The Bezos Sub-Orbital Flight Is Just an Uber Expensive E-Ticket Theme Park Ride.

[MineralMan]

Nothing more. Nothing new was learned that wasn't learned in 1961. Well, maybe we learned that obscenely rich folks will pay huge bucks for a 15-minute thrill ride.

Bezos got his ride into almost space. But, nothing was accomplished here. It's not a first step into the commercialization of space, even. It's just a very costly stunt. There's no potential value in sub-orbital flights. None. It's not a prelude into settling on another planet, mining asteroids, or even toward terraforming Mars. It's just a freaking stunt.

[MineralMan]

1. It reminds me of a new multi-millionaire buying a Lamborghini.

The next news story is about that rich asshole crashing his Lamborghini into a light pole on Mulholland Drive.

Now, it would be thrilling to drive such a car. I'd love to do it. But, stupid people buy them, get scared by them, and park them in a storage garage. You won't see one with 100,000 miles on the odometer. They are cars rich people by for the lulz of owning one.

Getting your Bezos Astronaut Pin is just like that.

[Dial H For Hero]

5. And buying a Lamborghini is bad....why?

I fully agree that his rocket is a (really cool) carnival ride. If he wants to spend millions for the world's most expensive E-ticket....

Shrug.

[MineralMan]

17. In itself, it's not bad. I understand the motivation.

However, too often, people buy such things as a symbol of their wealth and manhood. Such people often crash such cars, which is a waste of a nice piece of engineering.

[LiberatedUSA]

69. And they don't get lessons first.

That is the big mistake. I have never driven a super car, but I understand that you don’t just get behind the wheel and expect to drive like you would any other vehicle.

Get in it, hit the pedal, lose control and crash.

[MineralMan]

70. Sadly, that happens all too often.

The only good thing is that it means not paying for hugely expensive repairs during ownership of a Lamborghini, one of the least reliable automobiles you can buy.

The same thing happens a lot with superbike motorcycles. Some guy buys one with little motorcycle experience and crashes it within a month, often with fatal results.

People are often not very smart with their decisions about stuff.

[Dial H For Hero]

71. I recently purchased a Porsche Boxster S. It's fast, but it comes nowhere near supercar territory.

I would be very hesitant to drive anything capable of going 0-60 in 3 seconds with anything but the lightest of touches to the throttle.

[MineralMan]

73. Yeah, that's not a supercar. It's a fun car, though.

Those supercars are really just Le Mans cars, detuned just enough to make them street legal. In inexperienced hands, they can become lethal weapons almost instantly. Since there are no public roads suitable for driving them anywhere near their limits, a lot of owners get themselves into trouble right away.

What is really needed for people who buy such cars is a track-based race training course that can help owners understand the capabilities and limitations of their new vehicle. Even then, though, they are just big, powerful toys that are unsuitable for normal public roads and highways. I give supercars a wide berth when I encounter them on the road.

Which doesn't mean that I wouldn't love to drive one on a racetrack. I would dearly love to do that, but never will have such an opportunity. Back in my youthful days, I did race in SCCA races with my H-production Austin Healey Sprite. That was a blast, and pretty safe, given the limited capabilities of that car.

[brooklynite]

2. The first commercial flight was in 1914

Someone paid $10,000 (in today’s dollars) fir a 23 minute flight.

Think it’ll ever catch on?

[The Magistrate]

9. Still Basically A Thrill Ride, Sir

It is an interesting patch, though.

https://www.space.com/16657-worlds-first-commercial-airline-the-greatest-moments-in-flight.html

You didn't get anything that could seriously be called commercial aviation till after the Great War, with aeroplanes based on large bombing machines.





This is a Vimy Commercial, outside and in.

One of the largest orders for this machine was from China. The agent Was Cecil Lewis, a war-time flier and excellent writer. Oddly enough, a number of these Commercials in China were later fitted out as bombers, in service of, if recollection serves, Chang Tso-Lin, the war lord over Manchuria.

[brooklynite]

10. And those flight charged the equivalent of First Class today....

just a thrill-ride for the wealthy.

[The Magistrate]

11. I Fail To See Your Point, Sir

I enjoyed an amusement park as much as anyone when a boy. Roller-coasters were quite a thrill. But that's all they were.

This will not lead anywhere. There is no need this serves, nor is it likely one can be created for it to serve. Not of any commercial scale anyway.

I don't mind what the man does with his money. It's his. The problem isn't that he spends his money on this, it is that he has so much of it to spend in the first place. What does rub a lot of people raw is the frivolousness of the expenditure

[USALiberal]

52. Not a shock! Nt

Y

[Treefrog]

25. Lol, true enough.

I don’t care about the thrill, but first or business is the only way to fly.

[brooklynite]

34. Them's fighting words here...

I agree (flying Delta One to Rome in September), but I'm already lost.....

[Dial H For Hero]

37. Flying in the Qatar Airlines Q-Suite to Thailand in a couple of weeks. Japan Airlines business

class on the way back.

I haven't flown the Delta One suite yet, it looks quite nice!

[Treefrog]

40. My cousin has flown with them in business. I'd love to!

I’m still a bit leery of flying at this point.

Enjoy! You’ll have a blast!

[Dial H For Hero]

48. Thanks, looking forward to it!

[brooklynite]

45. In 2019, I was flying Emirates Business to Dubai...

…and was asked if I could delay my trip for 24 hours, in which case they would have flown me First Class. Sadly I couldn’t.

[Dial H For Hero]

47. Emirates First Class is about as over the top luxurious as it gets, from what I've read.

So far, I've flown first class on Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, and ANA.

[Treefrog]

49. Another fantastic airline.

It’s worth it just for the airport lounges lol!

[Treefrog]

39. Lol!

So true!

[Dial H For Hero]

38. You've got that right!

[Silent3]

57. I've only flown business class a couple of times, first class never

Once for business class when it was the only flight left available, once when I was bumped up for free.

Sure, it's nice and more comfortable, especially considering how cramped economy class has become. But I've never though a mere few hours of extra comfort was worth the extra cost, especially the usually enormous extra cost of first class.

[Dial H For Hero]

60. I never pay the cash price for a business or first class ticket. I could never afford it.

I’m a points hacker. The airfare for my upcoming trip to Thailand on Qatar Airlines in business class has a one way is over $8K, but my cost is around $500 and a bunch of points.

Given that I’ll be in the air for 22 hours, I’m very glad I’m able to do so!

[Silent3]

61. If I flew a lot and got points that way, sure

But I'm an infrequent flier, so that's not gonna happen!

[Dial H For Hero]

62. Well, I also have almost 20 credit cards.

I'm constantly opening and closing them just to get the signup bonuses. I also always use the proper credit card when making purchases (many of them earn lots of extra points). The trick, of course, is not to carry a balance on any of them.

[lame54]

30. Are you suggesting that soon space will be filled with...

Skyscraper sized penises?

[brooklynite]

33. Multiple shapes of aircraft; multiple shapes of spacecraft

And in the next 50 years, space travel within the Earth/Moon/Mars orbit will be significantly greater.

Do you disagree?

[MrsCoffee]

3. He donated 10 billion to Earth Fund but mostly agrees with critics.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/19/media/jeff-bezos-space-reliable-sources/index.html

Bezos says critics are 'largely right'

Earlier in the day, during an interview that aired on "New Day," Crane asked Bezos, "There have been a chorus of critics saying that these flights to space are, you know, just joyrides for the wealthy, and that you should be spending your time and your money and energy trying to solve problems here on Earth. So what do you say to those critics?"

Bezos didn't tap dance around the question: He said, "Well, I say they're largely right. We have to do both. You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We've always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both." He said this mission is about "building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there, and those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth."

[DinahMoeHum]

4. Yep, it's nothing more than a. . .

. . .cock-wagging contest between billionaires.

It's not even feasible as freight delivery for earthly purposes. Freight is considered an expense in the logistics business, and this type would be beyond expensive.

[Klaralven]

6. The technical achievement, to the extent there is one, seems to be reusable vehicles.

SpaceX and Blue Origin have both mastered the ability to return first stage vehicles to earth such that they can be refurbished and reused.

A major expense in spaceflight has been the expendable hardware required for each flight. Even in the shuttle program, the solid fuel boosters and the huge fuel tank attached to the shuttle were discarded. The shuttle consisted of the crew compartment, cargo bay, and main engines for reuse.

However, it will never be inexpensive, since over 8 pounds of fuel are required to lift 1 pound into near-earth orbit. That's a approximately 17,000 mph orbit, and more fuel is required to accelerate to above the 25,000 mph escape velocity for interplanetary travel.

[jmowreader]

12. The boosters were also reusable

The tanks were single-use items, largely because they were about as thick as a cola can and crumpled when the fuel ran out. But the boosters? You separate the booster into its sections, install one new NASA Standard Igniter and four new Thiokol fuel grains, then bolt it back together with new O-rings and it’s ready to fly again.

[Johonny]

77. This isn't true

The shuttle was so expensive because they were launching mostly dead weight into space needed to return it. The space shuttle is not a good example, it's reusability made it so expensive.

The major expense is the payload. The launch vehicle isn't nearly as valuable or expensive to produce. Launch vehicles cost millions, payloads cost billions. The thing on top of the rocket is the product. (For small satellites the launch vehicle is more a major expense, but these are big rockets they're making). For a launch vehicle reliability is more valuable than reuse. However, SPACEX is showing it can reuse and have high reliability. This will reduce costs, however, the payload is still vastly more valuable and they're still almost all single use.

[tinrobot]

7. The technology is better than 1961 for a number of reasons.

It's more efficient, reuseable, the rocket can land itself, plus more. The technology is not the problem here.

The problem is that Bezos used that technology to build a rocket shaped like a big penis so he can prove he has one. That's a waste.

[Shellback Squid]

8. Stephenson's Rocket

"Stephenson's Rocket is an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), held in October 1829 to show that improved locomotives would be more efficient than stationary steam engines.[4]

Rocket was designed by Robert Stephenson in 1829, and built at the Forth Street Works of his company in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Though Rocket was not the first steam locomotive, it was the first to bring together several innovations to produce the most advanced locomotive of its day. It is the most famous example of an evolving design of locomotives by Stephenson that became the template for most steam engines in the following 150 years.

The locomotive was preserved and displayed in the Science Museum in London until 2018. It is now on display at the National Railway Museum in York. "
Wikipedia

another wealthy folly

[The Magistrate]

13. Not At All, Sir

It laid the ground for revolutionary change in the transport of bulk goods. It was of tremendous consequence that haulage over land could compete in cost and scale with transport by water. It altered the very shape of human geography. Nor was this an un-looked for consequence --- it was the intent of the designer and his customers.

[Shellback Squid]

42. sorry, left off the sarcasm emoji, I agree with you 100%

it's a start and this may or will be the next industrial revolution

[The Magistrate]

44. Stephenson's Was, Sir

I doubt this present business will lead to anything of comparable scale.

[hunter]

14. The engine designs for these rockets are innovative.

Previously everyone was using Cold War era technologies -- throw away rocket engines originally designed for one-time use on nuclear missiles.

For a time there were many surplus Soviet missile engines that were sold to other nations including the U.S.A.

The Space Shuttle main engines were designed to be reusable. It didn't quite work out that way. Reusing these engines was costly, essentially becoming a complete rebuild.

Remaining RS-25 shuttle engines will be used up in expendable rockets. After that new engines of this design will be built for one-time use, omitting features that were supposed to make the original RS-25 engines reusable.

These billionaire rocket men have developed engines that are reusable and have repeatedly demonstrated reuse. This is an important technological development.

Other than that, I don't think humans will ever have a significant presence in space beyond lower earth orbit. We're just too damned fragile and too dependent on earth's natural environment. Our robots can do a far more sophisticated job of space exploration than any clumsy human in a space suit ever could.

[mathematic]

15. Is graduating high school a waste of time because "nothing new was learned"?

No, because that student learned things that were new to them.

The people that made the rockets in '61 are dead or retired. They're not making new rockets. The knowledge and practice to launch people into space is not something inherently in our genes, passed along from generation to generation. We must continue to learn the things we know.

[MineralMan]

21. Not equivalent in any way.

The lessons learned back in 1961 are now part of an entire industry that has developed around space missions.

Bezos and Branson used those lessons to redo what was done 60 years ago. That is not a huge accomplishment, nor does it contribute to future advances.

Both flights were just amusement park rides for the extremely wealthy. I can't really celebrate such excesses.

[mathematic]

23. This IS that industy

You've gone and missed the main point I was making. The things done 60 years ago were done by different people that are no longer doing those things. The people that learned those lessons 50-60 years ago aren't working. The people they taught those lessons to aren't working. Knowledge can be lost.

The space shuttle was designed in the 70s. All those people retired. To say that we can just create another crewed rocket because we did it 40 years ago is ridiculous. Technology changes, materials change, tools change, and the engineers working on it are all different.

How can you even say "lessons learned" if we're not designing and building new manned space vehicles? How do you know they were learned? A few space companies launch into space and it's suddenly a waste and not a demonstration that, yes, indeed, knowledge has been successfully passed down to another generation of engineers?

[BeckyDem]

16. Yep.

I like his ex-wife.

Link to tweet

[MineralMan]

18. I agree.

If a person amasses huge wealth, the proper thing to do with it is something that benefits others who do not have that advantage.

I'm talking about enormous wealth, of course, not modest acquired wealth created by hard work and thrift. I am one of the beneficiaries of a family trust built on those two things. However, my benefit is in just the mid six figures, not in billions or even a single million. Still, some of what I inherited will go to charity, with the rest used to help secure my future and that of my wife, however long that lasts. I'm almost 76 years old. The other beneficiary is my year-younger sister, whose Alzheimer's disease now requires almost full-time professional care. Her benefit will ensure that she has that.

[BeckyDem]

19. +1. That is wonderful.

[Treefrog]

26. Yes, it sounds that you and I had similar type parents.

I’d give everything I inherited back to have them here again though.

I’m sure you would too. As the saying goes, they don’t make them like that anymore.

[MineralMan]

28. Yes. Exactly.

[brooklynite]

46. And what is the threshold for "modest acquired wealth by hard work and thrift"?

I fear I won’t meet your exacting standards.

[MineralMan]

50. I have no numbers to offer, actually.

Last edited Wed Jul 21, 2021, 09:54 AM - Edit history (1)

I know exactly what my late parents' assets were. While they were substantial from my point of view and from my sister's point of view, they were finite and limited. At the estate's executor and trustee, I'm nearly at the point where all assets have been captured and distributed to their estate's beneficiaries. In toto, they amounted to just into 7 figures. Several beneficiaries received fixed amounts. I and my sister divided the rest equally.

The result is that I and my wife are now out of debt altogether, with enough left to pad our retirement incomes for a decade or so, as long as we live frugally. We bought a house at the bottom of the housing market, which will be partly offset by selling our previous home, which is also at the bottom of that market here. No vacation home. No fancy car. No frills. We just get to relax a little in our 70s. That's all.

My sister's health care needs will be met for however long Alzheimer's lets her live.

That's it. That's what I meant. We're not wealthy now, but we weren't before, either. We're just a little more secure.

[brooklynite]

65. I never inherited anything...

My wife has been a very successful lawyer; I've worked for the Government for the last 30 years. We've avoided the expense of children, paid off all of our loans and mortgages and invested responsibly. The result is a net worth that many people here would consider unacceptable.

My issue with these threads is the generic categorizing of wealthy people as obviously earning off underpayed employees.

[MineralMan]

66. That's nice.

Glad to hear it.

However, I don't believe I said a word about underpaid employees in my OP. In fact, I regularly defend Amazon on their employee pay scale and the energy savings involved through online retailing.

I just don't find space tourism to be of any value. I think it's only there because Jeff Bezos and Branson wanted to fly outside of the atmosphere and take other wealthy people on similar trips. That's what I said in my OP. I also said that what they did does not benefit the overall exploration of space much at all. Elon Musk's space ventures, on the other hand, are already delivering stuff to the ISS, and also use recoverable equipment. He should be praised for doing something useful with his space efforts.

[Marrah_Goodman]

20. I just snoozed MSNBC for the first time ever

Sick of the constant fawning over there billionaire assholes.

[48656c6c6f20]

22. With all the hate towards Bezos I was expecting

This press conference showing a man eating babies while throwing people into a wood chipper.
So to my surprise he seems like a decent, Extremely rich man. With faults and dreams. Good for him on what he did.

[Blue_true]

43. He is perusing something that he loves.

I would guess that it isn’t his primary goal, but success will make him astoundingly rich. But the technology that he is working on now can one day be applied to everything form fixing satellites in Space to climate control - the possibilities are massive and of great importance to the world at large.

[LanternWaste]

24. Cool story, bruh.

Stained glass lies
Colored shards of broken truth
Puzzle pieces arranged in
Sanctimonious expression
Designed to camouflage falsehoods
The perjury of Priests
Disguised...

[Treefrog]

27. Stained glass is beautiful, tells many stories, graces many ancient buildings.

And lasts for eons.

Nice poem though.

[MineralMan]

32. Nihilism isn't my bag, bruh..m

[USALiberal]

53. Fix your quote! Nt

[Liberal In Texas]

29. What an ignorant thing to say. You don't know what you're talking about.

I guess from your perspective a rocket went up and a rocket came down so this means this is just like 19i61. It didn't even dock at the space station so it must not be any good.

Did you even see the booster making a pinpoint vertical landing? I don't remember anything like that in 1961. Also this system is designed to be autonomous, there is no pilot aboard. Not possible in 1961 because the computers were worse than your phone today. And the system is reusable over and over.

Bezos has hired hundreds of the best and brightest aerospace engineers, scientists and designers over the last 16 years. Many of them hired away from NASA. The difference is like the difference between a 1961 Chevy Impala and a 2022 Chevy Corvette or a Tesla.

Yes, Bezos is going to initially concentrate on space tourism. Should he and other billionaires be paying more in taxes? That can all be debated but that isn't what this is about.

This, like any test of a new system is baby steps. Blue Origin isn't stopping with this. There are plans to return to the moon partnered with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draperto produce a Human Landing System for NASA's Artemis program.

Blue Origin, as prime contractor, leads the program management, systems engineering, safety and mission assurance, and mission engineering while providing the Descent Element (DE) that is based on the multi-year development of the Blue Moon lunar lander and its BE-7 engine. (This paragraph from their website.)

Like it or not, our government has squeezed NASA funding and has expected private industry to pick up the slack. This is just one element of that. Already we see that Space X will be shuttling to the ISS so we don't have to rely on our enemies to get us there and back.

[brooklynite]

35. No point trying to make a counter-argument...

Virtuous resentment is the only acceptable position.

[Blue_true]

41. Routine Space travel into Earth orbit is where commercial air flight was

just after air flights started flying more than one paying passenger. Air travel then was for the wealthy, occasionally a servant was brought along.

What Bezos is doing is no different from what the people that worked on the first big screen tv or the first personal computer did. The first offerings were super expensive and available only to people that had money to spare, now a person can buy a good big screen tv or laptop for a couple hundred bucks.

Once the early development yields advances, everyday people will be taking tours of Space, and spacecraft will be capable of tracking down and fixing satellites in Space, a process that is worth huge money.

Bezos is doing something that interests him, but if he succeeds, he will become even more massively rich (often, to get rich simply involves having a real interest in doing something better, I know there are those that sneer at such a sentiment, but not all people that became super rich started what they did to get super rich).

[EX500rider]

87. Exactly

According to a study by Compass Lexecon, commissioned by Airlines for America, the average flight from L.A. to Boston in 1941 was worth $4,539.24 per person in today’s money, and it would have taken 15 hours and 15 minutes with 12 stops along the way. By comparison, a nonstop flight in 2015 would cost $480.89 and take only six hours. Thanks to intensifying low-cost competition, we can find airfares as cheap as $283 today.

[Blue_true]

88. A lot of people hate Bezos. I don't.

He has proven himself to be forward looking and has shown that he can map a path to what he envisions. If he develops tour Space flights and charge $100 per head and only get 1% of the now 7 billion people on Earth to buy those tours, the amount of money taken in is staggering.

I seriously doubt that Bezos believes that he will be alive long enough to see the above come to fruition, but that would put him into the same position that innovators throughout history have been in.

[Bettie]

31. Billionaire Cosplay

Think about how much they will make taking other cosplaying dilettantes on their expensive carnival rides where they can pretend they are astronauts.

[Blue_true]

36. Like it or not, it is basic science.

When commercial air flight initially started out, it was exclusively for the rich. Today, unless a person flies First Class or Business Class, air flights are nothing more than packed buses in the sky.

The time will come when everyday people are heading off to Space tours. The only question is how long that will take.

[MineralMan]

51. Well, despite my fascination with space, I have no desire to

go there at all. I'm not sure how many "everyday people" aspire to fly into space, actually. I suspect it's a very small percentage. Vanishingly small, really.

The essential problem with commonplace, affordable space travel is purely physical. It takes a great deal of energy to lift payloads outside of Earth's atmosphere, and even more energy to achieve orbital velocities. There is also the problem of there being no breathable atmosphere outside of whatever vessel you are in.

What that means is that space travel will always be very, very expensive. The more people you take into space on one trip, the more energy is required to boost the load into space. There is no way to lower that cost. So, no matter how much time passes, the laws of physics will not change.

Commercial air travel is certainly affordable, but only because it occurs in the atmosphere, so oxygen is available to support the combustion required to sustain flight. Also, the presence of an atmosphere creates an aerodynamic environment that allows aircraft to fly. In space, neither of those things exist.

You won't be taking a nice trip into space anytime soon, I guarantee, unless you have millions in your bank accounts.

[Silent3]

58. I expect that someday the cost of energy itself will go way down

How soon that will be, who knows. But on our way out of dependence on fossil fuels I'd say it's likely the technology will come along for generating very cheap clean energy.

Before that happens, I wouldn't want lots of people flying into space simply because the environmental impact would be horrible using today's technology.

[MineralMan]

59. Really? What do you think will drive those costs down?

I'm not seeing any mechanism that will do that. And that's especially true for launching things into space. Reaching even orbital velocity is a real challenge that I can't see being met by any propulsion method other than burning things very quickly and in large quantities. The thrust requirements to accelerate to orbital velocities are quite high. That's especially true if you're planning to transport fragile living things into orbit without subjecting them to lethal G-forces. Superconducting magnetic launch systems have been proposed, but would require excessive accelerations that would kill any living thing aboard in the short distances such technology would use to achieve orbital velocity. Never mind the heat issues of pushing something to those speeds within the atmosphere.

Physics. It's a real thing.

[Silent3]

63. Even if you're just "burning things very quickly and in large quantities", what's most important...

...is the cost (both financial and environmental) of creating that fuel.

Hydrogen fuel is, after all, just an energy transport mechanism for us, not an energy source, not having a lot of free hydrogen on this planet. But if there's a really cheap clean energy source in our future, even if it's big and bulky and earth-bound, that source could be used to turn water into very cheap hydrogen and oxygen for traditional rocket fuel.

At any rate, it's not a denial of physics to simply allow for the fact that there will almost certainly be future technology that neither of us can imagine right now.

It's never good to be such a technological optimist that you're depending on unknown future technology to make things better. But I'm not making any decisions now that depend on any of this. I'm just saying it's not smart to rule out things we can't fully imagine yet.

The future (if we don't fuck up the planet so much we collapse civilization -- possibly a big "if&quot is almost certainly going to have a lot of amazing technology we can't imagine now, even some we might not grasp the basic principles of yet.

[Blue_true]

82. Technological optimists don't depend on an unknown future technology.

They develop those future technologies via the interactive processes that define Science and Engineering. That was the point that I tried to make about what Bezos is likely doing. He knows that $23 million dollar Space rides are ridiculous, but there was a time when people said the same thing about technologies and products that are commonplace and cheap today.

[Silent3]

100. By "technological optimist" I'm not talking about people actively working...

...on developing future technology. The term "technological optimism" usually connotes a passive belief that future technology will somehow make things work out for the better.

[Blue_true]

101. Okay, I understand now. nt

[Blue_true]

81. Another force would allow all the poster mentioned to happen.

There are many holes in the theory about how our solar system, galaxy, other galaxies, our universe and other universes work.

To give one example. The theory of hoe Venus got a retrograde spin is that planet suffered many violent collisions that somehow caused that planet to first stop spinning prograde, then develop a retrograde spin that is very close to the prograde spin of Earth (the Venusian day is close to the Earth day in hours, those two planets are also close in size). When I try to analyze all the particulars, I have a problem accepting the dominant theory on how Venus got it spin, the theory just doesn’t make physical sense in the absolute. But, basing a theory on an as yet unmapped force, one can explain how and why Venus spins the way it does and why it is located where it orbits the Sun.

[Blue_true]

79. Space will one day be much cheaper to go to.

Technological advances will do that, as well as make it possible for people on tools to breath and even walk about the craft comfortably.

I am one of the people who envision that there is an as yet undefined force that once scientists understand how to simulate it, will make routine Space travel an everyday affair, and allow organizations like NASA to send spacecraft to nearby star systems and beyond, at speeds that we can’t fathom at this point.

[The Magistrate]

56. From 1957, Sir

[Blue_true]

83. The Moon was reached about a decade later, Sir.

The issue is that making travel to the Moon commonplace hasn’t happened yet. Personally, I would rather see us focus on how to get to the nearest planet that may have human-like life that go to the Moon again. But getting to the Moon is far easier than getting to another star system.

[The Magistrate]

86. The Suggestion Was Obvious, Sir

Don't try and pretend you don't understand the message of the advertisement. The message conveyed was regular travel, and in both figures' lifetimes. Not a brief visit in a container little larger than the men it carried. Rest assured that is the meaning every young person who saw that, and a good many adults who did as well, took from it.


"I should like to take you seriously, but doing so would affront your intelligence."

[Happy Hoosier]

54. You are wrong.

It is a stepping stone to cheaper, safer, more efficient orbital transport.

As someone who works in aerospace R&D I can say unequivocally that you are out of your depth here.

I quite often agree with you, but you are dead wrong here.

[MineralMan]

55. We shall see. A good question is: How much orbital transport do we need?

How do the economic numbers work out for that? What will be transported, and at what cost per ton?

On a cost basis, container ships are the most efficient for international and global shipping. They're slow, but the cost of transport is relatively low. Air transport, the only real alternative for that kind of transportation of goods, costs far more. What goods are going to be transported by orbital means?

You may be closer to the aerospace industry than I am, but your view may well be restricted because of that.

Transport costs money. All transport costs money. Orbital transport is, and will be, far more expensive than other forms of transport. So, where is the economical information?

[Happy Hoosier]

64. Some people thought air transport would never be practical.

Or cars, or trains.

Do you remember when "air mail" was expensive, and you had to write air mail letters on special light-weight paper?

And orbital transport is the ONLY way to service satellites, or orbital space stations.

Of course, some developmental efforts do not bear fruit. But many do, and exploring those pathways tends to have benefits even if they don't pan out. I worked on a system 20 years ago they didn't turn out to be practical. BUT, many parts of that system were reused and further developed and are in use today.

In my view, your post is motivated by disdain for Bezos, not an honest assessment of the development of this technology.

[The Magistrate]

67. One Of The Key Points, Sir

Is that devotees of those technologies consistently over-rated what they could achieve, at the present state of the art, or in the near future. This is particularly marked in aviation. For one example, there was in England in 1918 a serious proposal, backed by major industrial effort and manpower commitment, that an aerial offensive against Germany would do such harm to production and morale that it would bring the war to a conclusion. Hundreds of aeroplanes, thousands of personnel, were fielded as the 'Independent Air Force' for this purpose. Its actual effect on the German war effort was undetectable. This is just one item, others could be adduced. People of an age to remember when air mail was written on lightweight paper tend to have recollection of these over-blown predictions and promises as well, and in consequence often turn a jaundiced eye towards such predictions and promises in the present day.

[Happy Hoosier]

68. So our reach sometimes exceeds our grasp. So the fuck what?

Yes, sometimes reality falls short of our most optimistic goals. SO. WHAT? I often set goals I don't quite reach. That doesn't mean the effort was in vain!

Modern air transport has completed transformed our economy,. There is simply no denying that. I have been to Europe many times in my life both for work and pleasure. Would that have been possible if transport to Europe was limited to two week ocean crossings on a ship? Of course not.

The freaking luddites here are infuriating. It's positively preposterous.

[The Magistrate]

72. The High End Liners Were Quicker Than Two Weeks, Sir

Five days or so, on the Queen Mary, for example. It might be instructive to compare the volume of freight shipped by ocean and by rail and river and canal with that shipped by air.

No one I have seen is engaged in Luddism, no one is objecting to utilization of space and the equipment necessary to it. Speaking for myself, the hype annoys me. Neither Branson nor Bezos have really plowed new ground selling tickets to brief sub-orbital flights. Nor do I consider it something special that it is private, not public capital, which has financed this. Those men are working from a foundation laid by public money. If you are under the impression the development of commercial aviation and the aviation industry as a whole was an achievement of private enterprise alone, I would recommend looking into the matter a bit more closely.

[Happy Hoosier]

74. You are hearing but not listening.

Not many of us have ten days to JUST do ocean crossings.

Yes, ocean transport has not been replaced by air transport. But care to compare passenger transportation by air versus ship? I don't mean pleasure cruises, I mean point to point transport. C'mon... you KNOW better than to make that weak-sauce argument.

And yes, of course those men are building on things done with public funds. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I'd argue that a LOT of basic research should be publicly funded with the goal of spurring commercial developments.

As a reminder, I am IN this business. In fact, most of the R&D I do is on the public dime and for the use of government.... and some of those things lead to commercial development as well. GPS, for example, is a government system, developed by and paid for by the government. Yet it is now used commercially all over the world.

And here's a little secret.... some of those commercial developments have worked their way back into systems used by the government.

So while I appreciate your condescending "recommendation," I assure you I am extremely well informed on the subject.

[The Magistrate]

76. The Same, Sir, Could Be Said Of You

You seem to be suggesting public investment ought to facilitate private profit. There we would seem to have a profound disagreement. Being in the business may give you a blinkered vision, rather than a wide view. You do not seem to understand how the thing looks from the outside.

Condescension, by the way, can be provided on request. Nothing you have said so far suggests you have any great grasp of the foundational period of the air age.



On review of your comment.

Your statement was 'Modern air transport has completed transformed our economy'. That would be, I think, generally understood as reference to movement of freight, not persons. Rapid movement of a few people for face to face encounters seems a bit short of revolutionary economic transformation. Now the first undersea telegraph cables did revolutionize economic life, enabling quick response to market conditions on a global scale.

[EX500rider]

89. "Rapid movement of a few people" A "few people"?

According to ICAO's preliminary compilation of annual global statistics, the total number of passengers carried on scheduled services rose to 4.3 billion in 2018, which is 6.4 per cent higher than the previous year, while the number of departures reached 37.8 million in 2018, a 3.5 per cent increase.
What % of those were business travelers?
Even air freight is fairly substantial.
Approximately 56 million tonnes of freight were carried in 2017.

[The Magistrate]

93. Eight Billion Tonnes By Sea In 2008, Sir

It will certainly have increased; it rises on average three or four percent a year. In a typical year, one billion, seven hundred million tonnes of freight moves by rail in just the United States.

Your figure is the number of seats filled by a passenger on a flight in the course of a year, but not the number of people who are passengers on any flight in the course of a year. The latter must be considerably less than the former, for most people who fly somewhere fly back home, and a good many people fly often, whether for business or pleasure. It is worth noting that something on the order of a billion excursions by automobile are taken daily in the United States alone.

As a conveyance of freight or persons, aircraft are a minor factor. The advantages of aircraft consist in speedy conveyance of small loads over a good distance, whether these be freight or persons. It is a luxury trade, not a staple trade.

[Dial H For Hero]

95. An example: During the 1990 Gulf War, the vast majority of US equipment got there by sea.

We were able to send a relatively small number of troops and their equipment in the first few weeks, but even with almost the entire Air Force providing round the clock transport, something like 90% of our stuff got there by sea (millions of tons of fuel alone).

Aircraft can transport a quick reaction force. Armies require sealift.

[The Magistrate]

96. Indeed, Sir --- A Question Of Scale

And it can matter that a small force can arrive quickly, and that is something that does require aircraft. It is a valuable capability.

[brooklynite]

92. Passenger air travel has given people the opportunity to experience the world outside their bubble...

Yes, they could stay at home and read. National Geographic or go to a Worlds Fair and see an ersatz representation of other countries and cultures (approved by their Governments), but nothing will replace travel to India to see how 1/7 of the worlds population actually lives, or to Syria to see how Romano and early Christian societies evolved.

That capability came with the development of larger passenger aircraft, which required profits from wealthy people on smaller planes to fund the R&D needed for expansion.

[The Magistrate]

94. All Very Nice, Sir

I have traveled a good deal myself, and have nothing against it. Nor do I have any objection to marketing towards wealthy individuals. None of this establishes that there was any great advance made, or advantage gained, by these recent sub-orbital flights. I do not even object to them, I merely object to the booster-ism and puffery surrounding them.

[brooklynite]

97. The advancement was that they worked...

They didn’t blow up on the launch pad. They didn’t lose pressure in the passenger cabin. The system were reusable. Future development can focus on higher lift and greater passenger capacity (consider a 1920s plane to an Airbus 380).

[The Magistrate]

98. This Is Getting A Little Silly, Sir

Rockets not blowing up on the launch pad is pretty routine, and has been for a long while. Pressurized cabins that don't fail are also routine in space travel. That the system can be used again I acknowledge as an advance, but it is one already established as well, albeit recently. I do think you rather stretch the matter by taking the difference between the Vimy Commercial and an Airbus as the measure of the degree of improvement over previous space flight equipment these things represent. Perhaps a Stratoliner, or a Continental, might be a better baseline.

It does seem to me we are beginning to get in a bit of a rut, and scrapping more for its own sake than to support positions taken. I think we understand one another's outlook on this, and know we are not going to change one another's minds. We look at the matter from different directions, each valid enough in itself, and rooted in personal tastes. I cheerfully acknowledge I am of an antiquarian bent, and am most impressed by the continuities which can be seen over stretches of time in human affairs. I have nothing against progress, I simply find there has been less of it than people like to suppose, and that much of it occurred further in the past than people of the present day seem to appreciate.

[Happy Hoosier]

102. You are determined to ignore facts

Fine. Have it your way. If you want to believe modern air transport is inconsequential, be my guest. But I consider it a ridiculous conceit. Good day, sir!

This subject makes me despair. Apparently both parties have their share of people willing to wave away facts in favor of a cherished point of view.

[The Magistrate]

104. Everything Is Relative, Sir

Vastly more freight moves by slower surface methods.

Far more trips are made by automobile in the United States, and likely by rail in other parts of the world.

So much freight is moved, and so many trips of all sorts are made, that a small percentage of either can be a number that looks very large standing alone.

Air transport does have an added value of speedy delivery, that no surface means can match. This is more important for valuable freight, of a sort which is not too bulky, and may be perishable. Air travel for pleasure does support tourism, which is certainly important to some local economies. Most business travel could be handled equally well by modern telecommunications.

[Happy Hoosier]

105. Do you think I'm stupid?

Yea, of course most freight moves by slower methods. But a lot doesn’t, including passengers.

And although I now travel less than previously due to improved telecommunications, much of what I do requires me to be on site when traveling. I’m glad I can get there in hours instead of days.

It’s frustrating to me to see intelligent, thoughtful people indulging in this kind of senseless argument.

[The Magistrate]

106. Why Should I Do That, Sir?

Personally, I seldom return to a lapsed thread after a couple of days to try and start up anew an old argument, and if poked at, will not do much more than restate and return to present interests.

[MineralMan]

75. Good Points All, Sir.

My late father flew B-17s in WWII. Post WWII-airliners were largely based on such warplanes, which were fairly easily adapted to passenger and air freight use, with some modifications and redesign. However, it was the military needs that caused them to be designed, built, and thoroughly tested under extreme conditions.

My Dad flew near the end of the war. After the end of the War in Europe, his B-17 was equipped with seats, and he spend the last couple of months of his time in the USAAF ferrying personnel who were going home from Italy and Northern Africa to places where they could get on a ship and return to the USA. Project Green was the name of the units that performed those missions. Here's a link:

https://www.fairchild.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/495903/wings-of-hope-the-92nd-bombardment-group-and-the-green-project/

Then, he and his crew flew their B-17 back to the states by a circuitous route down the coast of Africa, then to Brazil, and then up the coast of South America, ending up finally in Florida, where he was mustered out of the military and took a train to Arizona, where he met his three-month old son for the first time and began his civilian life. I'm that son, born shortly before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. War baby, me.

[hunter]

91. I'm some kind of "freaking luddite."

I think the world should should slow down, a lot.

As Emperor of the Earth I will limit all mechanically powered vehicles to less than 50 kilometres per hour, with exceptions made for emergency services and scientific research.

Travel time won't be a problem. Sixty day vacations will be the norm, with one year vacations about once a decade.

That gives everyone plenty of time to travel this earth.

Depending on the weather high technology sailing ships, unconstrained by artificial speed limits, could cross oceans quicker than fuel powered vessels.

On the other hand I do applaud the reusable rocket technologies developed by these billionaires. These really are something new.

The Space Shuttle was supposed to be something reusable but it didn't work out.

Landing a reusable rocket on it's tail Buck Rogers / Ray Bradbury style is something new. Welcome to the twenty first century. Most of Virgin Galactic's and Virgin Orbit's stuff is new as well.

My grandfather was a rocket engineer. Bits of his metal landed men on the moon. He was immensely proud of that. Some of his metal is on the moon and in the Smithsonian.

I could rarely engage my grandfather with conversations about World War II, back when he was an Army Air Corp officer. He'd clam up. Loose lips sink ships.

Apparently defeating Nazis was just a very dirty job that needed doing and he never got to do anything romantic or heroic or even fly airplanes in World War II. He was the officer with the big black government car and driver carrying a "get out of jail free" card for various misfits deemed essential to the war effort -- even the drunks, coloreds, queers, uppity women, and suspected communists. Paraphrasing his own words...

He'd call my wife that "Mexican Girl." To his credit he got over that, but only after we were married and he recognized she was better at math than he was.

Somewhere in the war he acquired a knack for metals then considered exotic but he wasn't allowed to talk about it.

His eyes would always light up to talk about space exploration. He loved JFK for his moon landing challenge, in spite of the fact that JFK was Catholic.

[Happy Hoosier]

103. I'm glad you are not king then.

And your Dad’s tale is fascinating!

[Blue_true]

85. Space travel will carry people, not goods. nt

[Blue_true]

84. I agree with your stepping stone analogy.

All great discoveries have come about via that method.

[Ron Green]

78. Agreed. It is a stunt, and one which ought to come to be seen as such.

Space travel is NOT analogous to 16th-Century global exploration, other than it sets up the “haves” to both distance themselves from and control the “have nots.”

All we humans are evolved from the substance of Earth, and interdependent on its sustenance. The projects of these rocket billionaires are different from NASA in that the earlier flights were in the service of a Cold War, and these are just the byproduct of capital run amok.

In either case space travel is the exact opposite of the trajectory best taken by humans on this planet.

[EX500rider]

90. "space travel is the exact opposite of the trajectory best taken by humans on this planet"

Because?
All your eggs in one basket is a bad idea and eventually population pressure and scarcity of resources will require us to look outwards.

[Ron Green]

99. Earth IS the one basket.

To see escape from our biological home as a response to our failure to control its consumption is not only morally bankrupt, but technically foolish. The amount of additional resources required to keep human bodies alive away from Earth is unlikely to be available on the scale necessary until other planets can be mined for energy or whatever scheme is planned by the accumulators and aggrandizers who have already so depleted this planet.

The hope for humans is to embrace de-growth and steady state economics, or to learn to exist as consciousness outside of physical bodies. I believe the former is more practical.

[JCMach1]

80. It's okay to LOVE the Science, but hate the billionaire

Totally disagree the science isn't valuable here...