Bezos' Blue Origin revealed!

Rand Simberg wrote:

Every astronaut who's actually done it would tell you that you've no
idea what you're talking about. But that's nothing new.



Orbital flight is one thing; but we are a _long_ way from that at the
moment.
The simple up-down flight is going to be about as exciting as a ride on
a roller coaster, particularly in its short duration and the fact that
you're not the pilot, or even a vital crew member, but just a passenger.
No one's life, including your own, is riding on your actions. Just be a
good little monkey, look out the window, pull the little lever under the
light when it flashes, and eat your banana pellet.
Oh....and make sure that's a cashier's check you brought us. :-)

Pat

On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:07:31 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:



Rand Simberg wrote:

Every astronaut who's actually done it would tell you that you've no
idea what you're talking about. But that's nothing new.



Orbital flight is one thing; but we are a _long_ way from that at the
moment.

There's nothing about suborbital flight that will make it unexciting,
and not worth a repeat trip.

The simple up-down flight is going to be about as exciting as a ride on
a roller coaster, particularly in its short duration and the fact that
you're not the pilot, or even a vital crew member, but just a passenger.

Alan Shepard would probably argue that, were he still with us. Again,
any astronaut will tell you that spaceflight is a peak experience,
whether orbital or suborbital, and if people can afford a second trip,
they'll be likely to do it.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Jeff Findley wrote:

It's an expensive, high risk, fad like climbing Mount Everest. Nobody
does that anymore, right?

One big difference... in going up Everest, you gather your rope and
climbing gear, fight wind, cold, snow, exhaustion, and frostbite, and if
you're lucky, look out from the highest point on Earth after possibly
years of planning, and weeks of effort.

Years of planning? There are commercial operations on Mount Everest that
take care of the planning, weather forcasts, sherpas, equpment, and etc. As
a customer, you need to worry about paying.

And if things don't go well on Everest, you end up as another statistic. If
you die high enough, they don't even bring your body back for your family to
bury. You become yet another reminder to future climbers that what they're
undertaking is a very dangrous undertaking.

In space tourism, you write someone out a great big check, spend several
hours training, and then strap yourself into a acceleration chair.
Later you look out the window for a minute or two.

And your point is what?

This isn't really going to give the feeling of challenge or accomplishment
that climbing Everest, or even a fall smaller mountain, would. It's closer
to a wild amusement park ride - a pretty passive adventure when it comes
right down to it.

As my kids in elementary school have learned, what you wrote in those two
sentences is an *opinion* and opinions vary from person to person. Who are
you to say that a suborbital flight, which will surely involve some
training, won't give the participant a feeling of accomplishment?

And having done it once, you probably will feel a repeat of the experience
would be pretty ho-hum.

Just like amusement park riders never ride the same roller coaster more than
once? This is clearly not the case. There are some people who spend a lot
of their free time riding the same roller coasters over and over. I ought
to know since I live a few miles from Kings Island and have ridden The
Beast, and other rides, maybe a hundred or more times each.

I think if this industry does get going, it's going to have a lot of
tourists for the first couple years or so.. then it's just going to dry
up, as there won't be anything that interesting or novel about doing it
after a few hundred or thousand other people have.

Again, that's an opinion. When Walt Disney built his first theme park,
there were those who thought the same thing, but last time I went to Walt
Disney World, it sure was crowded with people.

"Oh, you've been to space too? Dad paid for me to do that on my tenth
birthday... or was it my twelfth birthday? I forget."

It's entirely possible that some riders would make the trip a yearly
tradition, just as other people make a yearly tradition out of going to the
same theme park at least once each year.

It's going to be an awful lot of money to spend for an experience that's
that short in duration.
Where's the bragging rights in doing something that's really very easy to
do? It can be you in the seat, or a sandbag.
The ship will fly the same way with either.
Besides, I heard a rumor that a monkey was going to make the first
flight. :-D

You're all hand waving and opinions today. We'll have to wait and see what
happens to the market, since these things are notoriously hard to predict.
Hopefully you'll admit to that.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 14:29:11 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jeff
Findley" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


It's going to be an awful lot of money to spend for an experience that's
that short in duration.
Where's the bragging rights in doing something that's really very easy to
do? It can be you in the seat, or a sandbag.
The ship will fly the same way with either.
Besides, I heard a rumor that a monkey was going to make the first
flight. :-D

You're all hand waving and opinions today.

As opposed to any other day?

Pat has some deep-felt psychological need to denigrate this market and
industry. I certainly don't want to rummage around in that messy
personality-filled-monkey-filled cranium to figure out why, though.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Rand Simberg wrote:

Every astronaut who's actually done it would tell you that you've no
idea what you're talking about. But that's nothing new.


Orbital flight is one thing; but we are a _long_ way from that at the
moment.

True, but how did Alan Shepherd feel about his suborbital flight? He
certainly didn't drop out of NASA after it was over.

The simple up-down flight is going to be about as exciting as a ride on a
roller coaster, particularly in its short duration and the fact that
you're not the pilot, or even a vital crew member, but just a passenger.

More hand waving and opinion here.

No one's life, including your own, is riding on your actions.

Nothing bad happens during powered flight if you pull on that emergency exit
handle, does it?

Just be a good little monkey, look out the window, pull the little lever
under the light when it flashes, and eat your banana pellet.
Oh....and make sure that's a cashier's check you brought us. :-)

Just like riders on a one minute roller coaster ride never come back, right?
Hell, I'll wait in line for an hour on a hot summer day just to ride Drop
Zone at Kings Island to experience a few pitiful *seconds* of zero gravity.
A few minutes of zero gravity, after a real kick in the pants rocket ride,
would literally be out of this world! ;-)

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

wrote in message
ps.com...

Pat Flannery wrote:
Jeff Findley wrote:

It's an expensive, high risk, fad like climbing Mount Everest. Nobody
does
that anymore, right?



One big difference... in going up Everest, you gather your rope and
climbing gear, fight wind, cold, snow, exhaustion, and frostbite, and if
you're lucky, look out from the highest point on Earth after possibly
years of planning, and weeks of effort.

Clearly you have not kept up to date.

Too often the people paying for the climb have to be carried/aided to
make the last few hundred feet. And in case you think they just go on
a climb, they also need to file a lot of paperwork and pay out money to
a number of people and government organization before they can climb.
Just like taking a sub-orbital trip.

No kidding. I think it was National Geographic (or some other cable TV
channel) that has a good TV series on this. The guys who run the Everest
climbs take care of *a lot* of the details, and from what I understand, it's
not a terribly technical climb. The risks these days are more about the
altitude, thin air, and weather (cold). There's even a ladder up near the
top to make things easier (which is in addition to the climbing ropes
already attached to the mountain).

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Jeff Findley wrote:
Risk doesn't necessarily put an end to an activity. Have you seen any of
the more recent TV shows which document climbs of Mount Everest? One of
the episodes I saw included radio communication with climbers who had to
leave someone they found dying in the "death zone". The climber was
alive, but at that altitude, it's extremely difficult to aid another
climber who's essentially incapacitated. There literally wasn't anything
reasonable they could do but leave him to die. And yet, there was a
"traffic jam" near the summit that day.

I hate to think this would be extrapolated to space tourism; what are they
going to do, find someone climbing around on the exterior of the vehicle
at the apex of their flight trajectory, and have to leave them outside
during reentry? :-D
Providing the thing doesn't crash on landing, it's probably going to be a
case where everyone comes back fine, or nobody makes it.
Multi-Mach reentry problems aren't like belly-landing a Lear Jet.

If one of these do crash, I wouldn't be surprised if future customers saw a
memorial to the dead before they flew. How many NASA astronauts haven't
seen *some* sort of memorial to their fallen comrades when they were on the
job?

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

wrote:

Too often the people paying for the climb have to be carried/aided to
make the last few hundred feet. And in case you think they just go on
a climb, they also need to file a lot of paperwork and pay out money to
a number of people and government organization before they can climb.
Just like taking a sub-orbital trip.


I wasn't referring to the cost, but the effort involved.
With my age and health, my odds of surviving trying to get up Everest
are probably somewhere between 0% and 1%.
But I'd bet I'd be able to take a flight on SpaceshipTwo or New Shepard
with only a very minor chance of permanent harm coming to me.
Which means it's far less dangerous, far less challenging, far shorter
in duration (New Shepard's flight is to be ten minutes end-to-end) and
therefore inherently far less memorable.
Back when I was a young kid, the first thing I ever flew in was a Bell
Sioux helicopter; I was so young, the pilot was afraid to take me on
board for fear I might freak from the view through the big bubble canopy.
I thought the whole flight was fascinating, and the view wonderful; but
I can guarantee you I don't remember it anywhere near as much as that
time I was up in the Bridger Range of mountains near Bozeman, Montana
all on my own, and hyperventilated to the point where I almost fell off
the mountain because of my senses getting muddled and unconsciousness
setting in.
That was memorable, because if things had gone just a little
differently, it would have been all over.
The helicopter looked a little dangerous, but when you came right down
to it, it probably wasn't all that dangerous at all in a percentage
basis. I was just a passenger, not an active participant in what was
going on. The whole experience was passive, just like suborbital space
tourism's going to be.
When you get right down to it, a airliner flight from coast-to-coast
will not only let you see more scenery, but let you see more detailed
views of it over a lot longer period of time, in greater comfort, and at
lower cost.
In fact, if someone gave me a free ticket on SpaceShipTwo, I don't even
know if I'd think it would be worth flying the flight.
It's not going to be difficult to imagine what the whole flight would be
like in detail from end to end, and I doubt the actual experience would
be much different at all from the way you imagined it.
First you get squished, then you float around and look out a window for
a minute or so at the Earth and dark sky, then you get squished again,
then you land.
Whoop-de-doo. :-\

Pat

On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 14:39:44 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:



wrote:

Too often the people paying for the climb have to be carried/aided to
make the last few hundred feet. And in case you think they just go on
a climb, they also need to file a lot of paperwork and pay out money to
a number of people and government organization before they can climb.
Just like taking a sub-orbital trip.


I wasn't referring to the cost, but the effort involved.
With my age and health, my odds of surviving trying to get up Everest
are probably somewhere between 0% and 1%.
But I'd bet I'd be able to take a flight on SpaceshipTwo or New Shepard
with only a very minor chance of permanent harm coming to me.
Which means it's far less dangerous, far less challenging, far shorter
in duration (New Shepard's flight is to be ten minutes end-to-end) and
therefore inherently far less memorable.
Back when I was a young kid, the first thing I ever flew in was a Bell
Sioux helicopter; I was so young, the pilot was afraid to take me on
board for fear I might freak from the view through the big bubble canopy.
I thought the whole flight was fascinating, and the view wonderful; but
I can guarantee you I don't remember it anywhere near as much as that
time I was up in the Bridger Range of mountains near Bozeman, Montana
all on my own, and hyperventilated to the point where I almost fell off
the mountain because of my senses getting muddled and unconsciousness
setting in.

I think that this explains most of your posts. You never recovered.

On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:46:09 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Back when I was a young kid, the first thing I ever flew in was a Bell
Sioux helicopter; I was so young, the pilot was afraid to take me on
board for fear I might freak from the view through the big bubble canopy.
I thought the whole flight was fascinating, and the view wonderful; but
I can guarantee you I don't remember it anywhere near as much as that
time I was up in the Bridger Range of mountains near Bozeman, Montana
all on my own, and hyperventilated to the point where I almost fell off
the mountain because of my senses getting muddled and unconsciousness
setting in.

I think that this explains most of your posts. You never recovered.

More seriously, it makes the point that you continue to foolishly
confuse the demands of the market with your own unique (or at least
not universal) desires.

I wonder why you do this? No smart marketer bases business plans on
what he personally likes. He actually does market research.

But then, I guess Pat thinks he is the Everyman. And of course, it
explains why he lives in a cheap apartment in North Dakota.