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This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. They got abo
by marshallbananas 5y ago
This felt so underwhelming. I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. They got about two minutes of zero G and came down immediately. You can experience that for much longer with a regular plane, for much less money.
It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth.
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, but 'Blue Origin successfully avoids achieving orbit' sounds so much less like an achievement than 'first human flight'.
- notjustanymike 5y agoHe went up and then down again.
- jstsch 5y agoAgreed. This really felt like an amusement park ride for rich people. Like a throw towards the edge of orbit. I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super underwhelming.
- iso1631 5y ago> Like a throw towards the edge of orbit. It's nowhere near orbit. Orbit is about 10km of delta-v, then there's the reentry problem. Reaching the Karman line is about 2km of delta-v.
- ethbr0 5y agoWalk before you run. I very much doubt Blue Origin intends to freeze rocket development after this launch. Blue Origin now has a successful manned flight under their belt, and a revenue stream. While it might surprise some here, Amazon started by selling just books... It feels like similar attitude comments on that would have been "They'll never compete with Walmart. Real retail stores sell all kinds of things."
- dimitrios1 5y agoWell to be fair, they don't compete with Walmart. Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year, and that was during the height of a pandemic, which naturally steered people towards more online orders, something you think would tip the scales in Amazon's favor.
- l30n4da5 5y agohave you _seen_ walmart.com? their online store rivals amazon easily.
- dolmen 5y agoWalmart.com ships only in the US. Not in Europe, Asia. While Amazon has stores for all regions of the world that count.
- cptskippy 5y agoWalmart.com is an extension of their retail services. There's some overlap with Amazon.com but both offer services and features the others don't and neither fully supplant one another. Walmart's affiliate program allows them to cater to the long tail market that Amazon has long dominated but that alone isn't going to convince people to switch to Walmart.com. Why not go to Ebay or Newegg instead? Walmart+ costs 2/3 of Amazon Prime but doesn't offer any of the digital services available like Audiobooks, ebooks, Videos, Music, Gaming, and photo storage/backup. For many those services are more valuable than free shipping or pharmacy discounts. What does Walmart.com offer that's going to convince people to shop their over Amazon, Newegg, Ebay or other online retailers?
- cptskippy 5y ago> Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year, Eh... that's not really true, it's about 1.45x the revenue, not 2x. And that's not the whole picture. Revenue for 2020: Walmart: $559 billion Amazon: $386 billion Operating income for 2020: Walmart: $20.6 billion Amazon: $22.9 billion Net Income (business/total) for 2020: Walmart: $15.2/14.9 billion Amazon: $22.1/21.3 billion
- hinkley 5y agoWhat are the delta V's for a ballistic trajectory taking off in Texas an landing off the coast of Morocco? France? Western Australia? Hawaii? You don't need to go all the way around to have a story. Low earth orbit is apparently around 84 minutes per revolution. There's a lot of space in the middle for ballistic orbits of 5-15 minutes, right? We got in a rocket in Texas and had a light dinner on a yacht off Morocco 90 minutes later.
- iso1631 5y agoIf that's your goal than Virgin Galactic, which can take off from far more places in more weather conditions, is more attractive. Or you could use a Dragon capsule on an F9 which can do the job reliably today. For a 2,400km downrange though you'd need 4.2k of delta-v (a Thor IRBM). You'll be reaching a 450km apogee too. Forget Hawaii and Morocco, you won't even make Seattle from Dallas. You'll need 5.6k to get to places like Hong Kong and Israel, with an apogee of 1500km. That's 3 times the New Shepard. (delta-v calc from https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABM/DeltaV_BMs.htm https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABM/DeltaV_BMs.htm)
- q1w2 5y agoI agree that there's no scientific or engineering achievement here and that this ride is essentially joyriding. I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending money the way they want. I splurge on things sometimes as well. Unlike a lot of modern social media, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about being wealthy. If someone has an argument about what these specific people did that was specifically immoral to achieve their wealth, then they should call that out specifically and suggest a systemic change. I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
- natch 5y agoIt’s remarkable that such a mature, sane, and rational perspective has been downvoted at the time of this writing to the point of being dead. Like anyone I am alarmed by over-the-top displays of wealth but that’s not really all this was. There is a lot more going on here. Blue Origin needs a lot more test flights as they ramp up and increase their capabilities. They also need demonstration flights to hep increase confidence about their services. And it totally makes sense to allow some people with the resources to help subsidize the effort, while having some fun and enlarging their perspective. I think this experience was super meaningful for everyone involved, and we shouldn’t try to denigrate it. Sad to see HN not taking a more open minded view here, as evidenced by your post being hn-dead. And I say all this even not being a fan of the way Bezos has sometimes falsely claimed credit for “firsts” that were not really firsts, like when they landed a rocket (propulsive landing) while pretending that SpaceX had not done so in a much more challenging way already.
- nemetroid 5y agoI don’t think the comment deserves downvoting, but I cannot agree that this characterization - dismissing those who disagree as mindless and juvenile - is mature. > I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
- jstsch 5y agoSorry, I meant 'rich people' as a neutral term, I do not attach any value to it or intend to deride someone for their wealth. I think that in general people should do as they want, as long as they don't harm others. To rephrase: I felt that the entire flight was a bit underwhelming, and that it felt more like an amusement park ride (with a very expensive ticket price) than an actual spaceflight with astronauts, even though it was communicated that way.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- purple_ferret 5y agoit was a sales pitch
- Darmody 5y agoTo me it was pretty exciting after watching what Virgin Galactic did the other day.
- Clewza313 5y agoVirgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though. Sticking a capsule on top of a rocket and bringing it down with parachutes has been done since the 1960s, and SpaceX beat them to landing the launcher as well.
- ja27 5y agoSpaceX only "beat" them to a landing if you're disregarding suborbital flights. Blue Origin landed their booster 23 Nov 2015. SpaceX landed their first booster 21 Dec 2015. It really is apples and oranges until BO or VG gets to orbit. Rocket Lab is likely much closer to orbital booster re-use than BO or VG are.
- jpgvm 5y agoPrecisely. Landing a booster is difficult but creating or orbital class rocket is an order of magnitude more difficult. SpaceX just did the hard part first.
- Tossrock 5y agoBlue Origin only "beat" SpaceX if you allow BO's test flight and disallow SpaceX's - SpaceX was landing their Grasshopper prototype as early as 2012.
- zajio1am 5y ago> Virgin Galactic is at least taking a novel approach with the spaceplane though. Sticking rocket-propelled spaceplane under big aircraft and landing horizontally was also done in 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
- Clewza313 5y agoAgree re: being underwhelmed, but in fairness, your typical "vomit comet" parabola flight only gets you about 25 seconds of weightlessness at a time. Although you can repeat this several dozen times per flight pretty easily.
- FredFS456 5y ago25-30 seconds, with https://www.gozerog.com/ https://www.gozerog.com/ offering 15 parabolas totalling 6.5-7.5 minutes for $7500+tax. Much better total zero-gee time at much cheaper rates. Of course, you don't get the view above the atmosphere...
- qayxc 5y agoAnd you are ignoring the 1.8 g part after each parabola - the zero g don't come for free. The acceleration on New Shepard is much lower and even the max acceleration experienced during landing should be in the same ballpark of <2 g but only once and for a very brief period of time only compared to the vomit comet. This could be a factor for some people.
- rvz 5y ago> It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth. Translation: 'Other private companies building their own rockets and going into space is 'not good enough' unless it is by SpaceX' and doesn't count. To SpaceX fanatics and downvoters: I'm sure you are deep fanatics of SpaceX but surely you have the funds and deep pockets to join Musk and friends on a space mission together right now? If not, just continue to watch livestreams of others going into space then. It should not be just down to ONE company. Commercial space flight is going to get allot cheaper with the existence of more competitors and that should be welcomed. Even SpaceX welcomes this and so should you.
- jdavis703 5y agoThe Russian v. USA space race’s important milestones included putting satellites, animals and people into orbit. It wasn’t just merely launching them to the edge of spacs.
- soperj 5y agoThe USSR didn't even bother with suborbital flights. There's a reason that there's only 3 flights to suborbital ranges that are considered manned spaceflight.
- altcognito 5y agoIt’s kinda funny to see even the SpaceX fans miss a broader point. SpaceX could probably sell orbital trips on Falcon on the regular but they are out of reach of most nearly everyone except the US government whom needs manned flight for staffing the space station (thank goodness or we’d never get space progress) The excitement and noise over suborbital flight is good, but in terms of achievement, Blue origin has yet to deliver on their major promises. I have confidence they will get there, but credit where credit is due, Spacex is getting it done.
- DuskStar 5y agoSpaceX actually IS selling flights to tourists. First and second flights are scheduled for later this year IIRC.
- pantulis 5y agoYet this is what, with all their power, billionaries can achieve today. While private innovation is welcome, space exploration needs even deeper pockets so it is government territory.
- gameswithgo 5y agoIm very happy for Wally Funk
- LoungeFlyZ 5y agoSo happy! A proper injustice revisited.
- chasd00 5y agoi feel pretty guilty for being so underwhelmed because I sure as hell couldn't build an engine and airframe to do that but I am. I think the duration and lack of events is what did it. I'm use to the multiple phases of a falcon9 launch and the landing. However, i'm glad BlueOrigin did this and had a successful launch/landing. It certainly helps inspire others and is good for the industry as a whole.
- cptskippy 5y ago> i feel pretty guilty for being so underwhelmed because I sure as hell couldn't build an engine and airframe to do that but I am. Given Bezo's bank account, you don't think you could put together a team to get a rocket into space? Let's be realistic, no one person built this or any other rocket. Apart from Money, and perhaps short/bald man complex, Bezo contributed little overall. Yet all of the media has been about Bezos going into space. When Richard Branson came along to steal his thunder with the SpaceShipTwo launch just before him, Bezo showed his colors by dismissing the achievement as not "real space". I have doubt Bezos is still salty about it and planning to get back at him. IMO, none of these billionaires should be celebrated for these achievements. We should be celebrating the people who put them there but those individuals receive almost no mention.
- 5555624 5y ago> It really shouldn't count as space travel unless they go into orbit around Earth. So, Alan Shepard would not be the first American in space? Gus Grissom's first flight wouldn't count, either? I'm all for making a distinction between space tourists and astronauts; but, I don't know if orbiting the Earth is the distinction. (Yes, I know Shepard and Grissom orbited the Earth on subsequent space flights; but,those first flights have to count for something.)
- loloquwowndueo 5y agoMaybe you were just told they counted as going into space because otherwise the first American to orbit earth only did so a full 10 months after Gagarin, which looks worse than saying “oh we launched an American into space less than a month after the Russians did”.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 8ytecoder 5y agoHuh, I remember learning Yuri Gagarin as the first person to space. I don't think I even remember learning/reading about Alan Shepard.
- 5555624 5y agoI always learned Gagarin was first into space first. Likewise, I learned Shepard was the first American and Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. (I always have to stop and think about Grissom, since the fire of Apollo 1 is the always first thing that comes to mind.) Saying that someone has to orbit the Earth or do something while in space in order to be an astronaut seems like changing the definition. That would mean Shepard wouldn't become an astronaut for another 10 years. (Of course, then he would be in a very select group of astronauts, because he had walked on the moon.)
- rtkwe 5y agoPersonally I think there's a difference when the thing is completely new like when the space race first launched and now when it's decades on and we have continuously occupied the ISS for just over two decades. I might take one of these suborbital hops for fun but mostly because I have doubts it'll be reasonable to do a full orbit in my lifetime. These are both neat but the billionaire pissing contest nature of it really cheapens it. Blue Origin originally rushed out and crowed about 'beating' SpaceX in (I think) launch and land reusability and now Branson rushing out to beat Bezos to barely cross into space. I'd honestly thought the whole Virgin Galactic thing had been quietly canned years ago because nothing was happening till there was this little race.
- tester34 5y agowasn't it just a few years ago considered as being ahead of everybody in space industry?
- detritus 5y agoThe thing that amuses me is that if SpaceX can make Starship and the Heavy booster work, they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance. If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling. Then they'd just need to get environmentally-friendly methane production going and we can all be a bit happier.
- BurningFrog 5y agoYou can also land on the other side of the planet within... I want to say an hour?
- detritus 5y agoI must admit, that's the usage scenario for Starship that I don't particularly see much benefit in. I may well be short-sighted, but given how far away from cities the launch centres for these things would need to be, it strikes me that traditional travel infrastructure suffices. Now, the US military, on the other hand? Starship as a somewhat-disposable space truck makes a lot of sense. Then it comes down to how cheaply SpaceX can manufacture the things.
- fallingknife 5y agoYeah I don't think it makes much sense, at least not for a long time. Odds of a plane crashing are on the order of 1 in 10^7. On the other hand, it was a major accomplishment that the Falcon 9 was able to perform 100 successful missions in a row. Rockets have to be safer by many orders of magnitude before they move from the realm of thrill seeking to commercial travel.
- kiba 5y agoI am more concerned about nuclear war as a result of mistaken identity since it's the same technology used to launch ICBMs.
- ekianjo 5y ago> I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions or it's just not that big of a deal. Also, SpaceX knows how to put on a show. In comparison this felt like an amateur video. (not to diminish the mission itself, just how it was filmed).
- jpgvm 5y agoTo be fair SpaceX also has had practice, go back and watch some earlier launches and they have the same amateur vibe.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- theshrike79 5y agoI was kinda disappointed that the whole thing was just one shaky camera shot, no in-vehicle cameras on Bezos' face getting squished from G-forces or anything =(
- Ottolay 5y agoThe underwhelming part is that it took so long. The first private manned suborbital flight occurred in 2004 with SpaceShipOne. It is 17 years later at this point and only now do we have paying customers for sub-orbital flight.
- Clewza313 5y agoAnd even then we still don't have "paying passengers" in the sense of being able to rock up and buy ticket. One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count. I also suspect the pool of people willing to pony up $250k+ for a few minutes barely in space is going to be pretty shallow. I'd sign up in a heartbeat for a space hotel trip in that price range though, so here's hoping Axiom Space delivers (and gets the price range below the current projection of tens of millions).
- postingawayonhn 5y ago> One seat being raffles at a charity auction doesn't quite count. The person who won that seat didn't actually end up going on the first flight (will go on a later one). Some 18 year old with a dad who runs a hedge fund went. How much he paid was not disclosed.
- mongol 5y agoYes. What made it take this long?
- wombatpm 5y agoVirgin Galactic had an accident the killed its test pilot a few years back. Had to build new spaceshiptwo
- cecilpl2 5y agoNote that SpaceX hadn't even launched its first rocket in 2004. They didn't reach orbit until 2008 and yet sent crew to the space station over a year ago already.
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- ww520 5y agoGetting rocket working correctly is never easy. Just like in IT when things work smoothly, it doesn't look amazing but it takes a tremendous amount of work to get things work correctly and seemingly smooth. A smooth operation is always amazing. The booster landing looks pretty amazing. The capsule landing went without a problem. The deceleration when the braking chutes deployed looks a bit fast, from 205mph to 150mph in couple seconds. Must be hard on the body. Edit: Ok, in the post-flight briefing, they mentioned that they didn't anticipate the 5G deceleration on descent and it was pretty hard. Must be when the braking chute was deployed.
- daveslash 5y agoIt looked like they were going about 15-16mph when they hit the ground. That looked a bit rough as well. They seem to have done fine, but I can't imagine that it was comfortable.
- ezconnect 5y agoI watch it and slowed the clip and it seems there's a rocket boost just before touchdown, if the seats have shock absorbers they probably felt little of the touch down.
- senko 5y agoThey mentioned on the stream the capsule has cushions that deploy at around 6ft. I couldn't see them on the video feed but they might be underneath the capsule.
- dredmorbius 5y agoThat's roughly the speed of a Soyuz landing, which has been described as a "low speed car crash". Retrorockets fire immediately prior to impact to cushion the blow, but it's still a hard jolt.
- jb775 5y agoBezos mentioned there's a pocket of air that forms a cushion underneath just before it hits, slowing it to 1 mph at impact. The older woman said she didn't even feel it.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt's frustrating, because I'd like to get excited, but relative to even the regular things going on in aerospace this isn't interesting. Interesting enough, I guess. Guy went up and down. There are six people going around and around right now on the ISS and a second station is coming into orbit. He never left Earth? CNSA has a rover on the moon, and NASA has several rovers, some satellites, a helicopter, and a Will.i.am single on Mars. Max altitude of about 100km? Alan Eustance managed half that with a balloon, and then he jumped out of his capsule like Master Chief and fell back to Earth. They're planning to build a moon rover in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Three rivers, some department stores, a couple abandoned steel mills, more bridges than they can afford to maintain, and a mission control center. I'm generally in favor of more people being involved in space technology and space travel; I still consider it a long-term existential need. But about this, it's just, kinda... Step it up or step out, Bezos. It is nice to live in an era where this accomplishment feels mundane, though.
- mLuby 5y ago> Step it up or step out, Bezos. So much negativity in this whole topic, IMO due to Bezos's involvement. Space is hard technically, politically, financially, so the more entrants in the space race the better. Every space program, government or private, has started off small and built on what they learn.
- shadowgovt 5y agoAbsolutely true. ... but since we live in the era where multiple agencies have already done that, it's possible Bezos's dollars would be better spent on combined efforts with one of the front-runners to do something more ambitious than yet another capsule to high-altitude ballistic flight.
- rtkwe 5y agoI think it's pretty underwhelming and then is further diminished because it feels so much like Bezos and Branson just spending their obscene amounts of money to notch a win in this billionaire one upmanship game. First there was Bezos's Blue Origin crowing about their early launch and land success vs SpaceX like they were in a similar league of difficulty. Then with this you have Virgin Galactic coming out of seeming corporate catatonia so Brandon could rush out this first ahead of Bezos. I hadn't heard anything about SpaceShip One for what feels like years before this stunt. Also yeah they do also just barely make it to what the US had somewhat arbitrarily defined as space in the case of Branson's company.
- gameswithgo 5y agocome on, our billionaires are spending money advancing space tech. what a grand improvement over billionaires bribing governments and having people slaughtered instead, as happens through much of the world and history. applaud this.
- mkhpalm 5y agoI can't even fathom blowing the money on stunts like this before all my people's basic needs were met. Like, you know... even the janitors.
- sanderjd 5y agoYeah I expected an orbit too. But it was their first manned mission, so I think it makes sense that it was a simpler thing. But it shouldn't have been such big news. It only was because there was a billionaire on board, and that's really dumb.
- yreg 5y agoIt was news because it was the first manned flight of a private launch provider. That doesn't happen often and it is an important milestone.
- sanderjd 5y agoI dunno, that's "news" to be sure; certainly space nerds should care a lot, but they played the entire flight on The Today Show (I watched it). They did not play the entirety of the first manned SpaceX flight, which was a much bigger deal because (I'm pretty sure?) it was the first private manned launch. I'm not saying this flight wasn't news, I'm saying it wasn't mainstream news, except that it happened to have Jeff Bezos on it, and he's a celebrity because he's a billionaire. And that's a lame reason for it to be mainstream news, in my view. I don't love the celebrity billionaire stuff.
- usrusr 5y agoLet's look at it from the Hollywood angle: SpaceX clearly wins in explosions per minute, but on the other hand BlueO has Vin Diesel (I might have squinted too hard)
- zackbloom 5y agoIf you listen to the stream there's a moment when they ask each astronaut for a mock-serious 'status update'. At least one forgets to even respond. It feels like cosplay, like a tourist experience where you are pretending to be an astronaut despite having no responsibilities and little training. I would struggle to not feel embarrassment at pretending to be something I am not, and at the knowledge they are stroking my ego purely for my ego's benefit on the back of the very well earned reputation of real astronauts. It reminds me of what might happen on a tourist experience in Bali, where they have you hold a big spear and take a photo for Instagram as if you were a tribal hunter. I would take the Blue Origin flight if it was free, but I would wish they would treat me honestly: as a random schlub who knows how to sit in a seat and smile.
- DocTomoe 5y agoOne point: that was no "mock status update call", it was control checking if people were back in and strapped to their seats again. The wording arguably was a bit too much fluff ("Astronaut Bezos", yeah, right)
- rossdavidh 5y agoWell in one sense you're right, however...if they decided that they wanted to go for orbit without first doing an up-into-space-then-down trip, that wouldn't be a very wise thing to do. Test at each step. It makes perfect sense to do up-into-space-then-right-back-down first, before you try for orbiting the Earth, for many of the same reasons that NASA did it that way.
- yumraj 5y ago> I don't know if it's because I've seen SpaceX doing much more complicated missions You know that NASA and other countries have been flying rockets and sending people and things to space before SpaceX, yes?