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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Space / Dreams of Escape Open Thread: To Infinity Suborbit, and Beyond!

Dreams of Escape Open Thread: To Infinity Suborbit, and Beyond!

by | 34 Comments

This post is in: 

On the one hand: Spaceships are objectively kewl, at least to anyone born in the 20th century.

On the other: The scrimy fekkers bankrolling their current barely-metaphorical dick-measuring contest — not so much.

But I’m happy for Wally Funk! (and even Oliver Daemen, a little, because he’s still a kid… )

Reader Interactions

34Comments

  1. 1.

    TheOtherHank

    I think Jeff brought the two non-family members along on his giant flying penis simply to reduce the number of people actively hoping for it to crash.

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Picture perfect landing in the West Texas desert!

    Not possible. I mean, have you ever actually been to west Texas???

  3. 3.

    Gozer

    Creative staging on Bezos’ part to make himself seem taller in the pic (he’s only 5’7″). IIRC Zuck does the same and is the same height.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    I don’t understand the blood red level of vituperation and outrage. I just don’t.

  5. 5.

    brendancalling

    I have nothing nice to say about any of this.
    Jeff Bezos can kiss my ass, i wish he incinerated on re-entry.

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: I have seen “Eat the Rich” bumper stickers but I can tell you from first hand experience that that is a bad idea. They sit on the stomach like duck eggs. Better to just kill them and fertilize the garden.

  8. 8.

    Raoul Paste

    I see that space tourism is projected to be a $3 billion market by 2030.  How interesting

    There’s also even odds that by 2030, Florida will be devastated  and Arizona may be uninhabitable

    I guess Bezos heard the old Police song “when the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around “

  10. 10.

    Catherine D.

    I am glad for Wally Funk. She was one of the Mercury 13 women, and she beat John Glenn’s age record. (He testified to Congress that women couldn’t handle space.)

  13. 13.

    Cacti

    I really enjoy the matching blue uniforms that serve no functional purpose.

    They’re totally not douchebag-y at all.  ;-) ;-)

  14. 14.

    Hildebrand

    @NotMax: I am not enraged, just disgusted.  I’d rather the billionaire class found different competitions for their dick measuring – ending hunger, disease eradication, supporting democracy, combating climate change, you name it, any of them would be more beneficial.

    Now, if they really wanted to fund space exploration, they could write huge checks to NASA and be done with it.

  15. 15.

    sab

    @Hildebrand: My stepson buys season tickets to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio.. Bezos goes to space for quite a bit more money. Sort of the same thing as far as usefulness. Both had fun.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: My line comes from the John Gardner book Grendel. The full line is,

    “I hate priests. They sit on the stomach like duck eggs.”

    The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic. This is the book William Gass called “one of the finest of our contemporary fictions.”

    It’s a favorite of mine. Speaking of which, I’m overdue for another reading.

  17. 17.

    planetjanet

    Why did they may Wally Funk sit down for the picture?  Is she supposedly fit to be an astronaut, but unable to stand for picture?

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    Why is Van Jones directing where Bezos’ charitable donation goes?  Did I miss a news story?

  19. 19.

    Another Scott

    @Hildebrand: I understand the sentiment, but things don’t (and shouldn’t) work that way.

    By law NASA can only accept private donations that are unsolicited and unrestricted.

    I don’t want to live in a world, myself, where we depend on the rich to fight disease or hunger or homelessness or any of the other major societal ills.  Those are the responsibilities of elected governments.

    The problem isn’t that Bezos (and Gates and Ellison and Zuckerberg and Murdoch and all the rest) are spending money on bad things – it’s that they have too much money and too much power to influence the government policy and society.  They should be taxed more to reduce their power, and to increase public investment in people and national physical plant, not shamed into their foundations spending 5% a year (just enough to keep their tax benefits) on worthy things.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    Hildebrand

    @Another Scott: I don’t disagree with anything you say – but until such a time as we can tax them into responsibility, my pony request for today is that these pikers grow a moral compass when it comes to spending their obscene wealth.  And if they can’t, then we should shame them.

    These people are just endlessly frustrating.

  22. 22.

    planetjanet

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
      She certainly gets to sit wherever she wants. I was assuming she did not have a choice for the photo. It makes her look more passive and frail. It reminded me of a photo of a statue in Virginia that was taken down this week. It was of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea. Although she was the guide who led the way, she was shown crouching behind the two manly figures. Cringing.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @planetjanet: I assume nothing tho I understand the context of your thoughts. I was just being snarky in honor of her accomplishing what had to be a life long dream.

  26. 26.

    Martin

    I just don’t get this. Musk has a NASA human rated capsule that seats 4, and a lifter capable of putting it in orbit and  rendezvousing with the ISS and a second lifter capable of a lunar fly-by. He could do 10x these ‘historic’ achievements whenever he pleases. This is not some private sector breakthrough. It’s two companies badly trailing the leader getting accolades simply because Musk hasn’t bothered to take a ride himself.

    I am happy Wally got her ride. That was very cool. But fuck the participation trophies for the runner-up billionaires.

  27. 27.

    billcinsd

    Bezos is nuts to think you can get a million people living on the moon. A moon base needs to be self-sustaining and there isn’t enough water for a million people and to grow sufficient food for a million people. You might be able to make enough oxygen but to send water there, each person needs a bare minimum of 2 gallons a day. 1 gallon weighs about 8 pounds, which makes 16 million pounds for 1 million people. It currently costs around $10,000 per pound to send anything to the moon. If that was reduced by 90%, it would cost $16 billion per day plus the cost of making the ships, so it is not going to happen at that level. That is like 7% of the world’s GDP just for water. For more realistic values of water per day and growing food, etc. This would be far in excess of the world’s GDP

  29. 29.

    Pappenheimer

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Re: Grendel:

    I t appears that our billionaires have followed the Dragon’s advice, though, which is to “Gather gold and sit on it” – although it’s possible the Dragon could already fly, which is always cool

     

    @OzarkHillbilly:

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    @billcinsd: We wouldn’t take vast amounts of water there.

    NASA.gov:

    SOFIA has detected water molecules (H2O) in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth, located in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. Previous observations of the Moon’s surface detected some form of hydrogen, but were unable to distinguish between water and its close chemical relative, hydroxyl (OH). Data from this location reveal water in concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million – roughly equivalent to a 12-ounce bottle of water – trapped in a cubic meter of soil spread across the lunar surface. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Astronomy.

    “We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the Moon,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”

    Yeah, I don’t expect giant moon bases and the like anytime soon. But…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    eddie blake

    @billcinsd:

    you get it once you’re up there. that’s why astronomers are very excited about europa and why almost every trip to mars is to look  for water.

    and if there IS a regular supply of water up there, you can sustain life, power and propulsion.

    eta: also what another scott said.

  32. 32.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @OzarkHillbilly: In fact it was a Last-Picture-Show-perfect landing. (A college buddy taught for a couple of years in Lubbock; by his report it’s the sort of place any sane person fights despeerately to escape. He eventually escaped to Happy Valley, the Penn State main campus isolated in the middle of Bumfuck Pennsyltucky, and it seemed like heaven by comparison.)

  33. 33.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @billcinsd: You have no fucking idea how much water there might be under the lunar regolith to support colonization. And neither does anyone else. We do know there’s some there – in permanently shadowed areas of craters near the lunar south pole. Not enough for a million-person colony, probably, but it’s a start.

  34. 34.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Martin: ​I’m with you about 1000%. Musk has a specific goal in mind and a plan to achieve it, vs Branson and Bezos, who are just fucking around. And it should be noted a lot of Musk’s other activities (electric cars, power storage, tunnel boring) are directed toward some of our critical earthbound crises – and the money he spends on them, as well as SpaceX, is spent right here on Mother Earth, much of it on the people doing the intellectual and physical work.

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