[HN Gopher] Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing c...
___________________________________________________________________
Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA
gave to SpaceX
Author : _Microft
Score : 146 points
Date : 2021-07-31 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| cratermoon wrote:
| Is Jeffy still going with the "here's $2 billion, pick me
| instead" attempt? https://www.inputmag.com/culture/jeff-bezos-is-
| straight-up-t...
| mastrsushi wrote:
| I know this is completely random, but I just love how HN posters
| rarely communicate with each other past one or two comments.
| mfgs wrote:
| It probably has something to do with not getting notified when
| someone replies to your post.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| I think it's more to do with lack of social engagement. It's
| not difficult to figure out how to refresh your accounts
| comment page.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Maybe selfishly some clout at play too? I don't think sub
| comments add to profile upvote scores.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think they count, never really checked specifically
| though and the karma system isn't exactly spelled out in
| detail anywhere. I'm pretty sure your downvotes to the
| parent and children of a comment you make don't count
| though - or at least I read that a few times while
| looking into the site initially.
|
| I bumped your comment up, if you want to find out I
| should be able to un-up it once you check your current
| number... if I remember to refresh my comment history ;).
| Hayvok wrote:
| Multiple providers has been the "name of the game" for a long
| time now, so it's not surprising that Blue Origin or ULA got
| caught off guard. They had to know this Day was coming, but maybe
| not so quickly.
|
| This should be a wake up call to established space players: the
| days of cost-plus contracts, multiple bid winners, and endless
| cost and time overruns - are over. There's no purpose to those
| anymore.
|
| For the past fifty years this all made sense: going to space was
| hard, and the financial risks were astronomical. This decision
| highlights how much progress we've made toward establishing a
| "space economy". Space has been de-risked enough that the
| corporations can take on the (previously fatal) risk of a fixed-
| price contract. De-risked enough that the government is
| reasonably certain of achieving a strategic objective with a
| single provider.
|
| BO, ULA, et. al - the game just changed. Adapt, or die.
| cronix wrote:
| Maybe BO will one day actually do something noteworthy on their
| own, rather than trying to prevent SpaceX from moving ahead
| because they actually do things. Bezos also recently tried to
| block Starlink's modified expansion plans[1] saying it was unfair
| to his conceptual Project Kuiper (conceptual because it doesn't
| yet physically exist vs Starlink which is in beta service and
| expanding). Amazon isn't even using BO to launch their own
| Project Kuipers first satellites (they're going to use ULA)[2].
| That says a lot.
|
| > Amazon did not say when the first launch will occur, but the
| company said it had contracted with United Launch Alliance for
| nine launches to begin building out its constellation of 3,236
| satellites in low Earth orbit.
|
| [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/fcc-approves-spacex-
| starlink...
|
| [2]https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/amazons-first-
| intern...
| trhway wrote:
| Dealing with and relying on ULA will be the Bezos' space
| endeavors undoing. Similarly as if Russians agreed to the
| original Musk idea back then - there wouldn't be SpaceX today.
|
| Technically going hydrogen way Bezos cornered himself - the
| turbine would be extremely expensive and reliability is an
| issue, and without it they are very limited by expander and
| tap-off.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Why can't they cooperate instead of compete?
|
| It's not like they don't already have all the money they'd ever
| need or could use, and wouldn't the world be better off if they
| worked together than against each other?
| jexe wrote:
| Having some competition is probably the best way to make space
| companies work efficiently, cheaply, and reliably, so these two
| egomaniacs fighting it out in a space race might be the best
| possible thing for progress in the industry.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They're no more egomaniacs than, say, whoever wins a gold
| medal at the Olympics. You've got to be an egomaniac to think
| one deserves to be the fastest runner in the world, a
| completely pointless honor, but we celebrate them anyway.
|
| Pointless as in I, an old man and an uncoordinated complete
| failure at athletics, can ride my bike faster than any of
| them can run.
| yissp wrote:
| At least to some extent, competition was the reason for the
| first moon landing, right?
| nickik wrote:
| Because BlueOrigin has nothing to offer SpaceX other then if
| they want to simply give money to SpaceX.
| thrill wrote:
| No.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| krapp wrote:
| These companies are run by billionaire sociopath narcissists
| who live to crush and dominate the competition and who want all
| of the glory (and money) for themselves.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do you think bezos was a psychopath in 1999?
| joshsyn wrote:
| Call them what you want. They pushed the world forward,
| period.
| cratermoon wrote:
| They have certainly pushed the world. Whether the direction
| we're going is 'forward' is extremely debatable. It
| certainly might look that way from certain positions, but
| not all points of view agree, and there's no clear way to
| determine which should be privileged.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It's one thing to disagree, another to call them
| sociopaths.
|
| If what they're doing is debatable - let's debate then.
| With respect for each other and with civility.
| bigbob2 wrote:
| So it's civil to engage in anti-competitive behavior
| which arguably sets back the progress of humanity
| ("pushing the world forward"), but not civil to use the
| word 'sociopath' in reference to such actions? I was
| always taught that actions speak louder than words.
| smabie wrote:
| I mean sociopath has a real definition you can't just
| call everyone you don't like sociopaths.
| krapp wrote:
| They pushed the world, certainly. Whether they pushed it
| "forward" is debatable.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Going to the moon again is pushing the world forward? Why?
| Humans got there and there's been no reason to go back
| jhgb wrote:
| "Why? Humans got there and there's been no reason to go
| back"
|
| -- Europeans in 1493 about the Americas...not!
| medstrom wrote:
| They might have said it if the Americas had even worse
| living conditions than Antarctica. We're not colonizing
| that either.
| jhgb wrote:
| > We're not colonizing that either.
|
| That might largely be explained by the fact that doing so
| would be illegal as per international law to begin with.
| [deleted]
| marcinzm wrote:
| These companies aren't going to the moon, the US
| government is going to the moon using these companies.
| These companies are significantly lowering the cost of
| going into space and eventually going to Mars. That is
| moving the world forward.
| tayo42 wrote:
| So nasa wants to go, they're driving the innovation.
|
| > SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to the GAO decision on
| Twitter with a flexed-biceps emoji.
|
| This sounds like billionaires and their egos fighting
| with each other. Not really trying to make the world
| better
| marcinzm wrote:
| >So nasa wants to go, they're driving the innovation.
|
| You said going to the Moon isn't innovation. You can't
| have it both ways.
| B4CKlash wrote:
| This is an incredibly small minded perspective. Difficult
| challenges require new technologies, new processes and
| new ways of thinking. More specifically, technologies
| developed through the race to land on the moon (and space
| flight generally) are integral to almost every aspect of
| 'your' life and define what most of us consider human
| flourishing.
|
| Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_techn
| ologies#:~:t....
|
| https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-
| would...
| tayo42 wrote:
| These companies are just trying to shoot rockets further
| then each other. They're not science pr research
| companies. We're not learning more about space and the
| universe thanks to the them.
|
| What spin off tech have we gotten from them?
| sterlind wrote:
| Starlink?
|
| But these companies (well, at least SpaceX) have their
| focus on making orbit cheap and sustainable, and pushing
| towards Mars colonization and asteroid mining. Those are
| engineering and logistics problems more than science
| problems, but I think they're very important.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Those are all ways to squander the Earth's limited
| resources while sounding forward thinking. Colonizing
| Mars will likely _never_ happen, there is simply no
| upside: huge challenges, with no interesting resources.
| The Earth has plenty of space, we 're limited by
| resources, and there are no interesting resources on
| Mars. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we'll have
| a colony outside the solar system before a colony on
| Mars.
|
| Asteroid mining is more plausible, but still extremely
| unlikely given our current technology. There are massive
| hurdles, and few things that would massively improve life
| on Earth - it's much more interesting from a profit
| perspective than a future of humanity perspective.
| __d wrote:
| Musk's motivation, which he has expressed repeatedly, is
| to make humanity resilient to an event that makes Earth
| uninhabitable.
|
| Whatever that event might be (asteroid impact, nuclear
| war, environmental catastrophe, plague, whatever), I
| think the idea of having a second site of human
| habitation is not an unreasonable goal.
|
| Which is not, as has sometimes been stated, "giving up on
| Earth and the rich moving to Mars" -- it's just an
| insurance policy.
|
| The resources expended to achieve this are tiny. It's not
| a lot of money, and the consumables are ... literally
| drops in the ocean.
|
| That's not to say that there aren't other problems that
| could be addressed using that money, but it's not really
| a question of either/or: humanity could very easily do
| both, should it choose to do so. It's just that Musk
| chooses to focus on this problem, and its solution. We're
| all certainly free to make a different choice ...
| nickik wrote:
| These companies work for NASA, NASA wants do research.
| Their tech enables that research.
|
| SpaceX uses that money to lower the price of space flight
| for everybody and enables a whole lot of other companies
| to do new things in space.
|
| SpaceX themselves does things like Starlink.
|
| SpaceX also shares materials tech with Tesla that get
| used in their products.
|
| It will also anable real exploration of Mars and the
| outer Solar System.
| kiba wrote:
| Elon Musk gave Jeff Bezos advice on building rockets, which
| Bezos flatly rejected. He also hoped that Bezos work on Blue
| Origin or otherwise Bezos will die before he gets anywhere.
|
| Of course, Musk also mocks Blue Origin.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Would it be better if C, Java and Rust were integrated into a
| single uberlanguage with one central committee to drive further
| development?
|
| From a layman's perspective, an idea like that would make
| superficial sense; they are all programming languages, after
| all. From a programmer's perspective, that would be a
| nightmare.
|
| I think the companies are so far apart that extensive technical
| cooperation would slow them both down. Maybe they could share a
| weather service or even a drone ship fleet for landings, but
| not the core products and their parts.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| For an example of this, see the Parrot VM from the Raku/Perl
| 6 development.
| Kinrany wrote:
| > Would it be better if C, Java and Rust were integrated into
| a single uberlanguage with one central committee to drive
| further development?
|
| Yes!
|
| They need different runtimes, but there's a lot of
| infractructure they could have been reusing. It's a shame we
| have a couple dozen language silos that have to reinvent
| everything.
| hobofan wrote:
| You mean like Rust (and Zig initially) building on top of
| LLVM? Or like the dozen languages that coexist on top of
| the JVM?
|
| Rarely does a new language build everything from scratch,
| and the parts they build new are often progress.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| It seems like ULA's team-up with BO hasn't been going well
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Because there's no ego benefit there.
|
| That's all these companies exist for.
| marcinzm wrote:
| SpaceX is a functioning business that actually launches
| things into space at a lower cost than competitors.
|
| Basically every successful company has a massive amount of
| ego behind it but the question is if they actually achieve
| anything tangible and, eventually, profitable.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" SpaceX is a functioning business that actually launches
| things into space at a lower cost than competitors."_
|
| This might actually lead to a greatly increased risk of
| creating an impenetrable field of space junk if the
| thousands more satellites that SpaceX launches collide in
| to one another.
|
| If that happens expect SpaceX supporters to start singing a
| different tune.
| marcinzm wrote:
| SpaceX is launching its own internet satellites into low
| orbit so their satellites will only burn up in a decade
| without boosting. If your argument is "don't progress or
| change in any way because something bad might happen"
| then I suspect you'll find few takers on this site.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Collisions in LEO launch debris in all orbits, they are
| not limited to LEO. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX
| will turn out to be the reason we won't be able to
| explore space at all for a few hundred years.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Collisions in LEO launch debris in all orbits, they are
| not limited to LEO.
|
| How often? You'd need a pretty lucky collision to knock
| something into a higher stable circular orbit.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Any collision has a chance to knock things at orbital
| speeds in any direction. Anything launched away from the
| earth will be flung towards other orbits at something
| close to the 28,000km/h speeds of LEO.
|
| Here is an article in Nature [0] discussing other risks,
| and mentioning that LEO is already in the early stages of
| Kessler Syndrome, while SpaceX alone is seeking to launch
| as many extra satellites as there are tracked pieces of
| debris already in orbit, with several other companies
| having similar plans. They also mention that debris in
| one orbit can cross to other orbits.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89909-7
| _Microft wrote:
| _> I wouldn 't be surprised if SpaceX will turn out to be
| the reason we won't be able to explore space at all for a
| few hundred years._
|
| You seem to be referring to the Kessler syndrom. If that
| happened, it would not mean that we could not send probes
| to space anymore. It only becomes unviable to have
| satellites at the altitude of the debris field. We could
| still launch through it into higher orbits or onto
| interplanetary trajectories.
| nickik wrote:
| Such complete nonsense. Just admit that you have personal
| problems with those people, because your technical
| arguments are total nonsense.
| [deleted]
| PhileinSophia wrote:
| Because competition is how innovation is born.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Space is expensive. Bezos is pumping 1 billion per year into
| the company and the blue origin proposal was for 13 billion.
| Even for Bezos that's not chump change.
| _Microft wrote:
| Too much money might be part of Blue Origin's problem to
| deliver. SpaceX did not have the luxury to take ages, they
| had to build a working rocket to be able make money or die
| otherwise.
|
| I can only recommend Eric Berger's excellent book "Liftoff"
| to gain insights into SpaceX' way of working to get the
| Falcon 1 rocket off the ground and eventually into orbit. I
| cannot imagine Blue Origin having operated in a similar way
| at any point in their history.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| All the more reason to cooperate and pool resources instead
| of duplicating effort.
| kiba wrote:
| One company works slow, the other company works fast.
| avereveard wrote:
| "Let's pool 9 woman and birth a 14 foot tall baby"
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm not so sure, though. I think there's still an argument
| to be made for multiple approaches and different
| technology, which you're not likely to get if everyone
| works together. I'm not sure that "avoiding a monoculture"
| is important for this sort of thing, but maybe it can't
| hurt?
|
| Another problem when multiple independent orgs pool
| resources and work together is you either end up with
| design-by-committee (which leads to overengineering and
| extra expense, both of which are anti-goals for SpaceX and
| BO), or deadlock when the parties can't agree. And you'd
| better believe personalities like Musk and Bezos would
| clash a _lot_ if they ever did a joint venture on
| something.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" you'd better believe personalities like Musk and Bezos
| would clash a lot if they ever did a joint venture on
| something"_
|
| If they clash a lot it's proof they're not good at
| cooperating.
|
| So maybe the answer is that Musk and Bezos are good at
| competing, but not good at cooperating.
|
| That doesn't mean that cooperation is a losing strategy,
| but just that one has to be good at cooperating in order
| to succeed at it.
| Meandering wrote:
| People like to romanticize market competition as a epic
| battle of great minds and ideas that we all benefit
| from... but, in all honestly, it allows for comparative
| testing of diverse ideas while keeping pricing honest.
| Cooperation might lower the "cost" of producing similar
| products but, then we are producing similar products. A
| major goal of competition is to prevent us from putting
| all our eggs in one basket.
|
| I mean what if all the space companies decided to use one
| company's rocket engine and they failed to delivery...
| adrr wrote:
| It's like an average person spending $1,000 per year for a
| hobby.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| And at 200bb producing 'income' it's hard to grasp how huge
| that is. Even at what in this market is a super
| conservative 5%...
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| What motivation does SpaceX have to cooperate? SpaceX is way
| ahead on any metric that matters. Nothing to gain.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Was this ever about progress? Or ego?
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Blue Origin makes Bezos look like a sad little boy that wants to
| fit in with he big boys but fails miserably. BO feels like a
| cheap SpaceX knock-off. His ride over the Karman line (which they
| tried to point out as the border to to space so bad on their
| channels) really convinced me of that. Bezos lacks a vision for
| space, it's just a hobby for him and he fails at executing the
| Amazon playbook there.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Just keep in mind that there are regular engineers like any of
| us working at Blue Origin and giving their best to achieve
| something, make a living and tackle really hard problems.
|
| Some viewpoints expressed on HN feel like social media fed
| hatred, people often forget that there is a massive army of
| brilliant people doing stuff that most engineers would dream
| of. There are Facebook/Google engineers working on
| advertisement tech and we generally don't scorn at them. Adtech
| is far more "uncool" than space exploration.
|
| I say kudos to Blue Origin to lift a building sized socket up
| to space with humans in it.
| __d wrote:
| I agree that the current fanboi bucketing on Blue Origin is
| dumb, herd-mentality, kicking-the-weakest, bs. People need to
| grow up.
|
| I think it's genuinely interesting to compare two well-
| funded, privately-led space companies and their results. What
| is it that has allowed one to make such substantially better
| progress than the other?
|
| It's clear that SpaceX is a tough place to work, and Musk has
| very high expectations that go well beyond a hard-worked 9-5
| 5 days a week. That said, Amazon is not an easy place to work
| either ... so is Blue Origin a driven workplace culture?
|
| Perhaps it's just that BO got distracted by the sub-orbital
| hop goal, and should have ditched that (like SpaceX and the
| Falcon 1 and Falcon 5) and just gone straight into New Glenn?
| There's something to be said for aiming high.
|
| Perhaps it's just bad luck? BE3 seems ok, but BE4 appears to
| have some issues. Maybe SpaceX got lucky with Raptor? Or
| perhaps the difference is just the staff -- one good hire
| could be the difference between the fairly quick success of
| Raptor vs. the delays with BE4?
|
| Ironic as it is, I will give Musk some credit for keeping his
| ego out of the cockpit. Not that he's short of ego, but (so
| far) he's resisted the urge to launch himself.
| jollybean wrote:
| I actually like the fact there's a review of large, single
| supplier government contracts.
|
| They should do this even without grievances from losing bidders.
| sprkwd wrote:
| Good. They can't have everything. Where would they put it?
| baron816 wrote:
| One thing you have to remember about NASA is that it's packed
| with professional space nerds.
|
| You know what space nerd love? SpaceX. You know what they don't
| love? Blue Origin.
| jakear wrote:
| Between this and JEDI I get the impression Jeff feels he simply
| _deserves_ things, regardless of the established protocols which
| decide he does not, and he's more than willing to take the
| government to court to prove it.
|
| Maybe that's just the kind of attitude it takes to be the richest
| person alive, but it definitely rubs me the wrong way.
|
| Not like he cares who it rubs or in which way, of course.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The Asteroid Wars in 20 or 30 years between Musk and Bezos is
| going to be right out of Ben Bova.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Won't be much of a war if Bezos can't get Blue Origin working.
| They can't operate at 5% of the speed of SpaceX or even 100% of
| the speed of SpaceX. They have to operate _faster_ than SpaceX
| because SpaceX is in the lead.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Or lobby successfully enough to criminalize their
| competition.
|
| With the weight of Amazon on their side, I wouldn't rule that
| path out.
| babesh wrote:
| The US won't allow that for now because of external
| competition from China and Russia. That would result in the
| US losing the current Space Race.
|
| EDIT: Probably India as well
|
| If SpaceX were Russian, Indian, or Chinese, the US would
| shit its pants.
| krapp wrote:
| There is no "current space race" as far as the US is
| concerned. Americans put a man on the moon fifty years
| ago, and no one is worried that China or Russia are going
| to "gain the high ground" and nuke Washington from orbit.
| No one cares.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think you're underestimating things here. These days we
| have two new milestones: a crewed mission to Mars, and a
| permanent moon base. The fervor to get there is of course
| nowhere near what it was like in the 50s and 60s, and I
| probably wouldn't even call this a new "space race", but
| the US doesn't want to look weak in matters like this,
| especially with China's general technological and
| economic rise over the past decades.
|
| I actually think the US hasn't made such a big deal about
| Mars and the moon because they're afraid China will latch
| onto that and make it a big deal, and more likely "win".
| So instead we focus on LEO, ISS, Mars rovers, probes,
| telescopes, etc. And if China does eventually build a
| permanent moon base or get a crew to Mars before the US
| does, the US can claim "cool, good job, but we didn't
| think it was all that important, so we didn't pursue it
| as hard as they did".
|
| (Note that I believe that _Musk_ pushing hard for Mars is
| not the same as _the US_ pushing hard for Mars. The US
| seems more outwardly excited about Musk 's ability to
| cheaply ferry things to and from orbit than anything much
| farther.)
| babesh wrote:
| small satellites, Internet access to remote areas (both
| military and commercial uses), space tourism, space
| habitats, competitors to GPS (both military and
| commercial uses) etc...
| [deleted]
| Applejinx wrote:
| Indeed. Best watch out for Bezos trying to sabotage SpaceX...
| or NASA.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| SpaceX has two tried and tested orbital delivery systems and is
| making its typical iterate-and-explosions progress on a third. It
| is basically the only company doing this.
|
| The idea NASA would plunk down money for imaginary spaceships is
| silly. They have their own one of those already.
| f0xytr0xy wrote:
| Tl;dr: Two billionaires fighting over who gets gifted our tax
| dollars to launch spy satellites.
| FreakyT wrote:
| It's really a shame what has happened to Blue Origin. They've
| gone from a promising space startup to yet another purveyor of
| perpetual vaporware.
|
| Where is the BE-4 engine? Delayed, again and again. New Glenn,
| the rocket that could actually go into orbit? Same. So far their
| only functioning hardware (New Shephard) is, in effect, a
| glorified amusement park ride.
|
| Considering that SpaceX has actually made it to orbit multiple
| times, any rational actor would clearly choose SpaceX over BO.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Slow and steady wins the race. I'm not counting them out, Bezos
| is so immensely wealthy that if he wants Blue Origin to succeed
| then it will succeed.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Slow and steady wins the race against fast and transient,
| not, as SpaceX has been, fast and persistent.
| [deleted]
| chasd00 wrote:
| Slow and steady doesn't work against persistently fast and
| right.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is not really a race, as it does not have a well-defined
| endpoint. Reaching the orbit is just a starting step for some
| other activity and former champions may fall by the wayside
| as decades go by.
|
| Soviets were once in the lead very clearly, Roskosmos lost
| that edge a long time ago.
| adventured wrote:
| > Slow and steady wins the race.
|
| Not if it's a 100m or 200m sprint. Try that and you'll finish
| dead last.
|
| If SpaceX had gone with slow and steady, it would have merely
| given their monopolistic competition - competition
| particularly well connected in DC - that much more time to
| try to wipe them out using their preferred approach of
| avoiding competition via government protection.
|
| Blue Origin may yet make something of itself via slow and
| steady pacing (which Bezos can afford), however it's not
| winning the race.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| That is like saying that the meek shall inherit the earth -
| or what is left of it when the bold have taken all they
| wanted. Slow and steady is just that, slow. There is a place
| for it, e.g. when refining an established practice like
| mining or internal combustion engines. Commercial space
| exploration is a place where rapid advances can be made by
| visionary explorers, only once you can buy an off-the-shelf
| space minivan for the whole family the time has come for
| 'slow and steady'.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It's not like immense wealth hasn't been squandered before.
| bawolff wrote:
| The moral of the tortise and the hare fable is that the hare
| lost because he took breaks. He lost despite having a faster
| top speed not because of it.
| paxys wrote:
| Everything SpaceX is successfully launching today was similarly
| delayed during development. It's too early to write off Blue
| Origin, especially since Bezos _just_ got involved in it full
| time.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tigershark wrote:
| No, it wasn't. Blue origin was founded two years before
| SpaceX. SpaceX in the meantime managed to create the first
| ever reusable commercial rocket, the first ever reusable
| heavy launch vehicle. The first ever commercial manned flight
| for the ISS. And it's well on track to perform an orbital
| test in the next month or two with a fully reusable rocket
| that is using a full flow engine. Seriously, you are trying
| to compare an Australopithecus climbing a tree with an Homo
| sapiens building nuclear weapons.
| archsurface wrote:
| Similarly delayed? The delays are different by over a decade.
| Spacex was attempting orbit in 2006. When will blue origin?
| 2026?
| rnd1 wrote:
| The point of procurement is to procure something.
| mattr47 wrote:
| Bezos was never a scientist, engineer or dreamer. He is an
| entrepreneur, business savvy guy. Its about the dollar for
| him (which I'm not saying is a bad thing), versus for Elon it
| is a dream/passion to get to Mars.
| relativ575 wrote:
| He's always been a big space nerd.
|
| "While at Princeton, Bezos attended O'Neill's seminars and
| ran the campus chapter of "Students for the Exploration and
| Development of Space." Through Blue Origin, which he has
| called his "most important work," Bezos is developing
| detailed plans to realize O'Neill's vision." - [0]
|
| [0] https://www.princeton.edu/news/2021/04/16/documentary-
| featur...
| namelessoracle wrote:
| The kind of guy who saves The Expanse on a whim probably
| does have at least a hobbyist interest in space.
|
| Elon was probably more invested earlier and was paying more
| attention to what was going on is for sure though. Im not
| convinced Bezos personal attention is going to do much to
| help his space company though. Nothing about him seems like
| it would help other than his wealth. And he hasnt shown a
| willingness to throw a significant part of his fortune into
| his space venture. Nothing about this strikes me as
| anything more than what is a hobby that one of the richest
| persons in the world is passionate about
| WalterBright wrote:
| If that was true, Bezos would have sent someone else on the
| test of manned flight rather than risk his own ass.
| Retric wrote:
| Blue Origin was founded in 2000, SpaceX 2002. SpaceX achieved
| orbit in 2008. Blue Origin is still sub orbital yet planning
| on a moon mission.
|
| At this point Bezos might be better off starting over with a
| new team.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| You sound like a Sunday golf narrator.
| craftinator wrote:
| Ah, the context-unaware personal snipe. These flagrant
| and pouty birds spend their days sqawking at other random
| birds in an effort to achieve some kind of short lived
| feeling of superiority. They often go after other birds
| with no regard to the situation at hand, which causes
| their actions to look exceedingly stupid to the casual
| birdwatcher. This behavior is where they get their name,
| as their actions are "context-unaware", and makes them
| very easy to spot.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| >They often go after other birds with no regard to the
| situation at hand, which causes their actions to look
| exceedingly stupid to the casual birdwatcher
|
| ...Yeah not sure you landed that one too smoothly. It's
| healthy to get out more you know?
| starik36 wrote:
| They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the
| first to land vertically. That's not nothing.
|
| BE-4 has been delayed, true, but if it were looking like a
| failure, ULA would have dropped them a long time ago.
|
| I think 2022 will clear up lots of things for everyone.
| SLS, BE-4, New Glenn, etc... Till then there is no sense of
| dooming anything.
| jhgb wrote:
| > New Shepard was the first to land vertically
|
| Apollo LM was the first to land vertically.
|
| > if it were looking like a failure, ULA would have
| dropped them a long time ago
|
| That seems to be assuming that they have a choice. Given
| the fuel difference between AR-1 and BE-4, they've been
| committed to BE-4 for quite some time, no matter how much
| progress BO is doing (or not doing) on BE-4.
| Retric wrote:
| The first soft landing on the moon occurred in 1966.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9
|
| Many rockets did soft landing on earth before that point,
| but none of them had been in space.
| jhgb wrote:
| Sure, if that probe's rather crude landing system is
| enough for you, suit yourself with Luna 9. However, the
| LM landed on its legs in one piece, just like DC-X, New
| Shepard, Grasshopper, and F9 first stage did later.
| xoa wrote:
| > _They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was
| the first to land vertically. That 's not nothing._
|
| Sorry, but the McDonnell Douglas DC-X did the rocket
| straight up & down vertical landing in 1993. New Shepard
| frankly wasn't particularly different. It went higher and
| longer sure, but for orbital rocketry the challenge isn't
| height so much as _speed_ and everything that comes with
| that. The Falcon 9 flight 20 at the end of 2015 that
| marked its first landing was a vastly bigger achievement
| given that it was an orbital class rocket booster. It was
| going much, much faster and had to descend on a much more
| complicated arc through the atmosphere. And it pathfinded
| for actual rapid reuse, which is a whole different set of
| skills. That New Shepard did a suborbital jump a mere one
| month earlier 2015 honestly just isn 't great.
|
| Since then, F9 has done over 100 more flights, to orbit,
| including crewed ones, and set ever growing records on
| cadence, reuse of boosters and refurb speed, satellite
| launch records, etc. NS has done... what? 5 test flights
| over 6 years? Then that silly little PR stunt? It's
| ludicrous. And it's long since stopped serving any useful
| purpose in terms of learning because it avoids so many of
| the true challenges in going orbital which involve 9+km/s
| of delta-v.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > silly little PR stunt
|
| The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. What Bezos
| actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned
| flight of a totally new rocket design. It was a massive
| display of faith in his engineering team.
|
| Musk didn't do that. Branson didn't do that - and earlier
| test pilots of his craft died.
|
| As for the BO rocket being totally automated, that was
| the original intent of the Mercury missions, until the
| astronauts objected. Nobody called them joyriders or
| ludicrous.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Personally, though, I would have taken with me as
| passengers the chief mechanic and the chief engineer,
| just to ensure the rocket works well!
| errantspark wrote:
| One pilot died, the other bailed out successfully.
|
| Branson didn't fly on the first flights because
| SpaceShipTwo is a completely different beast to New
| Shepard. SpaceShipTwo is a pioneering space plane with
| MANUAL controls. New Shepard is basically the absolute
| most boring way you could claim to have "gone to space".
| It's vastly vastly less interesting and ambitious
| compared to what SpaceX and even Virgin Galactic are
| doing.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It didn't have to have manual controls, and in fact the
| fatal accident was caused by moving the wrong control.
|
| Automated controls are _more_ ambitious than manual
| controls. Note that the Apollo 11 was supposed to be
| totally automated, but Armstrong saved the mission by
| overriding it and doing it manually.
|
| > most boring
|
| Well, until the automation goes wrong, then it is briefly
| very exciting.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| Blue's landing is not in the same league as SpaceX's
| orbital re-entry landing
| xgbi wrote:
| > *near-orbital re-entry
|
| The first stage is far from orbital velocities when it
| reaches MECO and starts down, even though I strongly
| agree with you: SpaceX is in an entire other league.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| Blue Origin arguably did the first verticals landing from
| "space" as defined by 100km of altitude in 2015. Though
| the lunar lander is perhaps the more famous vertical
| landing from space in 1969, following earlier soft
| landings like Luna 9 1966, and a lot of earlier VTVL
| rocket research at the time.
|
| SpaceX started on powered decent in 2011 achieving it's
| first landing from an actual orbital space flight in
| 2015. I don't mean to dump on Blue Origin but their
| achievements are really just around the definition of
| space as 100km which is completely arbitrary, their
| effectively just publicity stunts.
|
| It's possible that Blue Origin will create a useful
| system for space exploration, but based on past progress
| their years if not decades from that point.
| [deleted]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Blue Origin is doing non-launch things. They are working on a
| lander system and studying lunar mission concepts at a level of
| seriousness that does deserve some respect.
|
| https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/a-telescope-on...
|
| I appreciate SpaceX's focus and god bless em for what they're
| doing in that sector, but there are other things to space than
| just delivery driving.
| elif wrote:
| Forget orbit, SpaceX has paid for it's ISS contract about 3x in
| savings over Soyuz. Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse
| now.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now.
|
| You're not optimizing for the same outcomes as Congress. NASA
| is a jobs agency.
| Arrath wrote:
| A 'jobs agency' that has produced a whole lot of technical
| advancements, maybe.
| meepmorp wrote:
| I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about Congress,
| the guys with the checkbook. For them, it's a jobs
| program.
|
| They're the next stop for Bezos, btw. This ain't over.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| maybe in the 60s, current NASA is living off past
| accomplishments
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Launch technology isn't the only thing space research and
| exploration is about.
|
| It's an important one for sure! But it's just not true to
| say NASA hasn't accomplished amazing stuff in the last
| decades with the funds and focus they're allocated.
| voidfunc wrote:
| NASA is a taxpayer boondoggle. The faster we can
| transition wasting tax dollars on it to the private
| sector and dismantle the agency the better.
| voxic11 wrote:
| What advancements have its current flagship program (SLS)
| produced? Maybe they do produce some but congress clearly
| wants them to produce jobs not anything else.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You know congress funds a lot more for space than SLS,
| right?
| voxic11 wrote:
| but sls is the program with the most funding currently
| right?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| From 2011:
|
| Robert Siegel: "As NPR's Peter Overby reports, Capitol Hill
| has always been deeply involved in NASA's activities, and
| sometimes seem to regard NASA as a jobs program, as well as
| a space program."
|
| Overby: "This year [2011], according to federal contract
| data, NASA will buy goods and services in 396 of the 435
| congressional districts."
|
| https://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555781/congressional-
| suppo...
|
| From 2019:
|
| "NASA will often highlight the fact that its SLS rocket and
| Orion spacecraft support aerospace suppliers. For example,
| this agency website details the number of suppliers in
| every US state and says, 'Men and women in all 50 states
| are hard at work building NASA's Deep Space Exploration
| Systems to support missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.'
| There are 106 suppliers in Alabama, alone, according to
| NASA's site."
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/an-alabama-
| represent...
| usehackernews wrote:
| BO didn't want to replace SpaceX. That's not what this is
| about.
|
| BO said historically NASA gives contracts to multiple
| companies, and BO wanted funding too (in addition to SpaceX.
|
| BO "argued that the agency was required to make multiple
| awards" because it had previously stated a preference for
| multiple awards"
| elif wrote:
| BO wanted 10B compared to SpaceX's 2.7B.
|
| They also got court injunctions preventing SpaceX from
| starting it's program, kinda deflating your whole 'just
| wanted to play along' narrative
| skissane wrote:
| > They also got court injunctions preventing SpaceX from
| starting it's program
|
| Not strictly speaking a "court injunction", a "stop work
| order" from GAO (which isn't a court).
|
| And it is debatable whether it actually stopped SpaceX
| from working on anything.
| jve wrote:
| > Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now
|
| I don't think SpaceX would be as strong if not that early
| NASA funding. "SpaceX contracted with the US government for a
| portion of the development funding for the Falcon 9 launch
| vehicle, which uses a modified version of the Merlin rocket
| engine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX
|
| So by your thinking, they could have only invested in old-
| school-reliable-expensive rocket companies, because less risk
| is involved...
|
| So funding a space company that doesn't yet have required
| capability but can be helped to get there - is not dumb.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Or maybe they (correctly) assessed that SpaceX was actually
| able to deliver on its promises and Blue Origin is not.
| yborg wrote:
| It's telling that Bezos has chosen to take this fight to
| Washington DC - his only real hope is to kneecap SpaceX
| politically. It's not that Blue Origin lacks engineering know-
| how, it's that they brought in a ULA executive to run things
| and so he's running the ULA playbook - maximize profits by
| delaying things indefinitely to keep that taxpayer money
| flowing. Blue Origin wants SpaceX to play by its rules and slow
| to a crawl so they can compete. Elon Musk, for all his faults,
| wants to accomplish something and is personally driving things
| to get that done and is unwilling to settle for vanity wins and
| big talk to impress fellow billionaires at Davos. Unless Jeff
| can convince Elon to focus on salad fights over how high is up
| I'd say this competition is long over.
| jccooper wrote:
| Blue Origin isn't vaporware. They have engines, they have
| rocket bodies, they have tooling, etc.
|
| But they are, apparently, firmly in development hell, with no
| public indication of trying to change that.
| nickik wrote:
| The definition of vapoware is things that are delayed
| continously after they should have been released.
|
| The BE-4 fits into that.
| completelylegit wrote:
| vaporware is a product that has been announced but never
| materializes.
| voakbasda wrote:
| A project is not vaporware until it gets canceled without
| delivering.
| jhgb wrote:
| Wikipedia: "announced to the general public but is late
| or never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled"
|
| Is official cancellation necessary?
| squarefoot wrote:
| The point is that Blue Origin isn't going to have anything
| ready by 2023 which is the year the crewed Artemis 2 mission
| should get the go. They might not be vaporware, but they're
| still several years behind SpaceX.
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