Jeff Bezos Is Planning To Ship 'Several Metric Tons of Cargo' To the Moon (vice.com) 108
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin aerospace company is planning to send "several metric tons" of unspecified cargo to the Moon in the next five years. The company reportedly signed a letter of intent with Germany aerospace companies OHB Space Systems and Security and MT Aerospace at the 69th annual International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Germany on Tuesday. The OHB dubbed the lunar project the "Blue Moon" mission in a press release. Motherboard reports: It's not clear exactly what cargo the Blue Moon mission would transport, but it likely includes infrastructure designed to start private business on the Moon: The IAC also detailed the launch of the "Moon Race," a competition between Blue Origin, Airbus Air and Space, and other space agencies around the world to develop technology that will bring companies around the world to the Moon. According to a press release, the competition could involve manufacturing products and technology, manufacturing energy sources for humans to survive, getting access to water and sustaining biological life, such as plant or agricultural life -- all on the Moon. Blue Origin said in a press release that both the Blue Moon mission and Moon Race are in line with its goal to "land large payloads on the Moon that can access and utilize the resources found there."
He doesn't know what the cargo is yet (Score:5, Funny)
Bezos just wants to be ready for the first Amazon Prime shipment to the moon. 2 day shipping will be a bit of a challenge.
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I guess you got an F in astrophysics
If you start out at 25,000 mph you will escape earths gravity, but you will use up most of that velocity in doing so.
I think low orbit speed is about 17,000 MPH
and from there you have to accelerate with whatever fuel you have carried with you.
And then of course slow down when you reach the moon. Sorry theres no atmosphere to use as a brake.
I think the apollo missions had 4 day transit times, you're not going to do much better than that with chemical rockets.
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Two moon-day shipping. (Score:4, Insightful)
that's 56 days earth time. I think he can do it.
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Bezos just wants to be ready for the first Amazon Prime shipment to the moon. 2 day shipping will be a bit of a challenge.
He will just subcontract the delivery to Space X..
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Bezos just wants to be ready for the first Amazon Prime shipment to the moon. 2 day shipping will be a bit of a challenge.
Let’s see UPS try to throw THIS package...
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It's all relative... ba boom tish!
"unspecified cargo"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"unspecified cargo"? (Score:5, Funny)
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Pressed for a specific date, Bezos replied "one of these days".
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Or Amazon's financial information:
"The letter of the law says we have to allow the tax man access to our accounts information to fulfil our legal obligations and we've told him exactly where they are and the access code but he's not bothered to audit them, so it's not OUR fault if you think we're not paying enough tax, we did try and work with the tax authorities. It's governments fault for not making sure that legislation explicitly states tax records must be held on Earth. They should change the law if th
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My goodness that was funny. I wish I had mod points, even though you posted AC.
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I'm assuming it'll mostly be union organisers.
The whalers on the moon probably ordered another shipment of harpoons.
Seeing a lot of talk about lunar flights (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk is cheap, guys. I'd be interested to see, in ten years' time, how many, if any, of these fantasies get carried out.
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Yeah, what struck me is he/they plan on shipping metric tons, in the end they will probably just be archaic US short tons.
Excellent ... miles, quarts, and fathoms, used all over the moon, bwa ha ha!!!!!!
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Has Blue Origin even got plans for a heavy launch vehicle. They have not really played with the Shepard yet much.
Is the 2-day lunar days? (Score:1)
I was wondering where all my deliveries went.
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They misread 'LOUISIANA' as 'LUNA'.
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I kinda hope it will be something more useful then Tesla. With Space X putting a Tesla in space, while a cool marketing was a complete waste of money. They could had at least worked with a university for some sort of scientific satellite (Or loaded the Tesla with sensors.).
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It was a test flight, and the first one for that family of rockets, at that. There was a decent chance that it would have exploded on the pad destroying the payload. Most universities don't have loads of cash to waste on building experiments that potentially only gather data about the internal temperature of a rocket fuel explosion.
They put a Tesla on there because it was more interesting than the usual chunk of tungsten that would be used for payload simulation on this type of mission.
The real technological feat... (Score:2)
Blue Origin Pivoting? (Score:4, Interesting)
Blue Origin of course has no near-term plans for Moon-launch capability, thus why they're courting other companies to develop this. However this got me thinking...
SpaceX's plan is for other companies to develop the various tech which will be deployed to Mars, for habitats, fuel production, automated machinery et cetera. This makes me wonder if Blue Origin is planning on developing some of said equipment, and putting it on the Moon first, giving up on making heavy-lift rockets and pivoting to making interesting cargo to put in space.
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NASA has chosen the BE-4. Too bad it uses single turbo thus requiring an interseal.
ULA has chosen the BE-4 because Rocketdyne refuses to put in any of their own money on their own engine, which pretty much says they'll never even have a working prototype. Even the ULA is probably expecting more money to make the Vulcan a reality and might not put in any of their own money, probably dooming it to vaporware. This leaves SpaceX and Blue Origin as serious choices. However, since the Senate gets to decide how NASA spends money, we can't discount the SLS yet.
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Earth resources, except oil, gas and coal, are not wasted. They simply go to a different place on the planet. The few metric tons that are in orbit or in outer space are not even a sand corn at a beach.
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In less than 100 years, localities will auction off the rights to rip open landfills and have robots sort it all for recycling.
And we can already use bacteria to create hydrocarbons. Tailored ones are just some research away. When this happens, even oil won't be an issue, pollution from burning it aside. But that won't be for a hundred years or more anyway, and we will be well into renewable energy and genetic engineering. I doubt ground oil will ever be a problem.
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Amazon (Score:1)
Just like Amazon shipments, it will be tossed on the driveway while the rocket speeds off into the distance.
Yeah and NASA is focused on Mars (Score:2)
I don't know if I should be upset they are concentrating on the pointless, or happy they won't be in the way of the people actually making space work.
Nazis (Score:1)
The Nazis who fled to the dark side of the moon at the end of WWII will take anything they leave there and use it against us. Is Bezos in league with the lunar Nazis? (Does this count as fulfilling Godwin's law?)
"letter of intent" = mere spin (Score:2)
why is media and slashdot falling for these corporate spin campaigns?
this is not even a contract, no significant amount of money changed hands, it is a mere letter of intent for something, if serious, would take years to happen, but more likely never happen. main purpose of this is to create good press for amazon. but media and meta media, ignores all that, believes the corporate spin at face value.
Metric crap-loads (Score:2)
Hope it's for a Prime customer (Score:1)
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Free shipping
Sure, but the cost of a Prime membership just went up by two orders of magnitude to make up for the shipping costs.
Hydroponics (Score:2)
Cash For Clunkers (Score:1)
Smiley Boxes (Score:3)
His Money... (Score:2)
He's probably planning to ship several tons of his money to the moon to keep it out of the hands of the tax collectors.
Iron Sky (Score:2)
Obviously he is establishing diplomatic relations with the Nazis on the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
New AWS region (Score:1)
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He should ship using the imperial, or standard ton. They’re 10% lighter! Think of the SAVINGS!
Nope, the Imperial ton is 40 pounds heavier than the (metric) tonne. The "short ton" used by Americans is 10% lighter than the tonne.
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Didn't They get Told how to Spell Tonne in School? (Score:2)
Ton : Imperial measurement. Ad hoc unit of weight based on the shin length of a medieval mole-rat.
Tonne: 1000 kilograms. Based on big round numbers that divide nicely by other big round numbers.
"Metric Ton"?
Japan started it. (Score:2)
Only after their announcement to go to the Moon and set up shop did the space race really get off the ground (see what I did there).
Industrializing the Moon is an obvious strategy that should have been an extension of America's thrust (see what I did there) back in the 60s.
The only reason JFK sent us to the Moon was to outperform the USSR.
The only reason we're going back is to outperform Japan and a host of other countries.
I don't know why in simple hell the Mars batshit crazy fanbois didn't choose the Moon
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I don't know why in simple hell the Mars batshit crazy fanbois didn't choose the Moon as a beta site in the first goddam place.
Because most of the "Mars batshit crazy fanbois" how far we actually are from being able to go to Mars and how much work is still needed to make that journey. I've looked at thing and asked people in lectures and giving interviews on the topic how long would it take to get to Mars with a manned mission once given Apollo level political buy in and budget, and the answer is 20-30 years. That time almost certainly involves testing many technologies in a moon fly by if not landing. Even Musk has said that a man
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Yeah.
Reminds me of when I was a little kid and first held my breath under water yelling, "Look Ma! I'm swimming!"
Sure, it was progress, but I had a long way to go.
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It's unfortunate, but necessary, that we lose lives and equipment, with budget-busting efforts, in order to learn enough to get on down the road.
While I am very impressed with the space shuttle program and appreciate the lives of those lost to make advances, I'm totally goddam pissed that we gave up.
And don't get me started on Waxahachie.