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Bezos's Blue Origin Prepares Launch Facility
mhteas writes "Jeff Bezos's very quiet and private spaceship company Blue Origin is preparing to set up a launch facility in west Texas on 165,000 acres Bezos bought. There's a little more information about Blue Origin's plans too."
Yes, so quietly that we've been hearing about this for the better part of a week!
A similar story was reported previously on Slashdot here.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Blue Origin's Web site says the company doesn't intend to stop with a suborbital vehicle. The ultimate goal is to establish an "enduring human presence in space," and Bezos told Reuters in November that his company hopes to progress to orbital vehicles.
Sounds like he might be trying to obtain the Bigelow space race for a space station. 50 million dollars is a nice prize.
On a side note Google buys enough dark fibre to make a space elevator thus obtaining total control of the globe with the only cheap way to get to orbit.
UID 1000000 is just around the corner.
You can read more about this here.
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the patented one click launch button?
If I can in any way at all afford it I'll be on a trip into space at some point in my life for no other reason than it's a dream of mine and always has been to do it. I think there are enough people like me to provide a fair amount of return on any development costs, and that's going up there essentially just for the experience of it. This should provide incentive to develop further and maybe go on to some useful mining operations and the like, as previous posters have said.
The other nice thing about this 'private space race' is that it's stimulating competition between some of the world's best business and engineering minds. This is exactly how capitalism is supposed to work - competition for the ultimate share of the profits leads to better products and developments from everyone. Looking at the level of people involved I'm willing to be there's going to be some cool tech made in this race. There isn't a viable replacement for Concorde yet for a start...
Again, here's my rejected submission from the last time this story was run. The info in it is somewhat better, IMHO.
After years of secrecy and much speculation, Blue Origin has finally announced its plans to build and operate a privately-funded aerospace testing and operations center in West Texas. The company, run by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is "currently developing a sub-orbital space vehicle that will take off and land vertically to take three or more astronauts to the edge of space." Flight operations could begin as soon as six years from now. Hopefully this will be a significant step towards Bezos's dream of enabling "an enduring human presence in space."
I'd also like to remind the reader that Neal Stephenson (author of Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, and many pieces of quality sci-fi literature) works for Blue Origin. Here's what he said when asked about it in a slashdot interview from last year:
Like Spock on the deck of the Enterprise, I sit in the corner and await opportunities to jump out and yammer about Science. Unlike Spock, I don't have anyone reporting to me and I never get to sit in the captain's chair and aim the phasers. This is probably good.
Though the X-Prize is cool and good, Blue Origin never intended to compete for it. Consequently, it has had no effect, other than destroying productivity whenever a SpaceShipOne flight is being broadcast.
As for my visions of future private space flight: here I have to remind you of something, which is that, up to this point in the interview, I have been wearing my novelist hat, meaning that I talk freely about whatever I please. But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet). I do not freely disseminate my thoughts on this one topic because I have agreed to sell those thoughts to Blue Origin. Admittedly, this feels a little strange to a novelist who is accustomed to running his mouth whenever he feels like it. But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.