| >The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. I honestly think you have it backwards: the media has been very kind to both Bezos and Branson, particularly the latter. This isn't surprising because the media doesn't really get orbital dynamics any more than they get most technical topics. Nevertheless a lot of them act as if Branson's and Bezos' flight were some big technical achievements or progress forward, as if they can just evolve the designs around the current limitations. They cannot. Hybrid engines have garbage ISP, the entire design of the Unity is completely worthless for high speed period let alone reentry, every $ spent on it is pointless beyond a quick joyride that will relatively soon be obsoleted by real space tourism. NS is at least vaguely sort of more useful for BO, it has a hydrolox engine so it's not doing anything for them on that front but they got to work on their landing a bit somewhat more easily. But the value of space comes from actually getting to orbit and then beyond, and that's a fantastically more difficult problem due to the delta-v needed, the rocket equation, our material science, etc. SpaceX's approach of focusing on the real hard problem which delivers serious revenue and opportunity then working backwards on economics, always with focus on orbit as their lodestone, has clearly been much more effective. BO is older than SpaceX and has yet to even once get to orbit or deal with reentry. At all. It's hard not to look at so much of NS and just see such a waste of years and dollars. >What Bezos actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned flight of a totally new rocket design. I guess? It had been flown and landed multiple times and it had a lot of margin to work with since it's just a big sounding rocket. They did a hyperconservative work-on-the-first-launch Old Space development process. >Musk didn't do that. You think Musk wasn't puckered launching 6 astronauts and tens of billions of dollars worth of other people's precious cargo to space? Musk didn't do that because it wouldn't have proved anything and been a pure waste and distraction from the actual serious mission. >Branson didn't do that - and earlier test pilots of his craft died. Branson is a daredevil and that design is garbage on a host of levels. >As for the BO rocket being totally automated So is Dragon 2. So will Starship. That's normal and good, it's manual that's bad. But it's also not a special achievement that justified 6 years after first launch and landing. |
A whole 5 times. The space shuttle flew many times before the Challenger.
> You think Musk wasn't puckered
It's a whole lot different when your own ass is the one that will die.
> Branson is a daredevil
And yet he still didn't dare to take the first manned flight.
> it's also not a special achievement
It's untried and very complex software. We know how that often goes.