Ever since Jeff Bezos was five years old, he has dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, he will take that journey with his brother. The greatest adventure, with his best friend.
It is a gutsy move. Nextbigfuture salutes Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark for taking the risk associated with a Blue Origin rocket flight.
I wish the Bezos brothers good luck and a safe flight.
This flight will be made weeks after Bezos steps down from his role as CEO of Amazon. Bezos likely had to step down as CEO of Amazon in order to take the risk for this flight.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
old egghead is looking bloated and ancient.
Mostly plausible.
You know what he meant.
Trusting his life to the systems on the rocket demonstrates his confidence in their safety.
New Shepard doesn't go over Pacific. It flies up vertically over the Kármán line, and then descend down also vertically. New Shepard flew 15 times already without problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Shepard), and the capsule (for space tourists) is a very safe one with multiple redundancy for every aspects of the flight. There won't be any problem, imo.
In TV show "Billions" S3E4 there was a scene, where CEO of fictional space rocket company, Farpoint, have done something similar… and died in explosion
As I've said before, the most sensible way for SpaceX to do the test, would be to wait until they have the Starship working, outfit two of them just as though they were making the trip to Mars, and have them spend some time in LEO in a bolo arrangement.
You get to test the effects of reduced gravity.
You get to test the long term habitation fittings.
Cryogenics storage in space gets tested.
And you've still got two working Starships at the end of the test, no hardware involved that isn't useful afterwards.
Even the tether for the bolo, because the best way to send Starships to Mars is paired up like that, so the passengers can acclimate to gravity at their destination.
If you had one of them fully refueled in orbit, and the other with a partial tank, you could even arrange for one to experience Mars gravity, and the other Lunar gravity.
You should write a SciFi book….
One of the points of being the richest man in the world is that you don't need permission from anyone who might think that you should miss out on your childhood dream.
I would be surprised if the Bezos bros haven't been getting some training in. And they look fairly fit based on the 4 photos I've seen of them.
But what about the auction for the other place? That winner (whoever it turns out to be (Trump!)) will only have a few weeks to get ready.
It's better than the old method involving rapiers.
Not that rapiers aren't cool. But spaceships are even more cool.
To be fair, even at proposed SpaceX starship launch costs, it still won't be cheap. Not by comparison to just about all other non-space related research. (Pharma and Fusion being obvious exceptions.)
I think we should get rid of that for a start.
There's a sideshow of a pissing match between Branson and Bezos as well this summer for suborbital, so the whole dueling billionaires meme continues.
Fair enough about VG; If the New Shepard is a sounding rocket, Virgin galactic is flying an underpowered sounding rocket.
You'd think people who were seriously planning on colonizing space would be more curious about the biological effects of partial gravity. Especially given that we already know the effects of zero gravity are pretty bad. I suppose they figured, make access cheap first, then cheaply run the test.
They just have to hold on during the ride, practice their pushing technique so they don't pass out during high-g's, look out the windows at the top, maybe float around for a minute, and lay down for the landing. The whole flight is about 10 minutes.
Virgin Galactic, if it ever gets this far, says they will have a 3-day training session for their astronauts. They also have two trained pilots that do the difficult parts, in fact, unlike Blue Origin, VG can't do an auto-land, it requires pilots.
It's gone thru a rigorous test process. There is some amount of risk, to be sure, but it's not the first time this rocket has flown. In fact, it had its 15th flight in April, where they had "faux astronauts" enter the cabin before takeoff, do the usual checklist, then leave. Then when it landed, they practiced getting the astronauts out. So everything but having astronauts in it during flight.
Much training? Perhaps physcial testing.
This has disaster written all over it.
The Day the Music Died, Titanic, etc.
What absolute moron thought it was a good idea to have the richest man in the world and the only almost credible competition to Spacex, ride on the origin flight of a rocket?
Technically they did NOT have that, see my comment above. You may recall this obscure rocket called the "Lunar lander". More recently, the DC-X program.
I suppose first private sector propulsive landing, McDonnell Douglas did the DC-X on government contract.
Technically they had the first propulsive landing with their first NS test, slightly before Musk could successfully jump with Grasshopper. But it seems like BO has been resting on its laurels ever since, which is definitely not a good look.
" It was the first rocket to land itself beating Falcon."
New Shepherd AND Falcon were both beat to that first.
The Lunar lander. Admittedly, it didn't land on Earth.
The DC-X and XA. Not only landed vertically, but flew multiple flights.
So, I'll give them this: First reusable rocket vertically landing after technically reaching "space".
Pity they didn't actually use that technology to do anything for so long…
New Shepherd has had a number of flights. It looks fairly stable. It was the first rocket to land itself beating Falcon. This was on land and I don't know if it was reused. I am looking forward to New Glenn first flt. Supposedly next year but they are more secretive than Space X. IT is a beast and their engines are supposed to be on par with Raptors. I hope they are not fighting some un announced tech issues.
There are a number of competitors about to join the parade. Holicity with their acquisition of Astra. Today the maker of a solid 3d rocket raised huge bucks and claims their new rocket will be totally reusable and have the same lift capacity as the Falcon. Personally I think space investments are the next huge opportunity in the markets.
You sir won the internet today.
Absolute respect
For tourists, depends on price diff: if you have $100k+ lying around and know you might be on a few-years' waiting list (from now) for sub-orbital -vs- 50++x that in $$ and a longer wait list – unsure of when that will even be starting – say min. 2024; one may go for the briefer tour, now. And the difference in numbers of tourists for that lower price point – could be 1,000s to 1 business income vs orbital. So, if sub-orbital rakes in heavy interest, it could possibly shift tourism investment to be sub-orbital for decades – a huge cash cow loss for orbital flights, bases, etc., hoping on no major competitor for awhile…
July 20, 2021 will be the 52nd anniversary of our landing on the moon. About time we start getting civilians into space.
The dude is 57. It's called "age".
Agreed. I like the centrifugal gravity idea, I think it's overdue, IMO.
But I think this puts them firmly ahead of Virgin Galactic, which hasn't met any of its promises to get people into "space" (VG isn't going to the 100 km boundary, but an 80 km boundary less recognized as the start of space).
And 2nd or 3rd isn't always so bad. As the saying goes, the 2nd mouse gets the cheese. For instance, Apple was late to the MP player game, but totally owned it with the iPod. They weren't the first tablet or smart phone maker either.
1. Bezos has solved Ageing and knows that he will be pursued by every Chinese, American, and Russion oligarch for the solution. Heads to own south Pacific island on faked death;
2. Can't stand to be without MacKenzie (who else would want him?) and wants (to be seen as) going out in a 'blaze of glory';
3. Is actually the Lex Luthor-equivalent of our Generation per South Park S22 Ep09, can never otherwise be out in public (pacific island);
4. Can't beat Musk, Branson, the Axiom people, etc., to be the First Hero-Colonizer of Space with a great vehicle, station, base, or extra-cis-lunar Mission (pacific island);
5. Worst speaking actor in Star Trek movie canon history. How else one would live that down 5 years later? (pacific island); and so on…
Best. Faked. Death. Ever.
I'm actually amused that somebody went to the trouble of downvoting that.
What's not true about it? Blue Origins really needs to start racking up some firsts, if they're going to develop a respectable reputation. They can't just come in second or third place on everything.
There are lots of candidate firsts out there to grab, I genuinely wonder which one Bezos will pick.
Yes, I think the real Bezos will be up there. What's the point of investing in expensive toys, then hiring a stunt double to play with them for you?
you figure that we would have heard more about training, etc., before now… July 20 – 6 weeks?
so you think the 'real' Bezos will be up there? Interesting.
agreed. huge risk. waiting lists for other programs may suffer if bits of the Bezos family end up scattered all over the Pacific.
Attention (and therefore investment) to the Space Industry (upon success) will be this flight's greatest achievement.
Not much of a pissing match, when Musk is regularly delivering people to the ISS, and Bezos is looking forward to briefly passing through 'space' then falling back.
But sooner or later it should be Blue Origin accomplishing one of those firsts, shouldn't it? Hasn't been, so far. SpaceX beat them into orbit, manned and unmanned, and will almost certainly beat them to the Moon, too. Virgin Galactic beat them with the first manned sounding rocket.
What is Blue Origins going to do first? I'm curious. I assume that, now that Bezos is taking direct control, it will be something.
Maybe the first orbital habitat using centrifugal 'gravity'? That's a first that's still open. Or exploring a lunar lava tube? First manned flight outside the Earth/Moon system?
It's got to be something, BO is going to mean Body Odor if they don't come in first on SOMETHING.
Musk is trolling Bezos with every successful launch at this point.
I mean, if absolutely nothing else, we'll need somewhere to put our GPS constellations…
Whatever else we might be exasperated with him due to the lack of progress on his part, at least it's nice that the Bezos can get excited about Blue Origin. I hope he has a nice trip and that it may inspire him to be more ferociter and less gradatim.
This is suborbital though right? The pissing match for orbit is still open between Bezos and Musk…
If it wasn't for all the space Earth would be sitting on the Sun. And that would make our curtains fade really fast.
Why do you think Earth needs space?
I think there may be a fair degree of buyer's remorse for the ~10minute round trip for those who had to dig deep for the ticket price.
I was thinking the same thing.
I noticed and figured he's already in retirement mode.
Good PR. It helps his image and the image of the New Shepard flights. Adding his brother was a great humanizing choice.
This will get the first flight more and more positive attention. It will make the difference between this and SpaceX’s commercial flights which are into orbit more evident. It will probably help the pace of advance seem dramatic in itself that there is first a passenger suborbital rocket, then orbital, then to ISS and then Starship taking passengers around the moon, then Starship landing NASA astronauts back on the moon all within a few years.
Yeah, Musk is probably precluded from trolling him by flying to the ISS the week before, he's D. D. Harriman'ed out of the choice.
I'd do it in his place, only if I had that kind of money, I'd want to actually go into orbit, not ride a sounding rocket above the Karman line. But Bezos would probably never hear the end of it if his first trip into space was on a SpaceX rocket.
Jeff looks like he had some work done on his face. Looks kinda rough.