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Jeff Bezos' Shot At Space

Posted by timothy on from the more-fun-than-yachts dept.

Brad Stone points out his story (due out in Monday's issue of Newsweek) on Jeff Bezos' secret space-oriented company, called Blue Origin -- which aims to launch tourists in a reusable vehicle. The article also touches on some of the other private space ventures you've been reading about lately. (One cool note about Blue Origin is that Neal Stephenson is an employee; I hope he's not allowed anywhere dangerous.)

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Space Race 2.0? by seldolivaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What the hell happened? Did someone declare a second space race and I missed the memo? The X-prize has been around a while, but in the last few weeks I've read of four separate previously-secret ventures to get people into space cheaply. So soon after Columbia, and in the middle of an economic downturn doesn't sound like the greatest time to announce high-risk, expensive projects like these. What gives? Even if the others are just copycats, what pushed the first guy to publish?

    Waiting to be enlightened here....

  2. Scaled Composites - fake? by Traa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Got to love those journalists that start the article with a picture of a rival company's craft without specifically mentioning that this craft has nothing to do with Mr Bezos.

    On top of that, the picture is Photoshopped (whoops, I mean "Gimped" :-)

    Compare the bottom of this picture closely to this image. Both are from Scaled Composites own site. Scaled Composites is one of the competitors for the X-price.

    Note the following fakes:
    1) The attachment of the crafts is a Photoshop job. They removed the wheels (look closely at the spot on the small plane that suposedly holds the wheels) and note that they forgot to remove the shadow of the front stand. Also, the shadow on the attachement between the planes is (nicely) faked. For that matter, so is the whole attachment.
    2) The small plane does not actually have an exhaust (the red thingy). In all the pictures this thing looks a little different. Note how it is awkwardly in and out of shadow in the above pictures.

    Why?

    Do investors know about this? Is this common practice for a startup (ok, forget I asked that ;-)? If I photoshop a cool plane, will you give me 1 Gazillion $$ too?

  3. Joint Efforts Anyone? by kevlar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With all these billionares forming their own space oriented companies, what the hell is stopping them from pooling their resources for their common goal?!?! You'd think that if they were capable of doing all this so cheaply, that triple or quadruple the capital would help speed things along...