Despite Tuesday’s flight, Jeff Bezos is running out of time to save Blue Origin
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
> Bezos has a compelling vision for space, and it is entirely genuine.
> He has the vision. He has the money. But at the age of 57, does he have enough years or willingness to ensure Blue Origin’s success?
The central thesis of the article seems to boil down to the above quotations, i.e., he's genuine and his goals are noble, but can he pull it off?
The "legitimate", "entirely genuine", and "compelling vision" to "ultimately sav[e] planet Earth" given in this speech is central to the argument, but it is barely even outlined in this article or linked articles -- beyond referencing O'Neill cylinders, mining asteroids, and vague notions of leaving Earth as a "garden". There seems to be no recording or transcript of this speech, nor even any second-hand justification for how legitimate, genuine, or compelling it is.
To me it all seems like the usual ludicrous utopianism that gets attached to space projects. Mine some asteroids, sure. But I see nothing here that even hints at a way to meaningfully reduce or stop environmentally destructive practices here on Earth. We will need to solve our Earth-bound problems. Bezos can focus on Blue Origin or not, it won't matter.
If it came to the point where he had to sacrifice things he actually cares about to help others with no benefit to himself or his ego I would bet Bezos net worth that he wouldn't lift a finger. Maybe convincing himself he's working to save humanity is how he justifies not doing something really useful with his wealth, like saving tens of thousands of people from suffering and dieing of starvation, instead of playing billionaire space games.
Those of us who aren't billionaires just have to satisfy more people with our arguments about why our ideas are worth doing. When you're funding everything, it's a lot easier to attribute pushback to personal preference rather than your overall worldview being flawed. After all, if your worldview was flawed, why are all these people working at your space company? How did you make all this money? Etc.
I don't actually if Jeff has drunk his own cool-aid, but I think people in his position have fewer people to push back against their worldview than most.
And it's not as attributable to Bezos, but Amazon is famous in journalism for asking for numerous "corrections" to articles about them, when those supposed corrections are actually just unrelated talking points and PR spin.
You could say this about Bill Gates he has actually eliminated disease, ventured into Nuclear, Renewables and food security, he has legitimately saved perhaps a few million of lives.
But how could you make such claims about Bezos? Of the big three cloud providers, AWS his the only one still spewing out carbon.
If we were to make "life/death" balalncesheet, did his Amazon and other Bezos companies save lives or contribute to people's deaths, net? It should be obvious that Amazon has reduced living standards and wages for so many people, some of them have suffered ill health and death as a result.
Wit this track record, how could anyone claim Bezos is "saving the planet" with some hypothetical projects that noone even comitted to? In my book, Bezos needs to pay off his debt to humanity and the planet first.
How did a brief amusement ride into sub-orbital space advance spaceflight?
To reach orbit, you need to go one part up and four parts sideways. This flight was only the vertical component - essentially just 20% of the minimum bar for useful space activity.
Is this always true though? Space tech is highly specialized, if you can't hire enough people already, more competition just spreads the available talent thinner. I'd be curious if it's currently the case that SpaceX/NASA/BO's development is personnel constrained.
I've definitely heard of projects at FAANG companies being cancelled because they couldn't hire enough people for them, so I could see this also happening in other industries.
Bezos tossing extra money into it defiantly helps.
Space tech is also always considered to be a national security topic, so the available personnel does not just have to be talented but they need a security clearance as well.
Try to avoid 0 sum thinking, its often wrong. increased competition for talent in space will drive up wages which will result in more people going into said fields.
One of the smartest things the UK power companies did was create very generous sponsorship programmes for students. For a tiny fraction of a yearly salary they could encourage someone to specialize in their niche. Now the UK has a great pipeline of engineers and they're saving on costs in the long-term because they don't need to compete amongst themselves on salary because there's plenty of talent.
Yes, being greedy, envious, and jealous of other peoples use of material goods is wrong. Its time we start calling it out. That doesn't make you progressive, it's a poor behavior attribute and you should not partake in it.
As far is 'how did it advance spaceflight'. its called progress. 20% is better than 0%. Maybe next time they will be 40%.
"Progress" is doing something we have collectively already been able to do, and then some, for decades?
I'd frame it as Bezos demonstrated supreme confidence in the rocket by being personally on the first manned flight.
Blue Origin will be a formidable competitor and working with ULA, JPL and NASA will be great for the space industry and new perspectives on sustainability on Earth.
ULA will be launching Amazon Kuiper satellites to start but eventually it will be Blue Origin itself. I wouldn't ever bet against Bezos. The competition is just beginning. I am glad we got a space race, competition is good.
The Blue Origin flight was extremely smooth and clean, I can't wait to see more.
Competition, good.
Living in space, colonizing Mars, mining asteroids, neurotic billionaires... Whatever. Just infotainment.
I agree about the living in space and colonizing mars which are mostly pipe dreams (that I'm admittedly optimistic about as a spaceflight enthusiast), but I think mining asteroids is a feasible proposition. The material is there, and in-situ resource extraction and return has been demonstrated. It's really just a matter of scale-up and putting in the upfront investment.
I don't really see how the Vulcan will be competitive with the existing launch capabilities of SpaceX, even if it does launch successfully before Starship.
I don't see how Blue Origin producing the engines for an also ran rocket is going to fund their operations. Blue Origin will be dependent of Bezos and the USG for quite a while, atleast until the New Glen can be launched re-usable.
Edit: The other side of the story is here. I am sure both sides have bias, but given that a judge dismissed Eberhard's claim that there were only two co-founders, it the five co-founder settlement seems reasonable.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090624221445/http://www.teslam...
I can't wait to see the most polluting industries, like agriculture or construction moved to space. I can't wait to see how heat-producing heavy industries intend to cool down in space either.
Great journalism here. Just repeat corporate bullshit without an ounce of critical thinking.
You do realize that all of the materials you need are on the ground here on Earth.. This type of thinking is not logical.
Bezos is theoretically right about all of this.
Meanwhile, it is actually achievable to reduce the environmental impact of heavy industry and agriculture on Earth, reduce consumption, etc. It would also be a lot more impactful to invest billions into stuff like that instead of space access.
All technological leaps sound silly until they happen.
> It takes a huge amount of energy to get into orbit
Sure, for the initial resources that you haul up there, but heavy industry begets heavy industry -- and light industry, and everything inbetween. Once you can build in space without hauling resources up the gravity well, costs go down, and the cost floor is a lot lower than it is on Earth, in the long run. We'll probably never see the crossover but our grandchildren might.
> Meanwhile, it is actually achievable to reduce the environmental impact of heavy industry and agriculture on Earth, reduce consumption
We should chase those paths further than we have, but in the long run it's a game of diminishing returns. You can only be so efficient before the victories become pyrrhic and even then you will still be a long ways from zero-impact.
Space scales all the way to turning Earth into a nature preserve (not that we would or should, but we could).
> It would also be a lot more impactful to invest billions into stuff like that instead of space access.
Today? Yes. A hundred years from now? Maybe. Two hundred? No way.
Thia is pretty speculative. There are significant engineering overheads due to thermal and environmental design constraints that could easily place the cost floor for many industries higher in space than on earth. The truth of this assertion is wholey dependent of a bunch of speculative technologies of unknown feasibility.
The major advantage of space is the capacity to scale production and resources beyond what earth can support. Thete is good reason to think we can do this, but also good reason to be skeptical of potential wishful thinking in this area.
We already have technology that does more than that. Even calling it "space" is really a stretch.
I do understand that big public projects drive technology interest and adoption as well as national pride, and everyone likes that. But I can't see how a short ride up and down 1/4 of the way to an existing "space base" is much of an accomplishment aside from those pride-based goals.
"projects in the works to support moving heavy industry from the surface of our planet into space. ... To set humanity on this environmentally sustainable path"
I expect heavy industry (and mining) will be on vacuum worlds like the Moon, asteroids, and Mercury, with some specialized processes and assembly done in orbit. Space is mostly for power satellites and habitats.
If you’re moving heavy industry to Earth orbit and supporting it entirely with material shipments from earth, yeah that seems like a no-go.
On the other hand, if it’s the moon, asteroid belt, or even Mars we’re talking about, you really just need enough launches to bootstrap the operation. The bulk of other materials can procured locally, reducing the number of launches to just those getting personnel to the stations, which would be dramatically fewer in number and less than a rounding error in terms of emissions (each rocket launch is roughly equal to a commercial flight, the latter of which there are tens of thousands each year).
Even if the entire mining operation were already setup (at a cost of thousands of dollars per kilo of weight sent up there), you would still have the costs of getting the mined materials back down here and those are likely to be astronomical, so to speak.
The cost issue is multifaceted.
Most of it is sunk into launching itself, which is where things like space tourism come into the picture as a way to provide an initial business case and eventually, economy of scale. Addressing that alone will improve the economics of off-world industry quite a lot just on its own.
For the other part, initially companies will just have to eat the cost to get things up and running. This really isn’t that unusual — we just haven’t had much in the way of truly new frontiers in many years and have grown accustom to business ventures being relatively low cost and low risk. That said, this could also be partially subsidized by researchers and tourists, since there is certain to be interest from universities and other organizations to send people to study these other bodies, and there are most certainly a surprising number of individuals both wealthy and crazy enough to want to go stay on Mars for a couple of years.
Now, there's not yet much of a market for commodities outside of earth, but as soon as there is, producing a commodity on the moon and shipping it to earth orbit will likely be cheaper than shipping it from earth - at least once scales are large enough.
A space elevator could potentially be much better, but none of these private companies are pursuing space elevators.
Investing money into developing renewable energy power for heavy industry makes infinitely more sense, but isn't as cool as launching rockets. IIRC the Gates Foundation is investing in a solar powered method for smelting steel.
So that explains how the ship was towed "beyond the environment" in the classic "Front fell off" sketch. They just took it to space.
[Interviewer:] So what do you do to protect the environment in cases like this?
[Senator Collins:] Well, the ship was towed outside the environment.
[Interviewer:] Into another environment….
[Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in the environment
[Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another environment.
[Senator Collins:] No, it’s beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment.
[Interviewer:] Well, what’s out there?
[Senator Collins:] Nothing’s out there…
...
It's offputting to see so much hate in the comments here. I'm not a fan of some things about Amazon, but I want SpaceX to face serious competition, and I see space development as more promising than Mars development.
It will a) put the best person on the job, b) close down an unnecessary spat and c) remove the opportunity cost and let Bezos focus on other things.
It would be a win for everyone on Earth apart from ULA.
Jeff can define success however he wants. He can define it in terms of making money, or in terms of successful launches. Making money is hard - there is only so much demand for things in space, and some competition - making it questionable if the investment will pay off. However launching isn't as hard, and he can define metrics in that way and be successful for his purposes.
How is launching things into space any different from paying composers to write much, or painters to paint pictures - two things that rich people regularly did 300 years ago.
* Like delivery of engines to customers.
* Getting to orbit.
* Winning large contracts.
* Putting amazons internet satellites into LEO.
etc...
Space demand will grow incredibly fast very soon as SpaceX leads the incredible prices drops in $ per KG to orbit.
I'd love for them to be successful, and its great to see so many space companies being created, testing, and launching. And it's very important for the future of civilisation. That doesn't mean that you can't ask questions about the health of a particular company.
It might as well be.
It doesn't take a genius to leverage equity ... and Bezos will have effective financial genius working for him.
1) time and time again, particularly in the media, I hear net worth bandied about as though it's the same as cash. Bezos is worth X billion - think what that cash would pay for!
2) billions in equity can't be translated into billions in cash. Millions, for sure. But not billions.
3) any statements that talk about taxing the rich inevitably seem to come down to transferring equity to the state over time based on a current stock market valuation.
All of the above seem misinformed and/or a bad idea, and worth trying to establish fundamental understanding in this area. If you already have that understanding then that's fantastic.
20 years to go from a pile of cash and no experience, to a full production line of safe orbit-capable launch vehicles is a very big ask. SpaceX has achieved that, but at the cost of many of its employees (just look at the press around SpaceX working conditions).
Yes, it's longer than the time between the Mercury missions and Apollo 11, but the 50s-60s era of space travel was significantly higher risk. If corners could be cut in the same way, no doubt 20 years would have been fairly reasonable. Add in an existing presence in space R&D and the shorter time frames of the space shuttle program seem even more reasonable. But that just isn't possible in today's safety first world.
New Glenn should be that vehicle, if they ever finish it.
Regardless, no one is wealthy enough to keep a business of this scale going just as a hobby project.
The development costs for the Falcon 1 were ~100 million, for Falcon 9 about 300 million.
So a billion/year seems adequate.
Elon Musk is "all in" on making mankind an interplanetary species. He is not cruising around the world on a yacht but holing up in a cheap house in Texas.
He went at an "impossible" goal by finding specific markets for launch services and satisfying them with Dragon. Starship is a bit ahead of the market, but the success with Dragon bodes well.
Looking at the big picture I wonder if Amazon succeeded (post-2005 or so) despite Jeff Bezos instead of because of him... That is, the systems he created at the beginning might have outgrown him.
There is nothing in our history or present day evolution that would suggest people can or should live on other planets. Absolutely nothing. We are not even remotely close to such a "goal" when today people live barely below the threshold of space (LEO) and not in space at all.
Religious goals and magical thinking have driven human society for hundreds of thousands of years (see the fascinating and recent post here on HN about The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind). Jeff and Elon's fantasies about human habitation in space (or somehow improving life on this planet by leaving it) are more of the same.
I think Mars is for the birds, cutting up a carbonaceous or wet asteroid to construct a solar-sail factory that can deliver sunshades to earth-sun L1 is a more interesting project. Something halfway to Niven's ringworld seems like a possible endpoint. (see https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487)
As I see it the problems are half chemical engineering, half "building a ship outside a bottle from the inside of the bottle" and half "what do you do with the gas before you take the asteroid apart?"
You might wind up with a structure that can hold a few trillion people, but you start with maybe 40 hardcore Zeons and a few million eggs because I don't see how you build and operate the factory or the factory factory with a 20 minute time delay.
Does it? I feel like we've seen tons of companies advertise lofty humanist goals, only to back away from them and declare "Actually we're a business and we serve our customers. It's not our job to save the world."
Maybe Sherwin Williams with their slogan?
Even Exxon Mobile will say the same. You have to look at the details and what they actually do.
Name one thing Bezos is doing that isn't about himself. I liked his "thank you" to Amazon customers (I for sure helped get him into space) -- but it was simultaneously very off-putting, and I'm not surprised he's completely blind to that reaction. Kudos to him for his success, which I respect, but I find nothing about him to admire.
He has saved me an enormous amount of time and gas because I don't go to the mall anymore.
I.e. Bezos makes money for himself by providing a service people find worth paying for.
Luckily corporations are not the only kind of human organization. We also have governments of various kinds and scales, international coalitions, non-profits, churches, universities, etc.
There is this weird idea that corporations are the answer to everything.
People missing that also usually miss the following:
* What the legion critics of Zuck and Facebook miss is that the company legitimately has the goal of connecting people
* What the legion critics of Page and Google miss is that the company legitimately has the goal of doing no evil
It's partially that it's more routine now, but it's more that the F9 is so much larger, has a far more complicated launch trajectory, and in my opinion that they are landing on barges in the middle of the ocean.
[1]: https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Siz...
[2]: https://everydayastronaut.com/new-shepard-vs-spaceshiptwo/
[3]: https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/52/1600x9...*
[4]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a18711/blue-o...
Oh, he wants to save the planet? Maybe his garbage spewing engine named Amazon could do something there.
Bezos is smart enough to know the odds of him saving Earth or an asteroid hitting in 30 years are about even odds right now, so sure, sell that but also figure by then he’ll be too old to miss out.
Humans sure love to live in the fantasy that humanity is forever well they needlessly consume the only planet known for certain to support their biology.
It does nothing to constructively challenge why we should let Bezos be in charge of saving the planet.
His billionaire adventures are doing quite a bit of damage to begin with, perpetuating shallow consumerism.
It neither denigrates nor deifies him. It’s a flaccid “both sides” emotional piece, leaving conclusions up to the reader.
Mine were that he’s part of the problem he’s trying to solve so why expect him to be anything else?
Bezos can’t escape being human and humans are destroying the planet.