[detritus]

The thing that amuses me is that if SpaceX can make Starship and the Heavy booster work, they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance.

If you can send 50-100 people on an actual orbiting jaunt, perhaps a night in 'space rocket hotel', rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.

Then they'd just need to get environmentally-friendly methane production going and we can all be a bit happier.

[Ajedi32]

That's the dream; affordable space tourism for the masses.

If Starship manages to hit the price and performance targets Musk has set for it (~$2 million/launch[1], max of 1000 passengers[2]) you could get a ticket to orbit for around $2000. Throw in some extra for profit margin, a stay at an orbital space hotel, and a few additional expenses, and it might well be possible to take a vacation in space for less than $10k.

I really hope that happens within my lifetime; it'd be amazing to experience.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/06/elon-musk-says-spacexs-sta...

[2]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1144004310503530496

[Andrew_nenakhov]

1000 passengers, really? Just imagine the possible loss of life if something goes wrong. We are still counting 100 successful launches in a row as an unprecedented success - whereas in commercial airplane flights airlines with less than 1 incident per 5000000 flights are considered 'poor safety record'.

[Ajedi32]

There aren't many rocket designs in use right now that have had more than 100 flights _total_. It's hard to properly evaluate the safety of a system when it only gets tested once a month.

As the cost of spaceflight comes down and launch frequency goes up, I suspect we'll start seeing reusable launch systems emerge that have had thousands of launches across dozens of rockets. Once that happens I think spaceflight's safety record will improve significantly.

[quijoteuniv]

I hope people have better dreams. That is my dream.

[aerovistae]

Oh man, struggling to channel dang here. How to respond constructively. Probably the best thing to do is flag and ignore, but I can't pass this up.

If people are interested in going somewhere, who are you to denigrate their ambitions? What is wrong with dreaming of orbiting the planet? How does that dream fall short? Is it a weak dream for a midwestern child, landlocked a thousand miles in every direction, to want to see the ocean? Is it a weak dream for a city child, blocked by light pollution, to want to see the stars?

What kind of comment is this? What does it even mean to have a "better" dream?

[colordrops]

Everyone is required to fix the worlds problems before doing anything else. At least that is how the thinking goes, which is absurd in most cases. Though there is some nuance here considering Bezos' absolute detestable behavior climbing on the backs of abused workers to get to this point.

It's an old story, as expressed by Dr. Seuss in his story Yertle the Turtle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_St...

[unfunco]

Maybe Jeffrey Bezos will return a changed man and give his warehouse staff proper piss bottles instead of used drinking water bottles.

[lostlogin]

Oxfam’s Deepak Xavier vented about the billionaire-hobbies issue early this week.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-blast-s...

[zzzeek]

it's an entirely appropriate dream for a child. for a society with enormous intractable problems such as global warming, income inequality, and fascism, it's pretty lame.

[aerovistae]

It's lame to dream of space until utopia is achieved? Until life is perfect, NASA should be shut down? Do all 7.5b people on earth need to dream of solving the same problems? Is eliminating diversity of dreams constructive? If your teenage daughter told you she wanted to go to school to be an astronaut, would you tell her that was lame?

[ericd]

Well, I’d say that few things are likely to really drive home to people how insignificant the little power struggles we spend so much of our life obsessing about as going up into space and looking down on everything, and then looking out into the infinite void.

If it makes everyone who can afford to go more circumspect about that, I think it’ll have been completely worth it, even ignoring all the useful stuff that’ll come out of it.

Also, off topic, but thanks very much for all the things you make, they’re wonderful.

[Seanambers]

It is a quirk of evolution that this kind of thinking is around. This defeatist unwillingnes to do. Imagine if man had never ventured from Africa, or from the trees to the savannah - I bet even back then there were those who chose to stay behind. Where are they now?

There is something so unimaginative about this kind of thinking it's really off putting.

As a society one should always strive to do better in all areas, not only in the areas you deem worthy.

[AtlasBarfed]

I actually think space tourism for the rich is very important.

We are entering an age of global techno oligarchy

I want my masters to see the earth from space. Get a feel for the stakes, see the delicate ribbon of air, the vastness of space.

See it as the rare jewel we spent a short time on, and the obligation to treat it well

[rurp]

I don't know why this is being downvoted since it makes total sense to me. It's not a good thing that the mega rich have an absurd amount of power over society, but it's a fact for the foreseeable future. There is precedent for people becoming much more conscientious about the planet after returning from space, so it's certainly possible that billionaires playing with rockets will have some positive second order effects.

[peatmoss]

It is indeed a phenomenon that others have experienced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

[ceejayoz]

Most of the folks who've been up so far are military and science oriented folks; there's a bit of an existing tendency to think in that direction. I'm not sure the personality required to become a billionaire is necessarily going to result in the same feelings looking at Earth from orbit.

"It's small, I want to own the others" might be the Bezos response.

[RobRivera]

where's the steering committee for quality of dreams? I am still waiting on feedback for my dream of a loving family and no more nightmares.

[gameswithgo]

i hope people quit being insufferable downers

[RIMR]

For real, people straight up fetishize the experience of "going to space", but the reality is that you're crammed in stinky tin can for a while, and eat preserved food.

The real magic of human spaceflight for me is the science that is done up there. Sending a bunch of untrained rich people into space for the fun of it is not especially inspiring. The idea of getting crammed like sardines into a giant rocket so I can experience this with the masses is just not a great dream.

[Ajedi32]

Space is inspiring to a lot of people because it represents both the the peak of human achievement, and humanity's future. Space is the final frontier; the next logical step in humankind's unending quest to explore the universe.

For me personally? I just want to mess around in 0G for a day or two. That seems like it'd be a rather unique experience; well worth a few thousand bucks and a couple hours packed shoulder to shoulder in a ship with a thousand other people.

[mam3]

If you cant dream beyond what you eat and the distance you can go in each direction its totally fine but dont impose it to other people

[mesozoic]

Cheaper and safer to just drop some acid.

[samstave]

But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed, order room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show, etc.

10k in space will get you what?

---

Random thought:

If they were able to get enough water into space such that one could swim through a sphere of water in a weightless environment, what would the sensation of being encapsulated in water while weightless feel like (clearly needing scuba or some other air connection..)

[bdjk68hsk]

> But for a $10k vacation, you get to sleep in a bed, order room service, go outside, go golfing, see a show, etc.

And what if you’ve already done all that?

Private jets (well, fractional ownership) gets boring after a few years.

[awrence]

Random reply:

Or you can stay here on earth, go scuba diving and experience the exact same weightlessness... :)

[colordrops]

It's not the same - that's buoyancy, not weightlessness. Gravity still exerts force on your body and internal organs, and you feel orientation, i.e. up and down. It's a very different feeling.

[samstave]

That's why I was asking!

What would the difference in sensation be for one who is submerged on earth, versus one who is encapsulated in a floating sphere of water...

[_moof]

There’s no buoyancy without weight so it wouldn’t feel like anything until you moved. Then you’d have the same drag forces you would on Earth. It’s unlikely the sphere would stay together very long with nothing to hold it together.

[MiddleEndian]

>go golfing

lol you would have to pay me to go golfing

[samstave]

Retarded response... you know what I meant. Go to the pub and wait for this to all blow over.

[bob1029]

Out of all of these space-faring corporations, SpaceX has orders of magnitude more aerospace infrastructure and assets to work with. Their entire ethos since inception was getting humanity to Mars, not sending a handful of wealthy people into suborbital trajectories. Elon/SpaceX have certainly participated in a lot of PR throughout, but it always seemed to be along an engineering axis, not some feel-good emotional axis (although many were moved by witnessing double booster landings regardless).

The construction of a massive space port in one of the more desolate places in America is a pretty damn good starting point. Doesn't take a magician to round that out with an airport, hotels, convention centers, restaurants, etc. I believe there is already an uptick in real estate on South Padre Island and talks about some bridge to better connect the island.

[caconym_]

BO has plenty of funding, and lofty ambitions far beyond New Shepard, but they just haven't made much progress toward achieving them.

I haven't done the math, but it seems like Starship is potentially an incredibly cheap heavy lift rocket even in total or partial expendable modes, e.g if SpaceX fails to realize their full reusability goals. At this point, I think BO and others are only falling further behind.

[darknavi]

It's worth noting that BO is much less open (pretty much the other end of the spectrum as SpaceX) about its progress.

We aren't really sure exactly how far along a lot of their projects are other than "not really close".

[itsoktocry]

Exactly this. SpaceX and Blue Origin take the opposite approaches when it comes to PR. You can see the results in this thread; people comparing BOs current tech with a hypothetically functional Starship.

[caconym_]

A lot of people seem to make the mistake of identifying SpaceX with Starship alone, forgetting that they've also achieved effective dominance of the commercial orbital launch market with Falcon 9, broken into the heavy lift game with Falcon Heavy, and recently delivered the only operational manned orbital launch capability in the western hemisphere.

So, IMO, you don't need to invoke Starship to illustrate the width of the current gap between SpaceX and a company like BO that has never flown substantial hardware in orbit or beyond, on their own launch vehicle or otherwise. When they do start delivering spaceflight systems, we can re-evaluate the competitive landscape. New Glenn could absolutely put some real pressure on Falcon 9, if they can deliver it before Starship eats its lunch.

[notJim]

Not sure a tiny island that’s 6-7’ above sea level is such a genius investment these days.

[bob1029]

The construction of most buildings along these coastal regions is expressly considering these kinds of concerns. Storm surge during a hurricane is an excellent facsimile for this scenario and encourages compensation on the engineering side. I haven't been down to South Padre Island in a long time to confirm, but I know for a fact that no beachfront property in Galveston has a meaningful first floor layout. Every one of these homes is constructed with the expectation that the first floor will flood, so everything important starts on the 2nd floor and up. Ground floor is typically just parking/storage/stairs/elevator.

I don't think any place on earth is a good spot to build when playing with geologic timescales.

[nickik]

By far small enough that you could easily protect it if need be.

[thepasswordis]

Do you think the ocean is going to rise SEVEN FEET?

[DougBTX]

Maybe!

> A number of later studies have concluded that a global sea level rise of 200 to 270 cm (6.6 to 8.9 ft) this century is "physically plausible".[8][2][9]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

[eloff]

Yes. Much more, even by very conservative estimates.

Just probably not in our lifetimes. The maximum sea level rise will be hundreds, even thousands of years from now. In the absolute worst case scenario where all the ice melted, sea level would rise 230 feet. If we did nothing at all about climate change and kept burning fossil fuels until we ran out, that's actually a likely outcome. It has happened in the past when the earth was much warmer. It won't happen to us, because we're taking action. The final sea level rise would depend how we do with actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as it will keep rising long after we stop using fossil fuels.

7 feet by the end of this century is not impossible, but not in the conservative estimate. So far we've been tracking the aggressive estimates, not conservative ones.

[Pixelbrick]

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/1732/

[mulmen]

You mean like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America?

[gvb]

There is a SpaceX private Crew Dragon mission scheduled: https://spacenews.com/inspiration4-announces-crew-for-privat...

"Launch is scheduled for no earlier than Sept. 15, slightly earlier than the original announcement of the fourth quarter of this year. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for three days, flying in an orbit at the same inclination as the International Space Station — 51.6 degrees — but in an orbit as high as 540 kilometers, more than 100 kilometers above the station."

[dev_tty01]

Yeah, the sub-orbital is a harder sell. When you are the only one or one of a few, the benefit/cost is perceived to be higher. After a dozen or so of these flights much of the cachet will be gone. Can they (Bezos/Branson) bring the cost down fast enough to transition to a sustainable model?

In 2000, Dennis Tito paid $20M for 11,400 minutes in space or about $1750/minute ($2765 in 2021 dollars). The Branson and Bezos models 20 years later are much more expensive per minute and are so short there is no real time to absorb the experience.

[simpleguitar]

I think a lot of people might be willing to pay for 4 days in orbit for $2M.

My version would have blackjack and hookers, obviously.

[samstave]

Honestly, I wish Branson and Bezos would have just put their dicks back in their pants and just fully got behind spaceX

I absolutely dont care about Bezos or Branson being able to do these stunts - SpaceX already docked with the IIS ffs.

It's like McClaren winning the Gran Prix, and then Toyota and Ford showing that their CEOs can finish a few laps in Monaco.

[lttlrck]

Doesn't blindly ceding to the industry leaders ultimately result in stagnation?

The VG and BO launches were both underwhelming for me - but it's still exciting to see the different engineering approaches, it's like hedging a bet, and I am sure each of them will pay dividends - one way or another.

[gist]

> rich folk would gladly pay millions, which makes the business case a lot more compelling.

I would say some would but keep in mind that a few other things have to come together.

a) Willing to take the risk (non trivial example I would not do this no chance)

b) Your family/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend has to buy into the risk even if it's just you going into the orbit.

c) Potential negative publicity as in 'look how they are spending their money' since early adopters would most likely be publicized in some way.

d) Guilt maybe spending millions for a trivial short ride vs. other things you can spend money on.

Keep in mind with 'd' other things are considered more acceptable and have social proof. This seems (to me anyway) the ultimate extravagance and I am wondering if there is the classic difference between what people say they would do if given the chance and what they would actually do.

[fallingknife]

The publicity aspect would deter some, but it would attract others. By the time even 20 people have gone up, it won't be newsworthy, and then it will just be like buying a yacht. There are about 1.5 million people in the US worth $10 million or more, which is about where you need to be to comfortably afford this type of thing now, and another 10 million or so single digit millionaires, many of whom would take a significant hit to net worth to go up. So I think the odds that you can get > 10K takers just in the USA are pretty much 100%. If you can put 10K people up with a solid safety record, then that number would probably go up to 100K to 1 million potential customers. The economy of scale at that level would probably drop the price to where most of the upper middle class is a potential customer. So I think this can work. Safety record is the key.

[pie420]

The economics are just silly. 4 passengers at $250k each is only $1M in revenue per flight. Between fuel costs, rocket costs (even assuming 10x reuses per rocket, you'd need to build the rocket for significantly under $10M to have a chance at profitability, could you imagine building a rocket for under 10M?), engineer and employee salaries and benefits, advertising, liability, etc.

Add in the fact that you have a very viable competitor in Virgin Galactic and SpaceX who could leapfrog both and provide even better experiences, and I don't see how Blue Origin will ever be viable without government funding

[meepmorp]

I think BO's game plan has been to become something along the lines of a traditional aerospace contractor, and SpaceX has made that very hard.

I think the timing of the launch isn't coincidental - iirc, the investigation into the HLS decision is going to be done in early August, and it undoubtedly looks better for BO's case to have had a successful launch with humans onboard one of their rockets.

[dcow]

I suspect their end goal is other funding whilst using the consumer space to launch their program and establish credibility.

[samstave]

I'm surprised we haven't heard of that scammer Blizarian trying to get on one of these flights yet...

[dorfsmay]

How many amateurs pay a lot of money to be able to say they went to the top of mount Everest, which is probably a lot more risky?

[gist]

Good point but a bit different. People view climbing Everest as an achievement as opposed to going up in a rocket which even though you need to prepare seems less daunting and a different type of risk.

Not that it matters but I wonder which of these buys more social capital?

[bronco21016]

Exactly. As a pilot, I find both of these rides uninspiring. Now if I could strap myself to the top of a Titan II in a Gemini capsule and do some piloting… now that would be an experience.

[dolmen]

Keep in mind that the fortune of those millionaires might collapse if they die in the adventure. Or insurance cost might might make the trip much more expensive than just the ticket.

[bitL]

There will be an inevitable crash/failure resulting in a mass casualty event where many industries will lose their leaders (the only people that could afford a spaceflight for fun), and that's very bad for PR and could sink the whole company as a result.

[notatoad]

>the only people that could afford a spaceflight for fun

i suspect the market will be less corporate leaders and more the family of corporate leaders (and saudi royals)

[BurningFrog]

You can also land on the other side of the planet within... I want to say an hour?

[detritus]

I must admit, that's the usage scenario for Starship that I don't particularly see much benefit in. I may well be short-sighted, but given how far away from cities the launch centres for these things would need to be, it strikes me that traditional travel infrastructure suffices.

Now, the US military, on the other hand? Starship as a somewhat-disposable space truck makes a lot of sense. Then it comes down to how cheaply SpaceX can manufacture the things.

[BurningFrog]

If I'm paying for a space tourism joyride, I would definitely be extra thrilled if we took off from California and landed in Fiji within the hour.

Presumably, since I'm stinking rich to begin with, I'd have a fancy resort booked there for the next week.

I agree it's not a replacement for commercial jet flights.

[dolmen]

Well, this raises the cost of capsule reuse because of transport back to the launch point.

[pantalaimon]

Why not also have a launch facility at fiji? You could even book a return trip.

[sneak]

I imagine the geopolitical efforts involved in coordinating to allow passenger ICBM launches at major cities in the industrialized west is on the same order of the effort involved in designing and building starship itself.

[pie420]

You make the mistake of assuming the uber-rich want to get to Fiji as soon as possible, when in reality they would rather spend the 8 hrs in their private Gulfstream in a cocaine fueled orgy while the pilot does barrel rolls and loops. Flying is one of the few times that the Uber rich can really disconnect and be alone and relax, why would they want to get to Fiji in an hour in a super stressful flight?

[fallingknife]

Yeah I don't think it makes much sense, at least not for a long time. Odds of a plane crashing are on the order of 1 in 10^7. On the other hand, it was a major accomplishment that the Falcon 9 was able to perform 100 successful missions in a row. Rockets have to be safer by many orders of magnitude before they move from the realm of thrill seeking to commercial travel.

[kiba]

I am more concerned about nuclear war as a result of mistaken identity since it's the same technology used to launch ICBMs.

[detritus]

Not sure why you were downvoted - for sure, we have alert systems these days so that test ICBMs and rocket launches aren't misinterpreted by foreign actors, and we would in any future where there were tens, hundreds, thousands of launches a day - but as-equally, it would be a lot easier to mask nefarious intentions in such traffic.

Irrespective of nukes, I shudder to imagine what the impact of an out of control de-orbiting Starship would do at ballistic reentry over a populace... .

[dredmorbius]

Ballistic free path is 45 minutes. A single LEO is 90 minutes, no place on Earth is more than a half-orbit distant.

A ballistic point-to-point tragectory is an orbit which intersects the surface.

[alexashka]

> they could actually come up with a tourism/joyride that would blow these piffling jumps by Branson and Bezos into irrelevance.

We've had tourism that blows all these attempts into irrelevance, for thousands of years.

Take 5 grams.

[agloeregrets]

The best part is that while these two billionaires do their 'space hop', Elon is laughing the whole time and probably texted Jeff Bezos asking 'Hey have you seen my car? NVM, sorry, you probably were not close enough to see it.'

Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to the obvious feud with Jeff Bezos, I know he is friends with Richard.

[simonh]

He was actually at the Virgin Galactic launch and is good friends with Richard Branson. He was having fun, but not for the reason you suggest.

[agloeregrets]

I'm mostly referring to Jeff, who he has an extremely public feud with.

[pie420]

No he doesnt

[martyvis]

I'm pretty sure Elon thinks Jeff's Blue Origin is impotent in delivering the technology needed to progress the return to the Moon https://twitter.com/kchangnyt/status/1386787651412451329?s=1...

[dev_tty01]

https://www.whereisroadster.com