[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?