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Jeff Bezos Is Planning To Ship 'Several Metric Tons of Cargo' To the Moon (vice.com)
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin aerospace company is planning to send "several metric tons" of unspecified cargo to the Moon in the next five years. The company reportedly signed a letter of intent with Germany aerospace companies OHB Space Systems and Security and MT Aerospace at the 69th annual International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Germany on Tuesday. The OHB dubbed the lunar project the "Blue Moon" mission in a press release. Motherboard reports: It's not clear exactly what cargo the Blue Moon mission would transport, but it likely includes infrastructure designed to start private business on the Moon: The IAC also detailed the launch of the "Moon Race," a competition between Blue Origin, Airbus Air and Space, and other space agencies around the world to develop technology that will bring companies around the world to the Moon. According to a press release, the competition could involve manufacturing products and technology, manufacturing energy sources for humans to survive, getting access to water and sustaining biological life, such as plant or agricultural life -- all on the Moon. Blue Origin said in a press release that both the Blue Moon mission and Moon Race are in line with its goal to "land large payloads on the Moon that can access and utilize the resources found there."
Bezos just wants to be ready for the first Amazon Prime shipment to the moon. 2 day shipping will be a bit of a challenge.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm assuming it'll mostly be union organisers.
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
Talk is cheap, guys. I'd be interested to see, in ten years' time, how many, if any, of these fantasies get carried out.
Seattle will pass a law requiring space ship recycling.
They misread 'LOUISIANA' as 'LUNA'.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
will be using quadcopters to deliver it.
Blue Origin of course has no near-term plans for Moon-launch capability, thus why they're courting other companies to develop this. However this got me thinking...
SpaceX's plan is for other companies to develop the various tech which will be deployed to Mars, for habitats, fuel production, automated machinery et cetera. This makes me wonder if Blue Origin is planning on developing some of said equipment, and putting it on the Moon first, giving up on making heavy-lift rockets and pivoting to making interesting cargo to put in space.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Earth resources, except oil, gas and coal, are not wasted. They simply go to a different place on the planet. The few metric tons that are in orbit or in outer space are not even a sand corn at a beach.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
and Uber will start hiring drivers for moon rovers.
No you're not. First thought that entered my mind was to take a photo of the next full moon to show your grandkids what it used to look like before we trashed it. Seems that not being content with trashing our own planet we're wanting to start to move out into space and trash that as well.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I don't know if I should be upset they are concentrating on the pointless, or happy they won't be in the way of the people actually making space work.
The Nazis who fled to the dark side of the moon at the end of WWII will take anything they leave there and use it against us. Is Bezos in league with the lunar Nazis? (Does this count as fulfilling Godwin's law?)
why is media and slashdot falling for these corporate spin campaigns?
this is not even a contract, no significant amount of money changed hands, it is a mere letter of intent for something, if serious, would take years to happen, but more likely never happen. main purpose of this is to create good press for amazon. but media and meta media, ignores all that, believes the corporate spin at face value.
I kinda hope it will be something more useful then Tesla. With Space X putting a Tesla in space, while a cool marketing was a complete waste of money. They could had at least worked with a university for some sort of scientific satellite (Or loaded the Tesla with sensors.).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Metric crap-loads is more like it.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Amazon Moon Pot is going to be AWESOME!
that's 56 days earth time. I think he can do it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It was a test flight, and the first one for that family of rockets, at that. There was a decent chance that it would have exploded on the pad destroying the payload. Most universities don't have loads of cash to waste on building experiments that potentially only gather data about the internal temperature of a rocket fuel explosion.
They put a Tesla on there because it was more interesting than the usual chunk of tungsten that would be used for payload simulation on this type of mission.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I know that it's been a few years since the federal government did this, but Jeff & Co. could start their own program up to get some polluters off the road and on to the moon.
Free shipping
Sure, but the cost of a Prime membership just went up by two orders of magnitude to make up for the shipping costs.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Awesome, now we're going to have smiley-face cardboard boxes polluting the moon.
He's probably planning to ship several tons of his money to the moon to keep it out of the hands of the tax collectors.
In less than 100 years, localities will auction off the rights to rip open landfills and have robots sort it all for recycling.
And we can already use bacteria to create hydrocarbons. Tailored ones are just some research away. When this happens, even oil won't be an issue, pollution from burning it aside. But that won't be for a hundred years or more anyway, and we will be well into renewable energy and genetic engineering. I doubt ground oil will ever be a problem.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Obviously he is establishing diplomatic relations with the Nazis on the Moon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
AWS moon region confirmed!
He should ship using the imperial, or standard ton. They’re 10% lighter! Think of the SAVINGS!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Ton : Imperial measurement. Ad hoc unit of weight based on the shin length of a medieval mole-rat.
Tonne: 1000 kilograms. Based on big round numbers that divide nicely by other big round numbers.
"Metric Ton"?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Only after their announcement to go to the Moon and set up shop did the space race really get off the ground (see what I did there).
Industrializing the Moon is an obvious strategy that should have been an extension of America's thrust (see what I did there) back in the 60s.
The only reason JFK sent us to the Moon was to outperform the USSR.
The only reason we're going back is to outperform Japan and a host of other countries.
I don't know why in simple hell the Mars batshit crazy fanbois didn't choose the Moon as a beta site in the first goddam place.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.