Amazon's Jeff Bezos Sets His Sights on the Stars

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.'"

Foreign airspace (spacespace?)

[komodotoes]

With all of the talk lately about civilian space travel, I was wondering if anyone knew specifically how far national borders extend vertically. Obviously satellites orbit over foreign territories all the time, but if the goal is space colonization like everyone thinks, would an American colony be bound by law to be in a geosynchronous orbit over the U.S at all times?

Private funding of space travel is more ethical

[cryfreedomlove]

I like this as an example of privately funded space exploration technology development. All of the participants in this adventure, from fund providers to astronauts, will be associated with the project on a voluntary basis. In the alternative model of publicly funded space exploration, taxpayers are coerced into funding the project and yet they do not exercise any real influence or control over the bureacracy that runs the program. The private model is based on voluntary association. The public model requires coerced association. Therefore, I conclude that the private model has a higher moral foundation.

Re:Private funding of space travel is more ethical

[massivefoot]

I disagree. The very nature of all government projects is that the entire population of the nation is associated with them. I may not particularly agree with my my nation's current use of its military, but as a member of a democracy, we make decisions as a mass. Frankly, I believe space exploration is far too important to be left to private companies. Sure, they can freely join in, but they are going to be looking for a profit. If there was a privtely owned space station in orbit instead of the ISS, would they be doing science, or giving trips to rich tourists?

Re:heheh

[Lead Butthead]

so amazon will have shipment to space? and cargo could be people?? nice :) DHL stock should rise on this one

Note that they do not guarantee the cargo hold is heated or pressurized, so I wouldn't ship anything with their service that does not react well to extreme cold or hard vacuum.

private == for-proft + non-profit groups

[FleaPlus]

Frankly, I believe space exploration is far too important to be left to private companies.

I disagree. Air transporation and food production are also quite important, and yet we seem to be doing fine with them being handled by private industry. Of course, there's government interference in those industries, but whether or not such interference is necessary is an argument for another day.

You, like many others, also seem to be making an assumption that all private groups are also for-profit, which is false. Non-profit groups engage in research and exploration as well, and I hope we'll see them engage in more space exploration as launch prices decrease.

For example, AMSAT [amsat.org] has launched a number of amateur radio satellites. The Planetary Society (attempted) to launch the first solar sail, funded by member donations. Elon Musk [wikipedia.org] started up a self-funded project to put an experimental greenhouse on Mars, but decided it would be better for now to focus on reducing launch costs via his SpaceX company -- hopefully he'll pursue the greenhouse project again in the future.

If there was a privtely owned space station in orbit instead of the ISS, would they be doing science, or giving trips to rich tourists?

That depends on whoever owns the space station. If it's owned by Richard Branson, it'll probably be for tourism. If it's owned by the Howard Hughes Institute, they'll probably be doing medical research. In the past, Bigelow Aerospace [wikipedia.org] has stated that they'll sell their space station modules to pretty much whoever for $100 million each, and they should be up and running in the next few years.

Fame forever

[PietjeJantje]

In a bigger scope of things, I see IT and dot com zilionaires investing in Space. I wonder if in, say, 100 years, this will be seen as the turning point where space exploration really got into motion. The heroes of the past are NASA, Armstrong, Gagarin and the like. These new rich, raised with SF, want to be the heroes of the future. They cannot be stooped by anything but their ego and the limit of their pocket, which is seemlingly endless. They will compete. They must have limited expectations of return of investment (?) It seems a good thing.

We need DOGS not CATS!

[Paul Fernhout]

This is the basis for the argument for CATs (Cheap Access to Space) and
http://www.space-frontier.org/Projects/CatsPrize/ [space-frontier.org]
various legislative pushes and at least a couple of billionaires (including Jeff Bezos of
Amazon.com) putting a lot of money into this (perhaps as businesses, but
essentially still billionaire hobbies). While I wish them well, I think
this approach towards space settlement is misguided. Let's work the
numbers.

The USA has about two million millionaires. There are many more elsewhere.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/07 11_030711_money.html [nationalgeographic.com]
"In total, there are an estimated 7.3 million people in the world whose
assets--excluding their home--amount to U.S. $1 million or more. Behind
Europe, North America has the second highest concentration of
millionaires at 2.2 million. The Asia Pacific region accounts for 1.8
million. Latin America and the Middle East account for 300,000 each, and
Africa accounts for 100,000."

At current launch costs of $10000 per pound, to put a 150 pound adult
(me on a starvation diet for a couple months!) would be about
$1,500,000, or $6,000,000 for a family of four. Now that amount of money
being paid is well within the reach of hundreds of thousands of people
if they liquidate all their assets -- homes, stocks, retirement
accounts, and so forth. Now if you could guarantee that they and their
children would have a better life living in cities in space, then some
percentage of them might well do that. The problem as I see it is, we
can't guarantee that right now. The other problem is of course, there is
no place to live right now for hundreds of thousands of people showing
up in their underwear and starving with no shelter or clothes or food or
air or water or other goods for them.

One solution is to pursue the 1980s NASA vision
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM5A.html#5a [islandone.org]
of first putting
automated factories on the moon (or at asteroids) and using robotics
(and teleoperation) make space settlements complete with food, water,
clothes, etc. for when these people show up. It would in theory only
take one Apollo-type launch to the Moon or an asteroid
with the seed of an automated
factory instead of a LEM to start the process rolling, and that would
have an up front cost of a few billion dollars or so -- far less than
the total launch costs for all the people. The factory could also carry
out putting up mass drivers etc. to realize Gerry O'Neill's or
J.D. Bernal's vision of building
near earth habitats from lunar or asteroidal resources.

So, as I see it, launch costs are not a bottleneck.
So while lowering launch costs may be useful, by itself
it ultimately has no value without someplace to live in space.
And all the innovative studies on space settlement say that space colonies will not be
built from materials launched from earth, but rather will be built mainly from
materials found in space.

So, what is a bottleneck
is that we do not know how to make that seed self-replicating factory,
or have plans for what it should create once it is landed on the moon or
on a near-earth asteroid. We don't have (to use Bucky Fuller's terminology)
a Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science
http://www.bfi.org/node/387 [bfi.org]
that lets us make sense of all the various manufacturing knowledge
which is woven throughout our complex economy (and in practice,
despite patents, is essentially horded and hidden and made proprietary whenever possible)
in order to synthesize it to build elegant and flexible infrastructure
for sustaining human life in style in s

Why vertical landing? Why not parachutes?

[tinrobot]

Setting down into the white-hot exhaust of a burning rocket engine sure looks cool in the movies, but is it really safe? I mean, the kickback of the exhaust can cause all sorts of heat related problems on the underside of the craft, plus the control mechanism requires extra hardware, plus you have to carry a lot of extra propellant -- adding unnecessary weight and complexity.

Parachutes, on the other hand, are lighter, much cheaper and a lot safer.

Keep it simple.

Re:Sounds Good

[Decaff]

And we havent even figured out how to get enough energy into a single stage ship to get to orbit.

Yes we have. Remember the Roton project?

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_roton_conce pt_and_its_unique_operations.shtml [spacefuture.com]

Control?

[Julian Morrison]

Why not parachutes? I'm guessing, but I'd guess control. A VTOL rocket in the Delta Clipper mold can park itself inside a one-and-a-half diameter chalk circle. A 'chute can probably be guaranteed to hit the right county. They're a recovery mechanism best suited to big government projects that can afford to recover astronauts from large amorphous targets such as deserts, oceans etc. Not suited to eg: intercontinental commuters landing at a spaceport with a schedule to keep.

Plus, even a VTOL design can use 'chutes to drop most of its speed, before using retro-rockets to coast in for a controlled landing.