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Space

Jeff Bezos Plans to Travel to Space on Blue Origin Flight (bloomberg.com) 131

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Jeff Bezos will go to space next month when his company, Blue Origin, launches its first passenger-carrying mission. From a report: The 57-year-old, who plans to travel alongside his brother, Mark, made the announcement in an Instagram post Monday. The scheduled launch next month will be about two weeks after the billionaire plans to step down as chief executive officer of Amazon.com. "Ever since I was five years old, I've dreamed of traveling to space," Bezos said in the post. "On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend."

Blue Origin is one of several high-profile space-tourism companies backed by a wealthy entrepreneur, alongside Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies and Richard Branson-backed Virgin Galactic Holdings. Both of those companies are making plans to carry paying customers. Blue Origin is auctioning off a seat on its New Shepard rocket for the July 20 flight, an 11-minute trip to suborbital space that will reach an altitude of about 100 kilometers (62 miles). The spot will be the only one available for purchase on the flight, and the proceeds will go to a Blue Origin foundation that promotes math and science education.
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Jeff Bezos Plans to Travel to Space on Blue Origin Flight More

Jeff Bezos Plans to Travel to Space on Blue Origin Flight

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  • I know he wants to go into space, but when you're worth like $250B.... sitting on top of a violent explosion with any chance of failure is not a good idea.

    • Huh? If you are financially rich, your life is worth more to yourself? A poor or middle class person should be more OK with risk?

    • What difference does what you're worth make?
    • Hubris eventually finds a force to balance itself. It's a sort of evolutionary bitch-slap when we get "too big for our britches."

    • His life is worth about as much to him as anyone's is. His wealth is so great, he can't spend it all. Much of it might end up essentially worthless to him.

    • but when you're worth like $250B.... sitting on top of a violent explosion

      The difference between $1B and $250B is essentially meaningless in terms of an individual. In a way Bezos is depriving 249 other people from being billionaires. That said, if he does explode I hope literal cash rains down on random people.

      • Money at that level translates directly into power over human affairs (you know, like a King or Queen.)

        So you get to be the king of your own space program, or the king of Mars etc. Or the king and queen of trying to eliminate Malaria, or whatever.

        Not all of these "kingly" campaigns succeed, of course. But I think that's what the fun of it is for these risk-taking adventurers.

        The gambler's hubris that's part of what made Bezos king of e-commerce is also showing clearly in his decision to allow his brother to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      its kind of risky no matter your net worth but he wants to do it and can afford it so blast off I guess.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nazsco ( 695026 )
      you are missing the point. Every billionaire is having their own rocket company because that is the new hip way to fake your own demise.

      exotic remote place exploration, expensive car crash, rockstar drug overdose, those are all out of fashion today. ...but you still need a way to keep those unwashed plebeians out of your life.

    • I think we should add more CEOs and CTOs on this flight, along with lawyers and politicians! They can go first, and we will surely follow them in the next flight! Yes.

    • Well I am All for him going and not coming back...

    • When you're worth $250 billion, you don't waste your time just sitting around on your yacht of supermodels like a plebe billionaire. The whole point of having that much money is to do things that literally no one else can do. Like building a rocket company because you want to go to space.

    • Bezos grew up with Star Trek. Cap Kirk getting with Aliens. There was a bit more to it but anyway good for Bezos. Employing rocket experts helping advance an industry. Wish them safe journey.

  • mega-billionaire buys roller coaster (Score:5, Informative)

    by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @09:53AM (#61462484)

    Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are just roller coasters for billionaires. They can't achieve anything more valuable than a one off joy ride.

  • Over Confident and cannot accecpt failure. (Score:3)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @09:54AM (#61462486)

    Seems like a good combination.

  • Waste of his time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @10:02AM (#61462510)
    Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX. In the same time frame that SpaceX have launched 123 orbital missions including crew and cargo to the ISS, Blue Origin have gone up and down a few times and delivered a few validation rocket engines for someone else to use.

    I would rather he leave New Shepherd to the B team and focus on getting to orbit.
    • According to Wikipedia, Space Adventures is planning to use Crew Dragon to send tourists into orbit for up to 5 days. Sounds like a much better deal if you really want to experience space.

  • It's worth it, though (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @10:04AM (#61462514) Journal

    If I'd just lost $38 billion in a divorce, I'd want to be shot into space too.

    • I'd be glad to be able to afford to lose $38 billion, and still be one of the richest man.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        Jeff Bezos can afford to lose $38 billion more than I can afford to lose $38. $38 dollars is less relative to my net worth than $38 billion is to Bezos's, but at some point additional dollars don't add meaningfully to your wealth; those dollars are just game tokens.

      • I'd be glad to be able to afford to lose $38 billion, and still be one of the richest man.

        Let me be clear: it's not so much losing the $38 billion that hurts as much as knowing your ex-wife and the lawyer she's probably banging are gonna get it.

        • Re:It's worth it, though (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @12:14PM (#61462968)
          Mckenzie married Bezos when he was a Hedge Fund manager making 500K. 1 month after marriage he resigns his job, moves across the country, borrows 100K from his parents to start a company selling books on the internet. Instead of running , she stuck around and ran logistics for Amazon when Amazon was a 2 person company (logistics in this case was going to the post office and posting hundreds of parcels). She deserves every bit she got. Now if you want a gold digger Melinda Gates is a prime example. She worked in PR in Microsoft and started dating Bill (her boss) when he was already the richest person in the world.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          No one seems to be taking your joke in the spirit in which it was intended, though I still think it deserves the funny mod.

          Just started thinking about the story, but have only been able to think of one potentially insightful angle... Too bad I can't figure out a way to make it into a joke. Something about space sickness?

          Maybe once Jeff finds out how much he likes gravity he'll give up on the idea of running away from the planet he's working so hard to destroy? The joke doesn't work because there's still no

    • If I'd just lost $38 billion in a divorce, I'd want to be shot into space too.

      Perspective; To him, he lost 38 dollars.

      Perspective, Part Duex; He's lost more net worth from a tweet that was shit out wrong.

  • Unless you reach orbital velocity, you might as well just ride the vomit comet. In 1957, astronauts began training on planes that simulate weightlessness by making roller-coaster-like maneuvers in the air. The simulation makes some passengers nauseous, which inspired the nickname "Vomit Comet." -> https://www.space.com/37942-vo... [space.com] You have about 25 seconds of weightlessness out of 65 seconds of flight in each parabola. During such training, the airplane typically flies about 40–60 parabolic mane

    • Avg of 50 parabolic maneuvers, so that gives: 50 x 25s = 1250s of weightlessness. Much more than you will get on a lame suborbital flight with 3.5 to 4 minutes of weightlessness.. :-o

      An important difference is that the 3.5 to 4 minutes of weightlessness is contiguous, not broken up into 25s blocks.

      • An important difference is that the 3.5 to 4 minutes of weightlessness is contiguous, not broken up into 25s blocks.

        I predict we're going to get much better space toilets in the future thanks to these suborbital hops.

  • "Ever since I was five years old, I've dreamed of traveling to space," Bezos said in the post. "On July 20th, I will take that journey"

    Yippee! Wait...he's not coming back, right? If he is, then oh well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Well he already put in his replacement at AMZN in case the rocket blows up

    • We should have a rule like most countries have for immigration. If you can't prove that you've made plans to established a residence then [rich] people should be denied entry to Earth orbit.

  • I'm sorry, this is a publicity stunt for a dying enterprise. The folks at Blue Origin deserve better than to be a third-rate carnival ride operator. These folks have engineering talent that shouldn't be wasted on this kind of venture.

    • They did build and impressively over-compensating penis-ship.

      Has to count for *something*, I mean it's not *nothing*...

    • I'm sorry, this is a publicity stunt for a dying enterprise. The folks at Blue Origin deserve better than to be a third-rate carnival ride operator. These folks have engineering talent that shouldn't be wasted on this kind of venture.

      New Shephard gets BO experience with propulsive landings, a human rated craft, and a hydrolox fuel system, all of which plays well with lunar exploration.

      New Glenn is still in development and a much larger, orbital, rocket. Methalox there, using their BE-4 engines.

      And Vulcan (

    • SpaceX is trying to be the Ford of Space - build it fast, build it cheap and in volume. Blue Origin is trying to be Rolls - hand craft it to Billionaire customer standards.
  • Hopefully it doesn't become a literal fulfillment of Proverbs 16:18....

    "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

  • adequate testing? (Score:3)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @11:18AM (#61462766)

    The first crewed mission [wikipedia.org] of Blue Origin New Shepard will be launch #16.

    The first crewed mission [wikipedia.org] of the SpaceX Falcon 9 was launch #85.

    Not sure of the relative safety implications of that. Elon Musk's uses "move fast and break things" strategy for R&D, so he works out some bugs using experimentation that Blue Origin might have removed at the design stage.

    Still, the longest unbroken sequence of successful Falcon 9 launches before the crewed mission began with launch #29, and that is 56 successful launches for SpaceX vs 15 for Blue Origin prior to humans, a continuous success record about 3.73 times longer.

       

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      This isn't a sending-astronauts-to-space mission. It's an internal test flight. The *first* flights of most aircraft are crewed.

  • . . . of Elon Musk, with a Barrett Sniper Rifle, in some hide near the Blue Origin launch site.

    After all, Evil Geniuses need to Evil Genius. . . (eviller grin)

    • Why am I seeing the picture of Elon Musk, with a Barrett Sniper Rifle, in some hide near the Blue Origin launch site.

      'cause you aren't an evil genius. That's obviously a job for a minion. Possibly a named minion in the credits with a short character arc, but certainly the evil genius isn't doing that job himself.

  • Bezos is clearly an alien who crashlanded on Earth at some point, and now he's got what he needs to go back to his homeworld of lizard people, and good riddance to him.
  • All high frequency trading companies are now setting up their systems to react immediately to a sucessful or failed launch or landing. I wish him well but he may well not make it...

  • Pssst... Hey Jeff... Over here... (Score:3)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday June 07, 2021 @02:29PM (#61463424)
    ... I heard there is this other company where you can get a seat all the way to the ISS and even stay longer that 11 minutes. Oh, the best part, they've been doing this for some time now, so it's relatively safe compared to the mushroom you plan on going up in.

  • SpaceX Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon which has completed multiple crew and cargo missions to the ISS.
    Bezos Blue Origin New Sheppard rocket is barely able to reach space before dumping it's capsule full of tourists back via parachute.
    BO tourism is like the choo choo train ride in the kiddie section of an amusement park vs SpaceX being a real railroad.
    I wish poorly informed pseudo tech journalists would stop lumping SpaceX and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic into the same "New Space" club. Actually, there's just

  • I have never wanted a space mission to suffer catastrophic failure until now.

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