Amazon's Jeff Bezos Sets His Sights on the Stars 123
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is looking to open a 'rocket-ship complex' for his new startup Blue Origin early next year. From the article: 'Blue Origin has released few details about the project. But a Texas newspaper editor who interviewed Bezos earlier this year said the billionaire talked [about] sending a spaceship into orbit that launches and lands vertically, like a rocket, and eventually building spaceships that can orbit the Earth -- possibly leading to permanent colonies in space.'"
Re:Foreign airspace (spacespace?) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ok (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite the condradiction, don't you think? I mean, how are you supposed to figure out what kinda tech you need for space flight unless you go and try it? And are we just supposed to casually develop tech for this? Much like the power industry is so focused on alternative power? (not!).
The simply truth is, necessity is the mother of invention. This seems like a chicken and the egg problem, but it isn't really. We need to get out there and look around, explore, experiment. Once we start doing this, we'll start solving problems. Once we start solving problems, things start to roll. Think about the evolution of boats.
There were probably civilizations full of people who completely disagreed with some of the people designing (bigger, faster, sturdier) boats thousands of years ago. Thinking there was no useful purpose of them, the naysays just sat around and bitched about how useless the boat-builders actions were. The same thing with the horseless carriage - we already have everything we want with horses - what possible good could the work you're doing be?
It's true that people like you need to exist statistically - the ones that bitch and point out all of the flaws in the useless shit dreamers talk about - so they probably don't even listen to you naysayers anymore - and for good reason. If people like you ran society, we probably wouldn't even have wheels because we've got enough people to haul those stone blocks the 80km they need to travel.
Fortunately for us, some people have imaginations.
Re:Chemical Engines Are Useless (Score:3, Insightful)
Concern over the use of nuclear energy isn't inherently stupid, though. I have to object every time I hear someone call it "clean". The waste is extremely nasty, but can contain it rather than (barring accidents) spewing it out into the environment. I still haven't seen any convincing solution dealing with nuclear waste in the long term. I'd say nuclear engergy as a solution to energy production here on earth is problematic, but still better than most of the currently available alternatives. The problem is that people tend to declare themselves either "pro nuclear" or "anti nuclear" without being very rational about it. They pick one standpoint and "believe" in it like it was a religion.
Storage of waste products is not, however, an issue when using nuclear energy for spaceflight. Chucking the waste into space seems to be pretty much the best way I can think of for getting rid of it.
> The only issue with these engines when they _were running_ back in the 70's
> were material issues.
Those weren't gas core nuclear engines, though, but solid-core, which really aren't all that interesting. Gas core looks the way to go, but they're still only drawing-board designs. To my knowledge, no gas core nuclear engine has ever been actually constructed, even for experimental use.