SpaceX Will Send Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa Around the Moon (theverge.com) 214
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed on Monday the identity of the passenger signed to visit the moon, set to launch on the company's Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) vehicle: Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Mr. Maezawa, 42, is the founder of Japan's Start Today, which operates largest online clothing retailer site in the country Zozotown and Wear. The Verge adds: Maezawa, who is 42, reportedly has a real time net worth of $2.9 billion, according to Forbes. He is also an avid art collector, and spent $110.5 million on a 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat called "Untitled" last year. "Finally, I can tell you that I choose to go to the Moon!" Maezawa said at a SpaceX event, announcing his trip. This isn't the first time that SpaceX has announced it plans to send a paying customer to the Moon on one of its vehicles. In February 2017, Musk proclaimed that two individuals had each put down a "significant deposit" to fly around the Moon on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, a larger version of the Falcon 9. No details about the passengers were given, though Musk said it was "nobody from Hollywood." The flight was slated to occur before the end of this year. "Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the moon," Maezawa said in a website that his team and SpaceX created for this expedition. "This is a project that I designed and made: #dearMoon," He added, noting that it will be launched in 2023. "I choose to go to the moon with artists. In 2023, as the host, I would like to invite 6 to 8 artists from around the world to join me on this mission to the Moon." He said going to the moon can contribute to "world peace."
Mr. Musk said SpaceX's first orbital flight could be in 2-3 years, and then it would test flights without a passenger around the moon. He added, however, that as far as the proposed 2023 deadline is concerned to get the first paying passenger on the moon, he is "definitely not sure about it," as there could be some delays because of the uncertainties and complexities.
Mr. Musk said SpaceX's first orbital flight could be in 2-3 years, and then it would test flights without a passenger around the moon. He added, however, that as far as the proposed 2023 deadline is concerned to get the first paying passenger on the moon, he is "definitely not sure about it," as there could be some delays because of the uncertainties and complexities.
Excited about the Future (Score:2)
I am happy and excited about being a multi-planet society. The earth is not big enough.
Its good to see positive people talk about a positive future and give people hope and something to look forward to.
I am glad that a civilian will step up and take his money and put it into something that will help people and the future!
Hard problems can only be solved through hard work and thinking outside the box.
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To paraphrase a comment I heard recently from Neil deGrasse Tyson, we'll have human presence on other planets at the moment some nation sees a military or political advantage from it.
If military/political advantage is not a factor, it will just happen more slowly.
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There's no business case for it,
let me reply with this quote:
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard
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We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard
I can name a hundred things that are hard, but that we aren't choosing to do. Stop increasing atmospheric CO2 is a good one. Going to the moon is easy.
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I can name a hundred things that are hard, but that we aren't choosing to do. Stop increasing atmospheric CO2 is a good one. Going to the moon is easy.
Okay bro. If you go to the moon in your own rocket, I'll stop global warming. Deal?
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Sorry to bust your bubble, but there is no "multiplanet society" on the horizon. There's no business case for it
How I imagine that conversations went in 10000 BCE: "Sorry to bust your bubble, but there is no "agrarian society" on the horizon. There's no business case for it."
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Sorry to bust your bubble, but there is no "agrarian society" on the horizon. There's no business case for it."
Except that there was a business case for it. People who started cultivating their lands were growing food that they could eat or trade.
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The business case for settlement of the Gobi desert could also turn out to be much larger than originally anticipated, and yet I don't see people getting too excited about that.
We aren't living in ancient times. We know what's out there, and how hard it is to get anything done. We can calculate business cases for space applications without going there first.
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We know what's out there
We actually don't. That's why we're sending all those probes, but they have barely scratched the surface yet.
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We also have barely scratched the surface of the Gobi desert. How come we ain't digging there ?
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How come we ain't digging there ?
I don't know...because we are? [riotinto.com]
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That's cute, but copper and gold aren't good enough to make a business case for space travel. We'd need something like a buried alien craft or a monolith to make it worth our effort.
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Don't insert reality, people don't like it.
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Mine's not (Score:2)
If we could afford to send these guys to space _and_ pay their employees a living wage I wouldn't be complaining, but it seems like they're riding to space on
Re:Mine's not (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just using what was already there (and paid for by my tax dollars, yet again).
Bezos' Blue Origin has only taken small amounts (in government terms) of tax payer funding. They're basically self-funded by Bezos himself.
And SpaceX is saving the government a lot of money. NASA estimated that SpaceX development of the Falcon 9 at a cost of $390M would have cost $3-4B by traditional means (source [arstechnica.com]). All of the launch providers (ULA, Arianespace, the Russians) are scrambling to get their costs down, lest they lose their place in the market.
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They only got it this cheap by two means. 1. Cutting corners and generally half asking things.
Right. A rocket that can put a payload in orbit, land its first stage, be refurbished in a month, put another payload in orbit, reland its first stage, and put another payload in orbit "cuts corners". Sure.
2. Hiding the massive amount of money they lose per launch from the public.
SpaceX has been in business, selling launches, for more than a decade. This month is the 10th anniversary of the first orbital Falcon 1 flight. Losing money. Suuure.
Have the trolls around here always been this stupid? I don't usually read at 0.
Re: Mine's not (Score:1)
If you think the BFR+BFS doesn't require a lot of new/novel development, you haven't been paying attention (or are extremely lacking in imagination to fill in the gaps of what occurs in development between now and routine flight). SpaceX has a lot of highly paid people.. and as a bonus, many are people working on something they actually want to work on.
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I'm impressed that MZ (as he likes to be called) chose to fly artists into space with him. That's a sharp departure from previous efforts.
Yes, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield was a capable musician and brought space to the commoner in a unique way, as have others. But a moon-flyby crew chosen for artistic merit above all else? I for one can't wait to see what becomes of this.
I agree that people who work for Bezos deserve to be paid fairly, and not subsidize space tourism. But that has little connection wi
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he's spending money on space tourism.
A correction: He's investing money into a potentially highly profitable company that would coincidentally allow others to spend money on space tourism.
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I choose to go to the Moon... (Score:2, Funny)
and do the other things, because they are easy, but because they are expensive.
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Maezawa's moving to the Moon (Score:2)
His first choice was to move to the Sun - but the rent's there are just too high.
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First Baby in Space (Score:2)
I predict this will be the first of Many Babies make in space on the maiden voyage.
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Unless the Van Allen belts sterilize all of a woman's eggs. We've never sent a woman to the moon so the fertility effects are as-yet unproven.
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Unless the Van Allen belts sterilize all of a woman's eggs. We've never sent a woman to the moon so the fertility effects are as-yet unproven.
It doesn't. We didn't have to send a woman to the Moon to know how much radiation people are exposed to when transiting the Van Allen belts. Even in the dinky little Apollo capsules, coming and going combined, astronauts picked up less than 5 rems of exposure, spread out over two instances more than 2 days apart. This is actual dosimeter exposures, not theory. Five rems doesn't sterilize anybody.
BFS is gigantic by Apollo standards, with 1100 cubic meters of interior volume. The BFR will also have one o
Error (Score:2)
Well of course he's not sure about landing someone on the Moon, this isn't about that.
The planned flight, if you'd looked at the website or video at all, is to do a fly-by of the moon.
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Thanks Captain Obvious. That would have slipped by if you hadn't pointed it out.
Hollywouldn't (Score:2)
Musk said it was "nobody from Hollywood".
That doesn't narrow the field very much. Almost every actor counts as "nobody from Hollywood."
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Of course landing is difficult, but you seem to be ignoring the fact that powered vertical lunar landing is less difficult than powered vertical Earth landing. We've only achieved the latter decades after the former. Adding the easier step if you already absolutely have to do the more difficult one is not a terribly large change. (Especially if the vehicle is already designed to do just that.)
How the training of the people affects the mission design is beyond me. They won't be involved in the operation of t
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There will always be much more control on an Earth-based whatever
That's exactly the opposite of how it worked with LM vs. Falcon 9. LM had the superior control. That's why landing it was so much easier. That's why landing the F9 is so difficult.
Thoroughly testing everything is a very important step within the process of creating reliable technology.
Well, that must be why SpaceX tests the shit out of stuff. By the time people will fly on the BFS, it will have been thoroughly tested.
What do you think that going in a space ship implies? That it is like using a plane?
What I meant was, is there meaningful difference between training for 0 g and training for 0 g/0.16 g? Or in other words, assuming a flyby as a baseline, what additional "orders of magnitude more d
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Just to be sure we're communicating with the same language...
"Can" [merriam-webster.com]
"Did" [merriam-webster.com]
The next thing you'll claim will be that the Atlas V can't actually lift 18 tonnes to LEO as per ULA's claims because it never did. You really seem to have some cognitive issues.
If you had any ability at all to work with a few numbers, you'd be able to tell the lower bound on the level of Falcon's LEO capacity from the realized GTO flights. But that would involve the knowledge of high school math with you obviously can't be bothered
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But thanks for your admission that Falcon 9 never lifted 10 tonnes to LEO...bbbut it "can"...
Falcon 9 lifted 10 tonnes to LEO.
Atlas V is can strap up to 5 booster side packs, different animal.
Nope, never lifted 18 tonnes so it can't. Atlas V never even lifted more than 10 tonnes, actually. It therefore can't - hey, your logic, not mine!
If you had any ability at all to work with a few numbers, you'd be able to tell Falcon 9 send Telstar 19V into sub-GTO, not a legitimate GTO orbit.
Interesting that you mention Telstar 19V. As per Tsiolkovsky, its 7-tonne mass to sub-GTO together with known stage 2 parameters of 4 tonnes dry mass, 112 tonnes gross mass, 348s Isp translates to around 15 tonnes to LEO using the same ASDS flight profile. That's not even considering expendable flight profiles.
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The point is - most of the problems of flying a rocket in vacuum are solved, and the rocket doesn't really care much what gravity is doing unless it's in contact with the surface. In the absence of atmosphere the moment you leave the surface you're in free-fall and the only effect of gravity is to change how fast your position is changing in response to the acceleration being provided. Well, at least not until you lean over enough for uneven weight distribution to start applying some torque - but that's f
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> flying inside an (pseudo-)atmosphere
What atmosphere? Mars has some atmosphere, for most practical purposes the Moon is hard vacuum all the way down (80 molecules per cubic centimeter, versus 3x10^16 on Earth. To get the force of a 1mph wind on Earth, you'd have to be going 400,000,000,000,000mph, or 24x light speed), which makes control *much* simpler than on Earth because you're not fighting atmospheric turbulence. If you were trying to land a Falcon, the grid fins would be useless, but the guida
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First off, as you say, nobody is talking about landing tourists on the moon any time soon. I would fully expect no tourist landings until they at least have a landing pad and possibly even a second ship standing by on the moon in case of problems.
No, it's not hard vacuum on the moon, but it's not remotely an atmosphere either for navigation purposes - it's not relevant to anything but geology and maybe some gas analysis projects. It's orders of magnitude thinner than the atmosphere in low earth orbit, whi
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Time will tell. However, the moons surface consists of solid rock and vacuum-welded dust, which hasn't given any other landers any problems. At worst the BFS will need a more conventional lander to precede it to create a stable landing pad.
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>.as opposed to the flights where the equipment function perfectly and yet still failed to land
Exactly. When you blow up in the air, it says nothing about the difficulty of landing, just that your rocket was flawed - and this rocket will have been very well tested on Earth and in orbit before it ever gets near the moon. The rockets that did work, had no problems nlanding.
And why would they train Maezawa? SpaceX rockets don't need a pilot.
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I assumed that was sarcasm - my point was that when the equipment didn't fail catastrophically, lunar landings haven't been a problem. Essentially - we've landed on the moon many times, and all the evidence suggests that there's nothing particularly difficult about it. The failures have all been because the hardware itself was flawed, not because a moon landing is more difficult than one on Earth.
And I said nothing about perfectly. SpaceX's failure rate is about the same as any other rocket line with the
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And the BFR has no grid fins or similar, it's designed for purely thruster-based maneuvering
Not precisely. Or at least not entirely. Here we need to be a little more precise with language.
Both components of BFR are intended to be landed and reused. The first stage and the ship, which we'll call BFS, as SpaceX has, land differently. The BFS, which is the only component that would land on the Moon, has motors in two of the rear fins/wings. They're variable geometry with respect to the body of the vehicle. So in atmosphere, BFS does not land purely with thrust-based maneuvering. Obviously it m
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Yes, the BFR first stage looks to be similar to the Falcon in function. The BFS however doesn't have any normal aerodynamic surfaces - those fins aren't aerodynamic surfaces like you'd see on a plane, they're for stabilization during hyper-sonic aerobraking, when they're hitting the air broadside. It doesn't fly through the atmosphere, it belly-flops, and the fins have more in common with a parachute than wings. Once it slows down to subsonic speeds and approaches the landing site it finally rotates ass-
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So they could put a refueling tank (perhaps with attached lander) in lunar orbit, and for a low, low additional in-flight purchase, you can choose (once there) to add a landing to your itinerary. I'm sure lots of people who intended for a flyby would decide to splurge on the landing once the Moon is... right... there...
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Indeed, it'd need enough additional fuel onboard to do that maneuver. However, if it was holding onto 1km/s delta-V anyways for a powered descent to Earth, then it'd already be there, and thus no additional fuel launch costs.
Dateline December 24, 1968 (Score:2)
Man successfully enters orbit of the Moon!
Those 2 individuals... (Score:2)
"In February 2017, Musk proclaimed that two individuals had each put down a "significant deposit" to fly around the Moon on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket,"
Elon confirmed in the Q&A that the 2 individuals were Yusaku Maezawa and someone else he was going to bring, and then spoke about how the Crew Dragon would really only hold 2 people comfortably for this trip (as it's about the same size inside as an SUV), and that by using BFS, more people are able to go. Musk mentioned maybe a dozen, whereas Yusaku
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Musk mentioned maybe a dozen, whereas Yusaku had earlier mentioned about 6-8.
Musk's dozen is considerably more likely to be the total count, while Maezawa's 6-8 artists is also accurate. The other 4-6 people will be trained astronauts. Musk may be behaving a little erratically lately, but he's not so far gone as to think sending a mob of poets, composers, sculptors, and photographers into space unsupervised is a good idea.
Good luck Elon & Yusaku Maezawa (Score:2)
...I genuinely hope they're successful and everyone comes back alive.
More CEOs in space! (Score:1)
The early astronauts, pretty much to a man, experienced a profound shift in their world views when they were able to behold the view of Earth from afar. They truly realized how fragile and isolated our world is. These were not guys predisposed to such touchy-feeliness, and yet they were still deeply affected.
If more CEOs and billionaires experienced the same view firsthand, perhaps they might give pause, reexamine their ways, and give more thought to long term consequences rather than short term profits.
Hope (Score:1)
I've heard Musk say this before, but he also repeated it in last night's announcement. One of the biggest benefits of this mission, and of SpaceX in general, is it gives everyone something to be hopeful about. There is plenty in this world to be down about as evidenced by all of the complaints filed around here. At the end of the day, who doesn't want to see people visiting the Moon!
I want to see it. I want to follow the updates and be excited about them. I want my son to be excited about it - maybe it
Maybe... (Score:1)
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Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
"You'll never get a rocket to orbit"
Musk: gets rocket to orbit.
"Well you'll never be able to land it"
Musk: Lands rocket. Makes it routine.
"But you'll never be able to refly it!"
Musk: reflies rockets routinely.
"But it'll take a year of refurb each time!"
Musk: gets refurb to under 4 weeks, targeting 24 hours.
"Yeah but it'll never save money"
Musk: reduces launch costs to lowest in industry on re-flow rockets.
"OK but you'll never make the BFR!"
Musk: hold my beer.
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He (or his company) has done amazing things, but he has always been overly optimistic about when it would happen. If he says 2023, you can be certain it won't happen till the late 2020's (at best).
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He (or his company) has done amazing things, but he has always been overly optimistic about when it would happen. If he says 2023, you can be certain it won't happen till the late 2020's (at best).
That's no longer as certain as it once was, and it ignores the fact that they already have the Raptor engine.
Falcon Heavy took much longer than expected because it ended up being a complete reengineering of Falcon 9. Falcon 9 Block 5 is entirely different from Falcon 9 Block 1, from the configuration of the engine pack to the size and shape of the reentry grid fins. Tip to tail, Falcon 9 had to be redone before Falcon Heavy was possible.
SpaceX has effectively designed three rockets now: Falcon 1, Falcon 9
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No Musk did not launch a Saturn V.
Re: Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
The heaviest rocket system in the world, not in history. The Saturn V, for all its merit, is not a current player.
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The heaviest rocket system in the world, not in history. The Saturn V, for all its merit, is not a current player.
That's not how English works... if you say he's the world's tallest man without further qualifications it's generally assumed to mean the tallest man in history. True, the SpaceX page [spacex.com] says "The world's most powerful rocket" as a headline but immediately follows up with "Falcon Heavy is the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two." and that's fair. It's like using "The world's tallest man" as a headline and "At 251 cm, Sultan Kosen is the world's tallest currently living man." as the
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If the world's tallest building were demolished, it would no longer be the world's tallest building. Some other building would be.
If the tallest building in history were demolished, it would still be the tallest building in history, until someone built a taller one.
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So if I launch a model rocket from my backyard, it's the heaviest current launch, right? I can claim that title?
Re: Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
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Saturn V is the heaviest rocket system in the world in the same way that Rome is the largest city. I mean, it USED to be, right?
If all current cities were smaller than ancient Rome then that analogy would make sense. You're comparing apples and oranges...
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Huh, 20 cases and 689 docket entries? Let's see what happens when we substitute another random billionaire - say, Zuckerberg [courtlistener.com]? Oh hey, what do you know, 54 cases and 6072 docket entries. I guess he's is going Megabankwupt...
Murder by Numbers (Score:2)
Although that may limit repeat rocket sales.
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Meanwhile, the Model 3 is the highest grossing passenger car in the US and keeps getting rave reviews. But don't worry your head about that - keep on shortin'!. ;)
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Yeah because if I ran a company I sure as hell wouldn’t make over prices poorly built piece of shit golf carts.
It wouldn't be a US company if it wasn't making over priced, poorly built pieces of shit.
The $110 million painting (Score:5, Informative)
On care anyone is curious what a $110 million painting looks like:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
That's one of the most expensive paintings ever auctioned. The artist died of a drug overdose at the age of 27.
Re:The $110 million painting (Score:5, Insightful)
Art is anything you can get away with. -- Marshall McLuhan
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BTW, I happen to think that Basquiat's painting is amazing.
There's a great movie [wikipedia.org] that was made about him. Worth a look.
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What? It clearly says right on the painting "500K" so he like paid 200x the marked price!
Re:The $110 million painting (Score:5, Funny)
"The artist died of a drug overdose at the age of 27."
Obviously that painting would be worth a lot less if he'd still be alive. I suppose Yusaku figured that out too. He then figured: what if I put 8 artists in a rocket and shoot them to the moon. If they die, prices for their work will go to the moon too.
I bet he'll cancel his ticket at the last moment.
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Still, killing yourself seems to be a good way to increase the value of your 'art'.
I'll always remember an "art piece" where some guy had a camera set up on a tripod and had someone shoot him in the arm with a gun. This was to get his doctorate in art I think.
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No, the thing you have to understand is that contemporary art is basically just the ultimate speculator's market in arbitrary status-signalling symbols for the mega-wealthy, dressed in a thin veneer of faux-intellectualism and pretend-philosophy; it didn't sell for this much because there's something special going on with colors here, it sold for that much because Basquiat got famous because of the movie made about him, and therefore dealers pushed his work into the artificially-created market for in-demand
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One thing I've noticed.
Classical art usually, by way of being judged for some time, strikes me as good. I can see the skill, and occasionally I'm wowed etc. So pretty much all of it gets a 80%
Modern art, most of it I look at and think "eh, don't care" and it scores maybe a 5%. But every so often one pops up, and it's fantastic, possibly a 95%. And I don't know why.
I think this is what they're going for.
Re:An artist?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I find his idea vacuous. But, so long as he helps fund the development of BFR / BFS, I don't care if his mission for buying the first flight was for the opportunity to juggle goslings in microgravity by bouncing them off the walls. A paying customer is a paying customer.
Re:An artist?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? I find it pretty inspiring, at least to the extent that space tourism can be. The guy is bringing others with him, for one, which is a first among billionaire space tourists. He's also not just bringing buddies - he's essentially commissioning artists to create (presumably public) works based on their experience of seeing the moon, which is a tangible and accessible way of giving something back to a broader community.
Finally, there is a bit of a historical homage to this flight - it mirrors Apollo 8 in the overall mission profile, which was the first time any humans had seen the far side of the moon. If I remember correctly, upon seeing the moon close up, Jim Lovell commented that he wished they had a poet aboard who could properly articulate the sense of awe and wonder of the experience - as it was, it was left to some no-nonsense test pilots to try to inspire a global audience via grainy TV broadcast.
Anyhow, this is a PR stunt, certainly, but it seems to be a thoughtful one.
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"Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's," wrote Philip Larkin, "and everybody else can fuck off."
"Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's," wrote Philip Larkin, "and everybody else can fuck off."
Instead of trying to appeal to general audiences, even educated ones, modern poets and artists try to appeal a small circle of people consisting of themselves, professional critics, and a small number of big-pocket patrons who, unlike the patrons of past classical art and literature, seek to distance
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Finally, there is a bit of a historical homage to this flight - it mirrors Apollo 8 in the overall mission profile, which was the first time any humans had seen the far side of the moon. If I remember correctly, upon seeing the moon close up, Jim Lovell commented that he wished they had a poet aboard who could properly articulate the sense of awe and wonder of the experience - as it was, it was left to some no-nonsense test pilots to try to inspire a global audience via grainy TV broadcast.
More than mirrors. Its aspiration is to duplicate the enormously far-reaching effect of the photograph called Earthrise by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission. Earthrise has been praised as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken." Today, a kid with Blender can create more spectacular imagery in an afternoon, but in 1968, that photo, and the reality of that photo, was earthshaking. It's debatable what photograph is the most reproduced in history, but Earthrise has to b
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As long as Musk follows the first Rule of Acquisition.
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I'd pay to watch gosling juggling in microgravity.