Quote:Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said on Monday he would fly on the first human spaceflight of his company's New Shepard spacecraft. This mission will launch from Blue Origin's spaceport in West Texas on July 20, which is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969.

With this timeline, Bezos seemed almost certain to beat his suborbital space tourism rival, Sir Richard Branson, into space. Setting aside whether Branson's VSS Unity vehicle reaches space—its maximum altitude is just below the Kármán line, or 100 km—this is nonetheless a meaningful milestone.

Both Bezos and Branson have been investing in the space industry for about two decades, and both men have made clear they intend to fly on their own spacecraft as soon as practically possible.

For Branson, that flight was expected to come during the second half of this year. As recently as one week ago, Sirisha Bandla—vice president of government affairs for Branson's Virgin Galactic—told Ars that the company's plan next called for a test flight with four employees in the passenger cabin. That test, she added, would be followed by a flight carrying Branson.

"We've got three test flights left," Bandla said. "We've got a flight with employees in the cabin. A flight with our founder, Sir Richard Branson, after that, and then to round out our flight test program, we are flying the Italian Air Force."

However, the Bezos spaceflight scheduled for July 20 may have scrambled those plans. According to a report by Doug Messier on his Parabolic Arc website, "Virgin Galactic is working on a plan to send Branson on a suborbital flight aboard the VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket plane over the July 4 holiday weekend."

This would beat Bezos by a couple of weeks.

(06-12-2021, 12:45 PM)404errorist Wrote: So how would the world react if Bezos blows up?

Personally, I'm a SpaceX fan, despite the elitism... I just don't see Blue Origin reaching the same market dominance as SpaceX.

But honestly, it's going to be just like how we have different airlines and they all have differences in what they offer.

(06-12-2021, 06:25 PM)Oni Wrote:

(06-12-2021, 12:45 PM)404errorist Wrote: So how would the world react if Bezos blows up?

Personally, I'm a SpaceX fan, despite the elitism... I just don't see Blue Origin reaching the same market dominance as SpaceX.

But honestly, it's going to be just like how we have different airlines and they all have differences in what they offer.

As you say, it will likely become like airlines. With competition, it might become possible for civilians to visit space in the distant future.

(06-14-2021, 07:09 PM)Oni Wrote: That's $9 million for each of the two minutes of zero gravity.

(06-12-2021, 08:13 PM)Jiggly Wrote:

(06-12-2021, 06:25 PM)Oni Wrote:

(06-12-2021, 12:45 PM)404errorist Wrote: So how would the world react if Bezos blows up?

Personally, I'm a SpaceX fan, despite the elitism... I just don't see Blue Origin reaching the same market dominance as SpaceX.

But honestly, it's going to be just like how we have different airlines and they all have differences in what they offer.

As you say, it will likely become like airlines. With competition, it might become possible for civilians to visit space in the distant future.

I'm imagining a podcast in 200 years where people discuss how weird it is that the popular airliner started off as a bookstore in it's early origins

(06-24-2021, 06:26 PM)404errorist Wrote:

(06-12-2021, 08:13 PM)Jiggly Wrote:

(06-12-2021, 06:25 PM)Oni Wrote: As you say, it will likely become like airlines. With competition, it might become possible for civilians to visit space in the distant future.

I'm imagining a podcast in 200 years where people discuss how weird it is that the popular airliner started off as a bookstore in it's early origins

That's a trip to think about. You could say the same thing about the largest smartphone software producer, it started out as a search website.

(07-02-2021, 01:17 AM)Oni Wrote: An update, Branson says they'll lift off on July 11th (9 days before Bezos):
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/game-on-sir-richard-branson-will-attempt-to-go-to-space-on-july-11/

Wally Funk, who trained to be an astronaut 60 years ago, will be flying alongside Bezos:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/01/wally-funk-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-space/