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Jeff Bezos' Shot At Space
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.)
Neal Stephenson's speaking at Carnegie Mellon on Thursday. I'll have to ask him about the project...
Kevin Fox
So has Jeff applied for a patent on this yet?
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It(TM)©® only(TM)©® takes(TM)©® one(TM)©® click(TM)©®(TM)!(TM) is© a(TM) registered® trademark(TM) used(TM) with Jeff©'s(TM) permission©. Unauthourized© reproduction(TM) is© expressly® prohibited(TM).
the federal patent office awarded a patent on space to jeff bezos today. as a result, all extraterrestrial bodies are required to license their existence.
"Now he has a $1.7 billion fortune to try to convert that dream into reality."
:(
Ok, I know now why I have not got one
That quote is right underneath a picture of bald Mr. Bezos in which he very subtly resembles Jean Luc Picard ;-).
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
So is this something else that no one will buy on Amazon, just like the Segway?
...the look on your mate's face as you OneClick a $20,000 space trip for him off his Amazon account...
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....
I'm sure he'd patent the method used to get him there, wouldn't he? And the damn patent office would allow it, because the patent office is his bitch, right?
Then again, leaving Bezos in space might be just what we need...
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
A excuse for Uber-latency on IRC. "My IRC host is on the moon."
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
It would be pretty cool if he were there because he's trying to get some experience for a future novel. It'd be especially funny, if comparing this work to Snow Crash, if he were going to have his character be a janitor in a space facility or somesuch, and like our infamous pizza driver, took on the closest weird job of custodial maintenance at this company to get a feel for what his character's life would be...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Attention Mr. teamhasnoi:
I represent Mr. Jeff Bezos and his patent portfolio. We believe that your Slashdot signature, "OpenBeos [sourceforge.net]& Software [bebits.com]," contains intentionally misleading language. Consumers are likely to believe that "OpenBeos" is associated with Mr. Bezos.
As you may be aware, "Bezos" has been copyrighted, patented, and trademarked by Mr. Bezos. In fact, Mr. Bezos also patented the process of trademarking the term "Bezos," to ensure that if his trademark were to expire, he could sue anyone else attempting to register the mark.
We request that you immediately cease and desist all use of the term "Beos," or any other mark which misleads consumers into the false assumption that they are a patron of one of Mr. Bezos' business ventures.
Regards
J. Wilberforce Patterson, Esq.
Really? I got one a few days after I got my talk show...
What? You don't have your own talk show yet, either?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Snide....comments......
/Muppet Announcer VoiceC CCEEE (/echo space).
(awww, screw it)
BEEEZZZOOOOSSSS...IIIINNNNNNnnnn....SPAAAA
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
He should form a company to sell the machine that generated the reality distortion field he used on his investors.
Other planets orbiting Sol
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***** This is it!, April 26, 2010
Reviewer: shill49 (see more about me)
This is the best planet. There isn't a lot to do there, but it's relatively uncrowded so if you're an introspective person like me you can "get away from it all" and not have to put up with many other tourists. Granted, you can't go around much because the surface is hot enough to melt lead, and the weather is often cloudy. If you have kids you're probably better off taking a look at Mars.
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Now sit back and watch the funding come in. You too can have a space program for only a $100 investment.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
From the more-fun-than-yachts department
Billionaires secretly building rockets and other spaceships isn't all that surprising; but a Slashdot editor using "than" properly in lieu of the much more popular "then"... now *that's* what I call news!
09
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Okay, this might seem terrible to say but what happens when one of these guys goes broke? Even worse, when there's an accident? I'm very happy to see progression of this kind because it really doesn't seem like NASA will be doing any for quite some time but have these guys seen the BIG picture? Redesigning rockets from the ground up is a good thing but remember when NASA was designing rockets? They had numerous scrubbed, failed, and fatal launches. Maybe these organizations should get together and pool their resources a little and make sure safety first is a goal. The worst thing that could happen to human space travel would be for another disasterous loss of life to occur. Because if a government can't do it and private organizations can't do it then who can? I wish these people and their employees the best of luck and hope they are successful in their ventures.
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.
:-)
;-)? If I photoshop a cool plane, will you give me 1 Gazillion $$ too?
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
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...
from article: " Rutan has spent a celebrated career designing airplanes like the Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world without refueling. He doesn't classify as an immigrant from high tech"
... y'know, I think I like this guy.
Voyager? Not high tech? The first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping for fuel? Methinks he's pretty modest
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
He's not claiming to be Bezos' son, he's claiming to be Burt Rutan's son, and the picture he has is therefore of Rutan's SpaceShipOne.
As mentioned in the article (By Bezos himself), Blue Origin haven't actually done anything noteworthy yet.
From the Article:
Bezos himself says, "It's way premature for Blue to say or comment on anything because we haven't done anything worthy of comment."
Advanced users are users too!
Mars? Venus? Man, that's dangerous.
Rekall Inc offers a safe substitute. You will remember your trip and you will have your souvenirs but you will never leave Mother Earth.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
He'd gotten to Level Two, which requires a written test and successfully launching a carefully inspected large rocket. As I recall, it lets you use "J" and "K" motors. (For those who flew Estes motors as kids, this is the equivalent of 64 and 128 D motors.)
Level Three requires a really large and sturdy rocket, and lets you use monstrous M motors.
(I was certified in the early 90s before there were levels, but let it lapse during grad school; when I tried for level one last year I failed because my model's nose cone popped off due to internal pressure. Nothing damaged, but that was enough to scuttle the attempt.)
Now I'm picturing him filling out the paperwork for Cert Level 4: Manned Flight.
Stefan
* Tripoli Rocketry Association / National Association of Rocketry
You've also got a cascade effect. As soon as one company publicly announces themselves, a lot of the others are going to want to speak up so the first company doesn't hog the spotlight. This will be especially true if they are currently seeking investors or plan to start doing so in the near future.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
the clinton era-boom generation of newly-rich are going for the x-prize. the reagan-era deregulation sired rich (like the virgin-atlantic folks and forbes-types) went for balloon racing and round the world plane flights. and the era before that the merger moguls like ted turner were going for yacht racing.
its all alpha-male competition. this time however its the alpha-male-geeks which explains the sci-fi content.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The Space Access Society has its annual meeting this weekend; this is the first one since the X prize was announced to be fully funded last October, and the race has definitely been heating up.
:-) Space enterprise will be the next big growth area - and NASA won't have a whole lot to do with it. Think of the shuttle accident as just another piece of motivation these guys need - right now the US has no human spaceflight capability, until one of these companies succeeds, or the shuttle starts flying again. Which do you think will happen first?
This year is also the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers flight, and a lot of these companies see this year as a terribly symbolic time to actually make it all happen.
It's time
Energy: time to change the picture.
... Capitalist Pigs... in... SPAAAAACE!!!!!
[/MuppetShowAnnouncer]
:)
Could this just be a way from them to spend more than 7.5% of their Adjusted Gross Income on a hobby to get another tax deduction? Hmm...
We aren't going to get beyond LEO with private enterprise. I'm saddened by the realization, but no D. D. Harriman is going to emerge to get us onto another world. I'd like to see us mine the He3 on the moon, and think we will. But it will be due mainly to gevernment research and spending, much as I hate the fact. Private enterprise won't even have much to do with developing the controlled, sustainable fusion reactors we need the He3 FOR, let alone the vehicles that get it from Luna to Earth. The invesment's too big, the payoff too small, and the timescale too long for any serious investors. Write your congresscritter and tell them how important fusion and space travel are. And read Robert Zubrin's Entering Space, an eye-opening book.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. - Robert Anson Heinlein