Jeff Bezos Is Selling $1B a Year in Amazon Stock to Finance Race to Space

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/science/blue-origin-rocket-jeff-bezos-amazon-stock.html

by sndean • 9 years ago

310 221 9 years ago

itchyjunk• 9 years ago

I think spacex getting some competition is good and healthy for the space market. Even though I like spacex a lot, monopoly isn't the preferred choice.

I was trying to find difference between blue origin and F9 and found these old articles. [0] [1]

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[0]http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9793220/blue-origin-vs-sp...

[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a18711/blue-or...

WalterBright• 9 years ago

I'm rooting for both teams!

fsloth2• 9 years ago

Space X 'getting competition'?

You do realize the 'old' rocket companies haven't gone anywhere. Yes, Space X:s success is astounding but let's not get myopic about it.

DavidSJ• 9 years ago

They are competition for the present market, but they are not even trying to compete for the (possibly illusory) market opened up by (also possibly illusory) 100x cheaper spaceflight.

nickik5• 9 years ago

They haven't gone anywhere but none of them can compete in price. Even the new vehicles, ULA Vulcan and Arianspace Arian 6 will be vastly overpriced, even if they reach the goal price they have set for themselfes.

For SpaceX reuse and the price saving are already a reality, ULA and Arianspace are only in the concept phase for these things. Their rockets are only planned for first flight in 2020 and maybe reuse a couple of years after that.

The only reason Arianspace can compete at all is that they don't amortize the development of the rocket.

paulsutter• 9 years ago

Yes - you summed it up nicely. They really haven't gone anywhere, haven't made an ounce of progress.

https://youtu.be/WCSt6Kobvzs

paulgerhardt• 9 years ago

One of their own executives said as much [1].

Yes, he may have lost his job for it but it's not myopic when ULA drops out of a competition leaving SpaceX as the only bidder and then announce a program to transistion to Blue Origin's systems.

[1] http://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/17/ula-executive-resigns-a...

Shivetya• 9 years ago

pretty sure China will become the most important competitor to Space X.

adventurer• 9 years ago

Are they truly in competition when they aim at two entirely separate goals? Also, isn't NASA already in competition with them?

zamalek• 9 years ago

difference between blue origin and F9

It's literally bottom-up vs. top-down respectively. If you consider how far ahead SpaceX is up-top, having even interacted with the ISS, Blue Origin is that much further ahead near the ground. Overall SpaceX does seem to have chosen an approach that provides more traction. However, the BE-4 (orbital engine from Blue Origin) is slated for testing this year. It's going to be interesting to compare apples-apples once Blue Origin reach orbit.

Robotbeat3• 9 years ago

I completely disagree. Blue Origin is not far ahead on the ground, either. SpaceX did a bunch of suborbital hops before retiring their Grasshopper/F9Rdev1 program.

However, Blue Origin's technical approach with New Glenn is sound and could easily give SpaceX a run for its money (but SpaceX likes to run anyway). Blue Origin is the only real long-term competitor for SpaceX that we've seen so far.

Even in spite of the fact that SpaceX is so far ahead, Blue Origin at least isn't making the same mistakes that 90% of SpaceX's competition is: using really outdated ideas that don't stand a chance at competing with SpaceX if first stage reuse works very well and /definitely/ no chance if upper stage reuse ends up working, too. Blue Origin is ultimately pursuing full reuse just like SpaceX, not partial gimmicks like engine pod reuse (which might be better than full expendable, but that isn't the standard any longer).

Blue Origin can and will be able to compete not because they have any kind of technical edge (they don't) but because their launch technology is going in the right direction and because Jeff Bezos has more money than God and wants to use all that cash to open the space frontier.

It's worth noting that Blue Origin was founded /before/ SpaceX and had been pursuing VTVL reuse while SpaceX was still messing with parachutes, but they basically squandered that initial lead and now are playing catch-up. But a billion dollars non-diluting investment each year certainly helps a lot, and I have no doubt that Blue Origin will succeed.

mdorazio• 9 years ago

Keep in mind SpaceX has been launching rockets to orbit since 2008. Blue Origin has yet to even complete their orbital engine. Even if we assume Blue Origin can somehow ramp up at 2x the rate SpaceX did, we're still looking at another 5 years before they're where SpaceX is today on orbital flights.

snarf212• 9 years ago

In addition to all the existing competition, I find this news disheartening. Things like this seem like they are about legacy for people like Bezos. It would be nice if some of the multi billionaires started some not for profit companies to solve the existing problems we have like clean energy, clean water, sustainable agriculture, etc. Especially in this case since Musk has already spent a ton on this.

dflock• 9 years ago

Tesla is, essentially, a clean energy company. Also Bill Gates is doing as you request.

adventured5• 9 years ago

$78.4 billion in personal wealth. 94% held in Amazon, which is currently sporting a $433b market cap, up 50% in the last year and trading at a generous 200 times earnings.

I hope he sells more than he needs, faster than he needs, before this latest bubble (slight or extreme is open for debate) gives out. I wouldn't have guessed that Blue Origin could cost him ~$1 billion per year to subsidize. I'm glad he's doing it, very few people on the planet could afford to; of those that could, fewer still would care to.

jaxomlotus• 9 years ago

He's a huge fan of Star Trek - he named his family investment office Zefram LLC after Zefram Cochran, a fictional character who invented the warp drive. If anyone on the planet wants to see the future of Star Trek become a reality, it's him.

marak830• 9 years ago

Before you said this, I was wondering if he was making this announcent so that h could liquidate his stock without popping the bubble mid sale.

jtraffic• 9 years ago

The concept of Life Imitating Art isn't exactly about trying to make parts of Star Trek a reality, but I think it still applies here. Bezos probably would have been obsessed with space without Star Trek, but it still seems possible that it influenced him.

I'm going out on a limb, but based on this alone, I rank the Star Trek franchise as one of the most influential bodies of fiction ever created. I think of it as a catalyst, rather than a cause, but still.

This article suggests Musk is a big fan of Star Trek as well: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/without-star-trek-th...

(Forgive the click-bait title, it doesn't reflect my view.)

myroon5• 9 years ago

When he talks about millions of people working in space, what jobs is he talking about? Primarily resource mining?

adventured5• 9 years ago

Manufacturing for one thing. He has spoken on numerous occasions about wanting to offplanet manufacturing to space for multiple reasons. The question of course, is whether by the time we could be doing large volume manufacturing in space, if it isn't far more likely to be done by robots.

synaesthesisx• 9 years ago

I'm having difficulty picturing anything we could manufacture on Mars that would be cheaper vs terrestrial manufacturing.

oblib7• 9 years ago

That is a more realistic view of manufacturing in space. Robots? Sure. I don't see "millions of people" doing that though.

And so far I've not heard of what or where they'll be mining. I've heard of getting water from comets but that's not really a profit maker either (unless maybe you make liqueur with it) so unless you've spotted one nearby made of precious metal I'm still not seeing the motivation for this.

ansible• 9 years ago

Solar power satellites would be a nice-to-have for the ultimate "clean energy" supply for Earth civilizations. I haven't looked recently to see exactly how practical they are though.

dirtyaura• 9 years ago

One would assume that harvesting energy is practical (sans the launch cost), but practical way to transfer the energy back to the earth is the unsolved problem.

hueving2• 9 years ago

Much easier to put solar panels on the ground.

andygates• 9 years ago

They're physically huge, so they're a lot more feasible when much of the bulk mass can be sourced "upwell" from (for example) mined resources.

Jakob• 9 years ago

"While Musk loves electric cars and spaceflight, there's one thing he hates: space solar power. "You'd have to convert photon to electron to photon back to electron. What's the conversion rate?" he says, getting riled up for the first time during his talk. "Stab that bloody thing in the heart!""

3xnis• 9 years ago

The primarily resource would be datamining. Datacenters need energy and cooling. Both are available in abundance in space. Unlike any other industry, their processing material, data, doesn't have to be transported with rockets.

However, this doesn't create jobs in space, just jobs in space industries, since those datacenters are most likely fully automatized.

dennyabraham• 9 years ago

Is this a joke or is purely radiative cooling in space feasible for a datacenter?

srdev• 9 years ago

Cooling is not easily available in space actually. Its a pretty difficult problem. There's no air to convect away heat so you rely only on radiative cooling which can't move a lot of heat easily.

detritus2• 9 years ago

I've always thought it a good idea to consider restricting future dangerTech development to, say, lunar or orbital labs and factories.

Advanced nano tech or virus development, for example.

Anything that skirts grey goo or 100% lethality rates.

Any problems and 'nuke the site from orbit'.

hinkley3• 9 years ago

It's the only way to be sure.

oblib7• 9 years ago

I appreciate the tech very much, but the visions of "Millions of people working in space"? I have no desire to be a part of that but I do wonder what they'll be working on?

And "Living on Mars". No thanks, I'll pass on that too. I can certainly see the thrill of the ride described though and who wouldn't want to be weightless for 4-5 minutes? But the market for that carnival ride is about as big as the number of cars Ferrari sells each year so I don't get that.

One can call this a "steppingstone" tech for now if they choose but it's more likely to be a cliff unless there's something of real value here. Even if we go out on a limb and say all this is really a way for the wealthy to escape the planet they'll find there's no place close enough to go so even that doesn't make sense.

No, none of the above makes sense to me yet so there must be something more fueling this race than what's being said.

And hey, isn't there also a downside to poking holes in the upper atmosphere and/or ozone depletion? How long do we let someone profit off the effects of that?

I honestly don't know the answers to those questions but I do wonder about them.

GuiA• 9 years ago

I do wonder what they'll be working on?

Why, they'll be driving SpaceUbers, doing the laundry, delivering food, walking the dogs, etc of all the techies debugging the asteroid mining robots, of course.

oblib7• 9 years ago

Ok. That makes sense because somebody will have to do all that. If I do have to go I'm gonna want Pizza.

ganfortran3• 9 years ago

Yeah, that is my question. Why living on Mars, where you don't even have drinking water available? Human population in a lot countries, such as Japan/China/Korea is going to shrink pretty soon. In US, without immigrants, the population is on the same track with those eastern asian countries as well.

And working in space...for what reason? For certain industry maybe, but is it a really a worthy goal to chase after? I don't know.

speeder• 9 years ago

I think part of the reason os that it os a chance to explore and "tame" new lands.

I am from Brazil, that is a gigantic country with stupid amounts of land. Also I really wanted to live on a rural community and farm a bit, yet somehow it seems 100% of the land, even the most inaccessible places, have an owner, and prices of land a ludicrous (land in Brazil somehow cost more than same land in France plus real medieval castle in it...)

So, colonizing mars sound awesome.

adrianN2• 9 years ago

We have to eventually leave Earth if we want to ensure the survival of our race. A base on Mars that eventually can become self-sufficient is a great first step.

Hermel2• 9 years ago

You clearly are not a visionary pioneer. That's what it is about. To go where no one else has gone before, just for the sake of it. Remember, there are plenty of people doing things like climbing Mount Everest for fun while you and I are watching Netflix.

oblib7• 9 years ago

Oh, but I do have vision. I'm looking for more than a few wealthy joyriders poking holes in the atmosphere here for nothing more than shits and giggles and questioning how that might affect our planet.

justicezyx• 9 years ago

Visionary pioneer "on space exploration".

Earth is complex enough for any person to be visionary. Please do not let your own interests overshadow others.

AndrewKemendo• 9 years ago

there are plenty of people doing things like climbing Mount Everest for fun while you and I are watching Netflix

The net long term difference of which is effectively zero. Adventure travel Everest climbers are not pioneers, and provide no new knowledge about Everest or the human condition - while burning up millions in cash in the process.

The frontier is still terrestrial.

snowwrestler• 9 years ago

Tourism is a multi-billion-dollar industry that employs millions, which involves a lot of going places and staying places for no practical reason.

Vacationing with a view of the Earth's limbe is conceptually not that different from vacationing on a cruise ship around the Caribbean. Sure, the losgistics are a bit tougher; the ship goes Mach 25 and a broken window will boil everyone's blood in a few minutes. But the point is to get out of the house and get some reading done somewhere else.

hwillis2• 9 years ago

I appreciate the tech very much, but the visions of "Millions of people working in space"?

"The billionaire tech entrepreneur also laid out a vision for space commercialization that stretches out for hundreds of years, leading to an era when millions of people would be living and working in space."[1]

This is hundreds of years in the future, at which point Bezos believes the population of the earth will be in the tens or hundreds of billions. He thinks the surface of the earth will be "zoned strictly for 'residential and light industrial'", probably for a combination of pollution, land quality, and resource scarcity. In that scenario (which seems unlikely) millions of people would be like .001% of the population, which makes... some sense?

[1] http://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-lifts-curtain-blue-o...

riffraff• 9 years ago

at which point Bezos believes the population of the earth will be in the tens or hundreds of billion

where do you see this mentioned?

I think it's generally agreed earth population will never get to hundreds of billion, the demographic trend is to get to around ~10B and stop there (kids per family decrease as living conditions improve, and they are at ~2 in most of the world bar africa)

EDIT: AIU it, Bezos just thinks we will have laws set up to avoid destroying our environment, hence forbidding things like heavy industry on earth.

dagw• 9 years ago

leading to an era when millions of people would be living and working in space.

That was one thing in The Expanse (great TV show about basically this (and also a series of books that I haven't read yet)), that I found a bit odd. We're currently doing everything we can to replace truck drivers and miners on earth with robots. So why would truck driving and mining in space be done entirely by humans?

desireco42• 9 years ago

I really appreciate your skeptical view. It is awesome to hear it. I obviously don't share it at all.

My arguments would be what others already pointed out, that tourism is irrational industry and the crazier the ride, the more people will be interested.

I am really overjoyed that something is happening on space front.

x2f10• 9 years ago

tourism is [an] irrational industry and the crazier the ride, the more people will be interested.

The comparison is foolish.

NASA's estimates a trip to Mars would take 21 months [1]. I don't know where you work, but I doubt you have 21 months of vacation accrued. If you do, do you have the $250k per ticket? If you do, do you have mental / psychical health to be accepted? If you do, do you accept the flight risks? If you do, do you accept that time does not stop on Earth (loved ones aging, loved ones dying, etc)?

If you do, you're _incredibly rare_.

This isn't flying 6-hour flight to Mexico to sit on the beach.

1. https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/q2811.html

nottorp• 9 years ago

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".

simonh9• 9 years ago

Translation: I don't want to do it for the reasons given, therefore nobody could possibly want to do it for the reasons given, therefore they are lying.

drcross• 9 years ago

This is also the fallacy that I find most frustrating- "I am a salesman who travels 500 miles a day and the Model S doesn't have that capability so the Tesla company will never amount to anything and are doomed to failure."

oblib7• 9 years ago

That's a huge leap there Simon.

You're not even close to the mark though.

cm21872• 9 years ago

And from an industrial point of view it is not like there are hidden mysteries in the close proximity of earth. And the industrial applications (mining mostly) are unlikely to be economical with rockets. We would need a much more economical way to lift heavy material. So I am not sure what entrepeneurs Bezos is referring to.

I totally get the personal excitment. And with a few dozen millions dollars in my pocket I would totally invest into something fun even if uneconomical.

simonh9• 9 years ago

So I am not sure what entrepeneurs Bezos is referring to.

Probably people like Planetary Resources[0] and Deep Space Industries[1] that intend to get their raw materials from Space.

[0]http://www.planetaryresources.com

[1]http://deepspaceindustries.com

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

Mining in space only to drop the resources downwell is uneconomical. Moving industry to space, where the resources are, and dropping only final products downwell might make more sense - especially if "moving industry" actually means rebuilding it with resources mined in space. But for that to happen, someone needs to lay the groundworks.

kamaal5• 9 years ago

You are assuming people will mine things and send them to earth.

There isn't much joy in that.

You could sell your stuff to the local space colony of the billionaires a thousand kilometers away from the mining site.

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

"Millions of people working in space"? I have no desire to be a part of that but I do wonder what they'll be working on?

I'll leave explaining most of that point to a pretty good filk song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab_mH8R0KTM

http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Julia_Ecklar:One_Way_To_Go

Maybe to quote one verse:

  Breaking free of gravity, moving industry
  Beyond the planet's surface into space
  Lunar mines and factories, Lagrange Point colonies,
  Total productivity and nothing goes to waste
  Solar-sailing ships deployed to mine the asteroids
  While Earth becomes a paradise, her ugly scars erased

If you want a more "vivid" and detailed view of how this may look like (good and bad sides), I'd recommend "The Expanse" book series (and TV show) - a hard sci-fi about humans who just begun expanding throughout the Solar System.

There are lots of useful things to do in space, but we need to bootstrap a profitable economy in space to get there.

legulere2• 9 years ago

Sorry I cannot see the relationship between moving industries into space and total productivity or earth becoming a paradise.

Moving things between space and earth will always be costly and people will still want to live on earth. If we can solve waste, productivity issues in space why should we not be able to also solve them on earth?

delegate• 9 years ago

If you look deep enough you will find that even life on Earth is meaningless. Our very existence is just a ride on a blue-green rock inside a meat suit.

For a more 'down-to-earth' answer, we can look into the past - how did the space race, landing on the moon, etc contribute to the development of science, technology, art... Did that have anything to do with our development as a species ?

If we manage to settle on Mars, that would mean a great deal of new technological and scientific discoveries - which we'll be able to apply here on Earth. Maybe the solutions for the problems we experience here on Earth lay on other planets ?

Other planets will follow and eventually other stars. There will probably be generations of people who live and grow on a space ship, watching space youtube and movies all their lives - set in a strange distant place called Earth.

Eventually, they will arrive on a planet far away and settle there - maybe they'll forget all about their space trip and technology - become farmers and raise space chicken - only to reinvent rockets once again thousands of years later.

Maybe this whole thing is inside our DNA ?

sweezyjeezy• 9 years ago

I think there are definitely a small minority with the 'explorer gene', who are keen to be on the frontier. But most of us (if we're really honest with ourselves) would find it too hard to live on Mars in the next 50 years (say). Being so far away from home, simple things like the lack of internet, your surroundings being mile after mile of this : https://go.nasa.gov/2p4TKrK.

I think realistically most of the people who first colonise mars will be doing it for financial reasons, because better options are not available to them on Earth.

andr3w321• 9 years ago

I am sure people said the same thing about sending ships across the Atlantic to America 500 years ago. What's the point? Why leave Europe? There's nothing over there.

jbattle• 9 years ago

no way! they knew they would find spices, gold and prester john. And they found 2 out of 3

marcofloriano• 9 years ago

A good and honest opinion for 2017. But probably not for 2050. You see, vision is something you go for the long haul, not a couple decades. The world will evolve a lot, specially in the sense of using Space, Moon and Mars as the foundation to colonies.

One thing i do believe is the possibility to mining space (specially asteroids, like this -> "NASA to explore asteroid made of $10,000 quadrillion worth of metal", google it).

I imagine SpaceX and Blue Origins playing a huge part (if not all) in the future of this kind of exploration.

agumonkey2• 9 years ago

The thing about living on Mars, is ... it's gonna be exactly like living on earth socially speaking. There will be morons, suboptimal structures, chaos, forced order, etc etc. A bit like living at the North Pole, without the air (until they complete pressurized bases).

In my mind, there's trillions of things to do here that we don't get to do. Sure looking at mars sky would be something amazing, but I'm not in a hurry.

krisroadruck• 9 years ago

Probably fewer morons given that the initial population will be comprised mostly of scientists, engineers, and people with the brains/gumption to amass enough wealth to afford a civilian ticket.

FLUX-YOU• 9 years ago

I appreciate the tech very much, but the visions of "Millions of people working in space"? I have no desire to be a part of that but I do wonder what they'll be working on?

Infrastructure, warehouses, and a rescue network mostly likely. Getting fuel reserves and supplies into particular places, making ranger stations, and maintaining all of that.

It's also not impossible that some mega rich people decide to fund private projects that only have a slim chance of making a profit. Most of them will fail, but they'll still need workers while it's ongoing, and that still means you're giving knowledge to humanity when those workers figure stuff out and train others.

And "Living on Mars". No thanks, I'll pass on that too.

That's fine. It seems rough because it is (understatement of the year). But there's always going to be a subset of the population who just want to get out and explore and colonize. The risk is not for everyone, because yes, sometimes you go exploring and die for a stupid reason completely out of your control.

Besides, we really don't have any full-time Martian marketing agencies to influence everyone's perceptions of life on mars. So of course it seems terrible. :)

Symmetry2• 9 years ago

Currently space is a $330 billion a year industry providing things like pictures of the Earth, communication, etc with a bit of science thrown in. And there are a bunch of other useful things people want to do in space which are currently infeasible because access to space is too expensive. If access prices go down we should expect the dollar value of the off Earth economy to go up and more people up there to do things like repairs.

EDIT: And Blue Origin and SpaceX both use liquid fuel rockets exclusively which cause very little ozone depletion. There combustion byproducts are entirely made from oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon with no nitrogen or chlorine mixed in.

EDIT2: Also, apart from the danger of ozone depletion there really isn't any harm in "poking holes in the atmosphere". The atmosphere is a fluid, it flows back together just fine after the rocket passes.

nickparker• 9 years ago

This is going to come off nauseatingly optimistic, but here's my take:

Made in Space is working on producing ZBLAN optical fiber in orbit, for sale back on Earth. [1] ZBLAN is an alternative to normal silicate fiber which has much higher theoretical performance limits, but worse performance in practice due to gravity induced crystalline impurities. Producing it in microgravity should allow it to reach its full potential.

They haven't launched the first batch yet, but their claim is that because optical fiber doesn't weigh much, and this higher quality fiber is so valuable, it's actually profitable at current launch costs to do this manufacturing in orbit.

The linked article ends with a quote from the CEO: "We believe in-space manufacturing of goods valuable to people on Earth will soon drive significant commercial activity in space, perhaps one day creating a space-based economic boom." Consider the lithography processes our chips are made with, or the single-crystal turbine blades that help modern jet engines and rocket turbopumps work as well as they do. There's an enormous variety of precision processes that could benefit from operating under an ambient acceleration between 0 and 1g.

Orbital manufacturing is probably the most believable short term goal for commercial space, but there are a plenty of extremely exciting opportunities out there:

- The Mars colony will be our stepping stone out into the asteroids and the rest of the solar system. The thin atmosphere and lower gravity makes lifting mass from the Martian surface about an order of magnitude less difficult than lifting from Earth's surface. The difference is so extreme, that if you assume commodities will someday cost about the same on both planets, structures in Earth orbit would actually be cheaper to build and launch from Mars and then tug over to Earth.

- The potential wealth from mining other bodies is unfathomably huge. A small minority of asteroids out there are actually chunks of proto-planet cores unleashed during the violence of the early solar system. A single rock like that has more accessible platinum, rhodium, and other heavy metals than all known accessible deposits on Earth's surface. This fact becomes a little less surprising when you learn that all of Earth's accessible deposits are nothing more than impact sites from rocks like this. The "original" heavy metals of Earth all settled deep inside the core while the planet was still molten, far too deep for us to ever reach. These heavy elements are unbelievably useful. The state of the art in a huge fraction of the "hard" problems in chemistry boils down to "We can do it with platinum group catalysts, but those cost too much for industrial use."

- Orbital superstructures. Made in Space's Archinaut project [2] is an early effort to free satellite designers from the size and weight constraints of delicate folding structures riding inside a single rocket fairing. It's still early, but once launch costs drop and/or we start doing heavy in-situ mining, we can reasonably start building kilometer scale stations. Enormous solar arrays to power all our new orbital industry, or 5,000 person orbital ring cities with a relaxing level of partial g and perfect climate control. I'd love to live in a place like that.

My favorite analogy for this is the settling of America. Settling the new world in sailing ships that took a month to cross the Atlantic was a terrible investment with hardly any foreseeable return. But then we made better boats, and new communication systems, and all sorts of other new technologies which created exponential returns from the colonies. The west still leads the world because of the unimaginable profits it made off the Americas. Settling space, and particularly Mars, is the biggest opportunity we've had since the 1500s.

[1] http://www.madeinspace.us/projects/fiber/ [2] http://www.madeinspace.us/projects/archinaut/

rokhayakebe• 9 years ago

I just hope that these planets to get to do not become first come first serve and these individuals claiming ownership of the vast majority of them.

nol13• 9 years ago

Descendants of the first space farers will probably make up the majority of the genetic pool that goes on to dominate the galaxy. Ah well at least we got nature and stuff down here, for now at least. :/

Slightly extrapolating of course.

chrismealy• 9 years ago

Low earth orbit, meh.

nyxtom• 9 years ago

Blue Origins seems pretty likely to tap into a much lower cost market for panoramic views of earth at high altitudes, similar to Virgin Galactic (had they not completely messed things up). Developing something that will get them into LEO is massively more difficult, with significant funding at $1B a year however (which is about 5% the total NASA yearly budget), hopefully they can make up their lag. I would love to see more and more ventures enter this market. The more the better!

skdotdan• 9 years ago

Imagine a reusable rocket, like the SpaceX one, but bigger and being able to reflight in, say, one week.

If in every flight there were a satellite + space tourists, going to the space would be much more cheaper, and it's feasible I'm the near term. I see both SpaceX and Blue Origin offering "cheap" traveling to Space in less than a decade.

simonh9• 9 years ago

The concept video for the MCT launcher showed it landing on the launch pad, having a new second stage craned on to it, refuelling and launching in the same day.

robryan• 9 years ago

The stated SpaceX goal is for 24 hour turnaround times. Right now their turnaround times are around 2 weeks, assuming that they can get a slot for the range.

This will improve once the pad that was destroyed is rebuilt mid/late this year.

OrwellianChild• 9 years ago

I'm impressed by the burn-rate of $1B for a company that isn't actively launching on a regular basis... Does anyone have any idea how much capital SpaceX sunk before it got its Falcon 1 up and running?

simonh9• 9 years ago

I think it was under a billion. Elon Musk recently estimated that just developing the re-use capability for F9 probably cost about a billion dollars. Not the whole rocket, just the extra cost of development, testing and infrastructure to make it reusable. New Glenn might be able to beat that if it goes directly to reusability, but then again it's a much bigger rocket.

acover• 9 years ago

From PayPal musk got $185 million. $100 million went to SpaceX which paid for the 4 falcon 1 launches.

Musk was nearly bankrupt due to SpaceX and Tesla but now they've made him a billionaire.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

adventured5• 9 years ago

Founders Fund also put $20m in, in 2008, before the Falcon 1 reached orbit for the first time.

usrusr4• 9 years ago

Reading the headline my first impression was that the rocketry hobby now serves as a pretext to pull out of Amazon without making investors nervous. Does not really add up though, as Amazon isn't really bubbly enough and Bezos can't possibly want that much cash for other reasons than for shooting stuff into the sky.

jessriedel• 9 years ago

Do we have evidence that they have already been spending $1B per year?

chki• 9 years ago

I'm not really sure about the amount of money needed to have an actual impact on a stock like Amazon but maybe somebody more knowledgeable might have an idea: Does this measurably lower the market valuation of Amazon? If there is constantly someone selling shares in those volumes there should be some effect, even if Bezos is obviously not selling $1B in one day but over the course of the whole year?

grondilu• 9 years ago

Does this measurably lower the market valuation of Amazon?

Only if this sale generates a significant drop in price, which it probably doesn't (after all that price has continuously risen in the last few years). I'm no expert but I believe if you sell in small quantities at a time and at market price, you won't lower that price.

temp246810• 9 years ago

I think this is what OP is asking - in other words, does Bezos selling 1BN in stock per year lead to a drop in price.

good_vibes• 9 years ago

He will be the richest man in the world by 2020 I think.

adventured5• 9 years ago

He's $8 billion away from Gates at this point and moving a lot faster. It'll happen in the next 12 months.

When Amazon hits $500 billion, he'll be the richest person on earth. That's about 15% up from here, a gain likely to occur before a correction does.

Pica_soO• 9 years ago

Rich guy Escapism reaching escape velocity

zeristor• 9 years ago

To be honest, what else would one do with untold billions?

hueving2• 9 years ago

Focus on acute issues in developing nations that will save thousands of lives like Bill Gates is doing.

niketdesai• 9 years ago

I believe his foundation is allowing other people to contribute in the way he and Melinda have setup so well. With that said, I like that our largest influencers are tackling problems at various stages. Finding the ideal mix will take time (this is all in the last 15 years for the names being dropped).

appleflaxen• 9 years ago

Space should be a much lower priority than climate change. There's not as much excitement or fun in it, but it's about a million times more pressing.

Kalroth• 9 years ago

But we are going to need good spaceships for when the planet is no longer inhabitable.

PierreRochard• 9 years ago

I could not disagree more. We should adapt to climate change as it happens.

Besides, all of the resources we pour into forcing the climate to not change (which would be unprecedented!) are all for naught when that asteroid hits.

danielpatrick• 9 years ago

"unprecedented"

...actually precedented by all the resources we pour into forcing the climate TO change.

And, asteroid, seriously? This is the best we can do now? May as well not eat meals anymore because hey I could get hit by a bus on the way to work.

rhino3692• 9 years ago

are all for naught when that asteroid hits.

Hiding in space from an asteroid strike is a bad plan. Earth during an impact winter is still much much more habitable than anywhere else in the solar system.

simonh9• 9 years ago

Every problem we have is easier to tackle if we are economically more prosperous. Bezos even states that he thinks most industry should be moved off-planet. If we can do that, wouldn't it be good for the environment?

krapp2• 9 years ago

Bezos even states that he thinks most industry should be moved off-planet. If we can do that, wouldn't it be good for the environment?

I would think the energy and infrastructure requirements to move most industry off-planet, integrate it with terrestrial civilization at scale, and maintain continuous growth, would be far more environmentally damaging than simply keeping it all on Earth.

greglindahl7• 9 years ago

Did you know that a lot of important climate change data comes from satellites? And that observations of the Sun, Mars, and Venus also supply important data related to climate change?

tryitnow• 9 years ago

Is this perhaps a signal that it might be a good time for others to start selling Amazon stock?

I know if I were Bezos I would sell when I thought the stock was overpriced. I wonder if this is an indication that

Bezos and his team were brilliant for selling a bunch of convertible debt right before the 2000 crash. And let's not forget Bezos got his start at the quant fund DE Shaw.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

I know if I were Bezos I would sell when I thought the stock was overpriced.

You're thinking of the stock as an investment. To Bezos, though, it's an asset - something that can be sold when he needs liquid funds to finance an operation like Blue Origin. Perhaps he thinks it will be more profitable, or more fulfilling, or more fun. What's the point of having investments if you can't sell them unless they're overpriced?

peter303• 9 years ago

I wonder why Bezos is spending so much of his own money (OK less than 2% a year). Musk has perfected the art of spending Other People Money- government loans, green subsidies, IPO. Plus he has good customer revenue stream in two of his companies.

e40• 9 years ago

I wonder if Bezos will own more of the result?

jmeister• 9 years ago

Bezos is a lot richer and is on his way to making a ton more.

kakarot• 9 years ago

I always figured Amazon and SpaceX would just grow to be sister companies. Let SpaceX handle hardware and negotiations and let Amazon handle logistics and sales. Instant 45-minite Anywhere-On-Earth delivery service. I think there would be enough cash for them to share.

I have no doubt that Amazon wants to dig deep into space mining and being the backbone of the early solar economy. Who doesn't. It's gonna take a series of extremely smart investments for whoever does manage to pull that off. The barrier to a sustainable space economy is quite high.

Jeff Bezos Is Selling $1B a Year in Amazon Stock to Finance Race to Space

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