Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
What is this obsession with moving out of the basement? There are already so many people in cars driving around that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much cars driving around that it'll be self generating and dangerous for humans to venture there especially if this idiotic idea of autonomous vehicles takes off. As for flying vehicles, called aeroplanes - until someone invents a serious much faster and practical competitor to ships 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 Jules Verne like world, but I'm afraid its just books kids, reality is another ball game entirely.
Yeah, not a prefect match but does reflect your "I don't understand it so it can't happen outlook".
Two specific points:
The Microsat movement isn't going to contribute much to space pollution as low lifetime sats deployed to low orbits aren't the problem.
Creating an space-based economy and self sustaining workforce aren't objectives beyond our means unless we allow ourselves to be hobbled.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Lets be honest, no one wants to increase government budgets, what most would consider reasonable is shifting some of the budget from the War Industrial Complex. Some of that War Industrial Complex spending should also be shifted to infrastructure spending and well, what is development of space but quite simply the building of off earth infrastructure to allow access for humanity, not only to the rest of the solar system but also the galaxy beyond that. It will also not be one nations goal but the majority of democratic nations working together to achieve a goal for the entirety of humanity on this planet.
The comparison of what that exploration provides, is the gap between cave persons and where we are today. So, why leave the cave, why climb past that mountain range, why cross oceans, well, if we hadn't there would still be a tiny number individuals squatting in caves, terrified of all the far more physically capable predators around us and continually under threat of immediate extinction.
It is not destiny, it is just another challenge, just another goal, just another step in working together to become more than what we were. We will either fail or succeed but we will most certainly fail ie extinction inevitable, if we do not try. Personally I see that step next step of becoming a galactic species to be the greatest ever possible achievement of humanity, every other fear pales against it (consider that trillions of species over billions of years did not manage to escape this planetary cocoon and we are now in a position to do so). Humanity on many worlds and scattered throughout the galaxy, writing their history across this galaxy, possibly hundreds of millions of year of it. How can you deny that, in all good conscience, to future generations. This versus turning in on ourselves, squabbling ever more violently over diminishing resources and tearing down this planet down around ourselves.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
you're
Damn, this is tiresome !
Wrong. Thanks to orbital mechanics, you have a lot of inertia to shed, and thus need to accelerate in the opposite direction, spending precious fuel before you can hit the atmosphere again. Or wait years / forever for atmospheric friction to slow you down, depending on the altitude of your orbit.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The way I look at is if the reusable rocket guys get the cost of orbital rockets down to 1/10th of the cost that it is now, lots of options open up. If you can get 10 trips up for the cost of 1 now, suddenly assembling a Mars-distance ship in orbit and all the fuel and supplies to make it happen seems pretty plausible.
We aren't going interstellar without some new physics, but with a much less expensive orbital lift platform, interplanetary starts to look much more within reach even if it is initially limited to Mars or even Mars orbit stations.
Two specific points: The Microsat movement isn't going to contribute much to space pollution as low lifetime sats deployed to low orbits aren't the problem.
We already have a government/military component spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year tracking every single piece of space junk we've put out there in our artificial asteroid belt. And if the planet is any indication, any place we humans occupy we manage to fuck up with garbage. This will become a problem because of the exponential growth in interest they're hoping to drum up with this capitalist space race. Forget low orbit. Higher orbits will become the issue when human arrogance labels low orbit for "losers" who "can't get it up" or some stupid shit. You know, kind of like the bigger-dick syndrome we suffered from in the 60s with planting a flag on a moon.
Creating an space-based economy and self sustaining workforce aren't objectives beyond our means unless we allow ourselves to be hobbled.
Speaking of hobbled, tell me how well our electronic world that is critically dependent on communications would fare if a catastrophic event occurred where the majority of our major satellite system were inadvertently destroyed. It would be at minimum years before we could fully recover communications and capability at this level. For the fucking planet. Good luck with your "self-sustaining" workforce then.
TL; DR - Humans fuck up any space they occupy. History has shown this, so don't be ignorant about the inevitable dangers of exponential growth.
The U.S. government budget for 2016 was $3.999 Trillion. The U.S. Defense Dept. budget for 2016 was $597 Billion. So, that's, 14% of the budget. Of that, approx. 1/2 is due to personnel costs. Another $100 Billion goes into physical plant, leaving about $200 Billion for everything else. A chunk of that goes into R&D and not fielded weapons.
Now, about the War Industrial Complex. Most companies do not rely on U.S. Defense dollars because the money isn't big enough. The U.S. has approx. at $19 Trillion economy. To think you are going to swing that in any direction with $200 is silly. You might argue that the entire approx. $600 Billion should be included. However, if you remove that from salaries, health benefits, etc., you lose that chunk of the economic savings you think you are going to get.
What's cool about your post is that I can swap your space references with Internet references and it still stands up pretty good!
"What is this obsession with shoving stuff into the Internet? There are already so many things in the Internet that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much Internet debris flying around that it'll be self generating and dangerous for humans to venture to the Internet especially if this idiotic idea of IoT takes off (pun intended). As for deep web - until someone invents a serious much faster and practical competitor to the Tor Browser 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."