational perspective has been downvoted at the time of this writing to the point of being dead. Like anyone I am alarmed by over-the-top displays of wealth but that’s not really all this was. There is a lot more going on here. Blue Origin needs a lot more test flights as they ramp up and increase their capabilities. They also need demonstration flights to hep increase confidence about their services. And it totally makes sense to allow some people with the resources to help subsidize the effort, while having some fun and enlarging their perspective. I think this experience was super meaningful for everyone involved, and we shouldn’t try to denigrate it. Sad to see HN not taking a more open minded view here, as evidenced by your post being hn-dead.

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 don’t think the comment deserves downvoting, but I cannot agree that this characterization - dismissing those who disagree as mindless and juvenile - is mature.

> I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.

Sorry, I meant 'rich people' as a neutral term, I do not attach any value to it or intend to deride someone for their wealth. I think that in general people should do as they want, as long as they don't harm others.

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.

> I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.

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.

Wearing out the bodies and dignity of Amazon floor workers.

> I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending money the way they want.

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.

The underwhelming part is that it took so long.

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.

And even then we still don't have "paying passengers" in the sense of being able to rock up and buy ticket. One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count.

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).

> One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count.

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.

Yes. What made it take this long?

Virgin Galactic had an accident the killed its test pilot a few years back. Had to build new spaceshiptwo

Note that SpaceX hadn't even launched its first rocket in 2004. They didn't reach orbit until 2008 and yet sent crew to the space station over a year ago already.

Yes, and the first suborbital crewed flight was in May 1961. A bit more than sixty years ago.

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.

> I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal.

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).

To be fair SpaceX also has had practice, go back and watch some earlier launches and they have the same amateur vibe.

I was kinda disappointed that the whole thing was just one shaky camera shot, no in-vehicle cameras on Bezos' face getting squished from G-forces or anything =(

I think it's pretty underwhelming and then is further diminished because it feels so much like Bezos and Branson just spending their obscene amounts of money to notch a win in this billionaire one upmanship game. First there was Bezos's Blue Origin crowing about their early launch and land success vs SpaceX like they were in a similar league of difficulty. Then with this you have Virgin Galactic coming out of seeming corporate catatonia so Brandon could rush out this first ahead of Bezos. I hadn't heard anything about SpaceShip One for what feels like years before this stunt.

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.

come on, our billionaires are spending money advancing space tech. what a grand improvement over billionaires bribing governments and having people slaughtered instead, as happens through much of the world and history. applaud this.

I can't even fathom blowing the money on stunts like this before all my people's basic needs were met. Like, you know... even the janitors.

Im very happy for Wally Funk

So happy! A proper injustice revisited.

To me it was pretty exciting after watching what Virgin Galactic did the other day.

Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though. Sticking a capsule on top of a rocket and bringing it down with parachutes has been done since the 1960s, and SpaceX beat them to landing the launcher as well.

SpaceX only "beat" them to a landing if you're disregarding suborbital flights.

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.

Precisely. Landing a booster is difficult but creating or orbital class rocket is an order of magnitude more difficult. SpaceX just did the hard part first.

Blue Origin only "beat" SpaceX if you allow BO's test flight and disallow SpaceX's - SpaceX was landing their Grasshopper prototype as early as 2012.

> Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though.

Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and landing horizontally was also done in 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

i feel pretty guilty for being so underwhelmed because I sure as hell couldn't build an engine and airframe to do that but I am. I think the duration and lack of events is what did it. I'm use to the multiple phases of a falcon9 launch and the landing.

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.

> i feel pretty guilty for being so underwhelmed because I sure as hell couldn't build an engine and airframe to do that but I am.

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.

Yes, but 'Blue Origin successfully avoids achieving orbit' sounds so much less like an achievement than 'first human flight'.

If you listen to the stream there's a moment when they ask each astronaut for a mock-serious 'status update'. At least one forgets to even respond. It feels like cosplay, like a tourist experience where you are pretending to be an astronaut despite having no responsibilities and little training. I would struggle to not feel embarrassment at pretending to be something I am not, and at the knowledge they are stroking my ego purely for my ego's benefit on the back of the very well earned reputation of real astronauts.

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.

One point: that was no "mock status update call", it was control checking if people were back in and strapped to their seats again. The wording arguably was a bit too much fluff ("Astronaut Bezos", yeah, right)

It's frustrating, because I'd like to get excited, but relative to even the regular things going on in aerospace this isn't interesting. Interesting enough, I guess. Guy went up and down. There are six people going around and around right now on the ISS and a second station is coming into orbit. He never left Earth? CNSA has a rover on the moon, and NASA has several rovers, some satellites, a helicopter, and a Will.i.am single on Mars.

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.

> Step it up or step out, Bezos.

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.

Absolutely true.

... 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.

> I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions

You know that NASA and other countries have been flying rockets and sending people and things to space before SpaceX, yes?

Let's look at it from the Hollywood angle: SpaceX clearly wins in explosions per minute, but on the other hand BlueO has Vin Diesel (I might have squinted too hard)

Well in one sense you're right, however...if they decided that they wanted to go for orbit without first doing an up-into-space-then-down trip, that wouldn't be a very wise thing to do. Test at each step. It makes perfect sense to do up-into-space-then-right-back-down first, before you try for orbiting the Earth, for many of the same reasons that NASA did it that way.

Yeah I expected an orbit too. But it was their first manned mission, so I think it makes sense that it was a simpler thing. But it shouldn't have been such big news. It only was because there was a billionaire on board, and that's really dumb.

It was news because it was the first manned flight of a private launch provider. That doesn't happen often and it is an important milestone.

I dunno, that's "news" to be sure; certainly space nerds should care a lot, but they played the entire flight on The Today Show (I watched it). They did not play the entirety of the first manned SpaceX flight, which was a much bigger deal because (I'm pretty sure?) it was the first private manned launch. I'm not saying this flight wasn't news, I'm saying it wasn't mainstream news, except that it happened to have Jeff Bezos on it, and he's a celebrity because he's a billionaire. And that's a lame reason for it to be mainstream news, in my view. I don't love the celebrity billionaire stuff.

Part of the reason for that is that Blue Origin's flight was about 12 minutes in total, while SpaceX's first manned mission was closer to six months.

Fair.

He went up and then down again.

it was a sales pitch

Yet this is what, with all their power, billionaries can achieve today. While private innovation is welcome, space exploration needs even deeper pockets so it is government territory.

wasn't it just a few years ago considered as being ahead of everybody in space industry?

> It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.

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 Russian v. USA space race’s important milestones included putting satellites, animals and people into orbit. It wasn’t just merely launching them to the edge of spacs.

The USSR didn't even bother with suborbital flights. There's a reason that there's only 3 flights to suborbital ranges that are considered manned spaceflight.

It’s kinda funny to see even the SpaceX fans miss a broader point. SpaceX could probably sell orbital trips on Falcon on the regular but they are out of reach of most nearly everyone except the US government whom needs manned flight for staffing the space station (thank goodness or we’d never get space progress)

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.

SpaceX actually IS selling flights to tourists. First and second flights are scheduled for later this year IIRC.

Please don't take HN threads into tedious flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think its more like that the parent comment ultimately 'invited' (and started) this so-called flamewar you are accusing me of.

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'.

Whatever the objection you have to the GP comment, you took a huge step (several huge steps) further into flamewar with your reply. Not cool; please don't.

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.

> 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?

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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