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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Thinks Space Can Be the New Internet (theverge.com)
Speaking at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said space is essentially a new internet, as it is the next frontier that needs new infrastructure to support new entrepreneurs. He said the purpose of Blue Origin is to build out a similar kind of infrastructure for space that Amazon used to operate during the days of the early internet, such as the United States Postal Service and long distance phone network. The Verge reports: "Two kids in their dorm room can reinvent an industry," Bezos said, referring to the strengths of the modern internet. "Two kids in their dorm room cannot do anything interesting in space." Bezos says rocket reusability needs to be improved, and both Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are working toward the goal of vastly reducing the cost of sending payloads to space. Bezos said there's also a number of restraints right now that prevent the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that helped create Amazon do the same for a next-generation space venture. "We need to be able to put big things in space at low cost." Bezos talked of his earliest days at Amazon more than 20 years ago, where he was driving packages himself to the post office with a 10-person team. "We were sitting on a bunch of a heavy lifting infrastructure," he said. "For example, there was already a gigantic network called United States Postal Service. The internet itself was sitting on time of the long distance phone network." This is the kind of infrastructure Bezos hopes to build out with Blue Origin. "Every time you figure out some way of providing tools and services that allow other people to deploy their creativity, you're really onto something," Bezos said. But building that infrastructure space is still the grandest dream. "I think space is about to enter a golden age."
...I can subscribe to Amazon Prime program ?
So now that the costs of research and experimentation have been paid for by the public, "entrepreneurs" are willing to step up and reap the profits?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
the internet has just a slightly lower cost-of-entry than space.
I can shitpost IN SPACE soon?
Excellent.
"...The internet itself was sitting on time of the long distance phone network."
Try this instead, Bezos Bozo:
"...The internet itself was sitting on top of the long distance phone network."
What Bezos, and similar Libertarian Leeches fail to appreciate is... well, this:
"For example, there was already a gigantic network called United States Postal Service..."
Benjamin Franklin is credited with the idea of the Postal Service as a Government function in the US, because Private Enterprise had failed in this function up to then. Franklin was many wonderful things, but ultimately he was that rare American Character- A Realist. Some things simply have to be left for those that we choose to Govern Us.
While Bezos et al are rewriting History to suit their egos, note that four little letters are missing from this Puff Piece. An "N", an "A", an "S", and another "A". I know that "NASA" is, by Bezos' Standards, an antiquated Government Institution, somewhat like the Postal Service, that hasn't ever created something New and Profitable for Centuries. (Centuries, Decades, Parsecs... what are you, a Commie?)
I actually do hope that Bezos succeeds. That would be a wonderful thing, somewhat unprecedented in US History. But to ignore the Billions of Dollars, tens of thousands of People, and a few deaths that some of us still grieve, in search of Profit In Space for Bozos...
That is something of which I will not put up with. No Siree.
Captcha: trouble
There is a chance of slightly more than zero that something like that is going to happen and ignoring it may mean to miss it or to come too late. Of course there is a dream of tricking out the limits of growth by just growing out of Earth. Then someone else already is sitting on the juiciest resources out there.
Well, either that or we will be increasingly fighting over diminishing resources down here, sooner or later. In case you haven't noticed the world is becoming smaller and smaller.
Bezos is just spending some money on trying not to miss the ultimate growth opportunity in history. In the worst case he will just be selling engines to ULA (and he's is already developing the BE4 engine for them).
Can do nothing on the internet now; people expect polished products and most markets are getting saturated and if you do start to gain traction in some new area, the big guys like Amazon can easily spin up their own version of whatever you're doing rather than buy you out.
call me when we can lift millions of people into orbit, not to mention the Lagrange points the moon, mar etc, the internet cost nothing space will cost thousands of times planetary gdp
They can turn it into just as big of a cesspool as the internet has become, funnelling all the profits into an ever decreasing group's pockets while they first flaunt then pay fines to get back on the good side of the law. And all the while the little guy will be fucked as there is less opportunity to earn the money necessary to own your own property and as the physical resources are cornered more and more first by corporate might and then by legal capture.
Space as Internet makes Sad Panda stuffed panda.
What is this obsession with shoving stuff into space? There are already so many satellites in orbit that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much space debris flying around that it'll be self generating and dangerous for humans to venture there especially if this idiotic idea of microsatellites takes off (pun intended). As for deep space - until someone invents a serious much faster and practical competitor to the chemical rocket we ain't going anywhere and thats only going to happen if the laws of physics suddenly open up in unexpected ways. I know a lot of people dream of a Star Trek like world, but I'm afraid its just TV kids, reality is another ball game entirely.
So your all for increasing NASA's budget in the off chance other new profitable opportunities will arise?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Until you get sucked out of an airlock.
Growth at any cost is the human way. When humanity stagnates we start getting antsy and when we start getting antsy people start to do things that are destructive.
We need to figure out how to navigate space. We need to figure out how to colonize other worlds. There are asteroids out there filled with all sorts of lovely minerals for the taking.
Saying, "There's no financial incentive to go up there" is a defeatist mindset. It's the logical next step in our cultural and technological advancement as a species. Self driving cars, smart phones, and even the internet are small peanuts compared to the veritable gold mine that space is.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Thinks [a cheap* heavy launch infrastructure] Can Be the New Internet
There, fixed that for you. What Bezos is saying is that Amazon's rise was possible because some one had already deployed a long distance phone network and a postal system, and had already invented the Internet and the web. He is proposing to invent*/deploy the systems that will make startup companies for applications in space feasible.
*This is the step of his proposal, where a miracle occurs, is not going to be as hard as jumping from a long distance phone network to the Internet was. It is going to be as hard as jumping from hide drums to the Internet was.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Count me in.
... the Space Bubble ! ...
Sorry, it's Friday, I'm tired
Totof
Great, instead of space junk, entire Amazon wharehouses will be built in space.
Get your packages space dropped to your doorstep.
"Two kids in their dorm room cannot do anything interesting in space."
What if their dorm room is in space? Then the possibilities are endless.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I'm not convinced that space is the next internet. How is space going to bring more porn to the masses?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
OTOH, seeing what results a bad hair job can produce, I'm not so sure...
can't pay for life support = legal to kill. As in legal to kick someone out of an air lock to there death.
That is the GOP view of space
My god, it's full of porn.
>> Space Can Be the New Internet
Um...the thing that makes the Internet the Internet is that anyone with $100 or a computer can contribute something new, whether open source, artwork or, for a little more investment, hardware. Space has a significant barrier to entry that will keep the vast majority of us...er...grounded.
We've got to bootstrap our way into space before we can have a golden age thereof. We can't feasibly have a golden age of space until we're building spacecraft in space out of stuff we mined in space.
We're going to have to have a boring age of mining before we can have a golden age of exploration.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So now that the costs of research and experimentation have been paid for by the public, "entrepreneurs" are willing to step up and reap the profits?
Yes! That's one of the great things about publicly funded research. It turns into economic benefit to society via technology transfer. You seem to be implying (wrongly) that this is somehow a bad thing. Quite the contrary - this is a hugely awesome good thing. It means tons of jobs, new industries, and economic benefits all around. It grows the economy. Keeping the research in a lab where it will do nothing would be pretty much the worst thing you could do with it because then you spend the money and get no economic benefit either.
And pretty much all of his ilk are delusional, egocentric, flipping *morons*. He is like a thong made out of piison ivy, sandpaper, and laxitives (as I think half of the things these people say are just verbal diarrhea, and some of it sounds like it's coming out of their ass, not their brain. If you truly aren't on the spectrum, or metamucil, you really don't need to share every retarded thought that flies through your head. Also, neither money nor 'influence' are an indication of intelligence or character, genius). Troll me!
Obviously.
The Wright brothers didn't create the aircraft in their dorm room - they needed a garage and wide areas in order to do their stuff. Plus they needed wealth, which two kids in their dorm room are much less likely to have nowadays. They need space to construct that sort of stuff, much more than what's needed to build a hot-rod or small aircraft.
As for something interesting in space, the only things left is to colonize another planet (or moon), extract resources from the other planet, FTL jump to another system, etc. Two kids in the dorm room can't build the Lunar Cheese Extraction Facility, nor can they do hyperspace stuff.
The two kids in the dorm room that are capable of designing improved rockets or space vehicles wouldn't be in the dorm room because they would have been hired by any company wanting to do the same type of work.
Since the internet came out we have been saying it is the wild wild west and as regulation gets implemented a next wild west will be space.
Note: on trying to post this, Slashdot says "Slow Down Cowboy!"
Stop buying from Amazon, Tesla or anyone else who wants to go out there and reap all of space for themselves.
How refreshing! The tax-dodging tycoon tells us its business could not have emerged without tax-subsided public services.