Yeah, but you're the only halfway civilized country in the Americas, so it's not surprising you'd feel that way. You do provide a nice counterpoint to the Russians though, I'm sure the rest of the Arcticans appreciate it.
>isn't chemistry all maths? can't you just calculate the same reactions and have a 100% success rate?
Because chemistry is applied quantum mechanics, and the math is HARD. I think they finally managed to simulate the chemical properties of a hydrogen molecule, but last I heard that was the most complicated molecule we've been able to simulate accurately - and it's literally the simplest molecule that exists, by a wide margin.
Who says there was an increase in substance *abuse*? There was certainly a surge in substance *use*, primarily because it was closely tied to the cultural revolution. The abuse didn't seem to really set in until the 70s, when the combination of disillusioned revolutionaries and the consolidation of the black market started making for some real unpleasantness.
And what is your proposal for reducing demand? Criminalization does little to reduce it, which we knew quite well from the last time we tried prohibition. And it makes it a *lot* more difficult for people who've developed an addiction they're having trouble breaking to get help.
They said that job performance was maintained in four days - so presumably the employees were still getting a full weeks worth of work done in only four days. Which really isn't that surprising - several studies have shown that total weekly productivity drops dramatically for people working more than 40 hours per week, it's hardly a stretch to think that maybe 40 hours is longer than the "optimal total productivity point" as well. Sounds like they found that, at least for this company, 32 hours yielded roughly the same total productivity, along with a substantial increase in employee satisfaction.
They also said performance improved, though they kind of skimmed over that. Several other studies have shown the same thing, especially for working more than 40 hours per week. It seems that working more than somewhere around 40 hours per week starts to consistently have a rather dramatic negative effect on your total weekly productivity, but there have been far fewer studies trying to locate the point of maximum total productivity.
In the US, no contest. And I think somewhat in Europe, etc. But I understand it's a point of consternation for many other North- and South- Americans. And reasonably so.
I prefer US myself, but it comes down to context - If you're talking about sovereign states, there's only one country with "America" in it's name - search for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On the other hand, the term "American" should probably be in the same class as European, African, or Asian - a continental identifier, rather than a country. Except, its not specific enough - There's two very different continents that include American in the name - are you North American, or South American? Or Central American I suppose - which isn't a proper continent on it's own, but has it's own thing going on (And I mean, Europe and Asia aren't exactly separate continents by any reasonable geographic distinction either)
So, not ideal, but pretty unambiguous all the same. Plus, USian doesn't really roll off the tongue very well.
You missed the part where they said employee performance also improved - which is what the company paying them undoubtedly cares about. If you can pay your employees the same amount, they do more/better work, morale improves, AND they get an extra day off every week to focus on their own life, then everybody wins.
Maybe you could maintain/improve performance further with a three-day week, but I suspect the combination of the larger increase in per-hour productivity required, in combination with the smaller incremental reduction in stress, would make that difficult. Though it might well be worth investigating, in smaller increments to try to find the optimal "sweet spot". Perhaps 3 10-hour days, or 4 7-hour days or something would yield even greater productivity.
I think the problem is far more insidious than just an entrenched system - a system of unevenly applied laws, especially when the laws are so overreaching as to criminalize everyone, is a system in which those with power can arbitrarily punish anyone for any reason, using whatever crimes they've committed as the excuse.
Hmm, so what happened in the 60s that caused all that crime - prohibition maybe? Lets criminalize the possession of many widely used recreational substances, and suddenly we have a huge crime problem, create massive black markets and the violence associated with them. The gang warfare. The militarization of police in order to be able to compete.
All of that was completely predictable - it all happened when we tried alcohol prohibition, and continued getting worse until that was repealed. You have to ask yourself - what was the real motive in trying it again?
>The only way the system works is if the balance between cost of prosecution and magnitude of the crime worth prosecuting remains stable
An alternative would be to enforce the law at all times and for all people, with no exceptions of any kind - the public backlash from that would be sufficient (in a legitimate democracy) to severely prune the law to the point that obeying all the laws at all times is actually an relatively easy thing to do.
Correction - they want the ability to illegally invade our privacy *back* - they've been invading it at will for many decades, and for the last couple decades have been doing it at a scale and invasiveness to dwarf anything ever before seen in all but the most dystopian fantasies. The rise of encryption has been a direct response to that unbridled power grab, and now they're trying to cast off those unwelcome limits on their unsupervised power. I mean hell, when they flat out lie to Congress about their activities, repeatedly, you've got to realize that they are no longer in any way a legitimate government agency.
That's even worse - why would you willingly trap yourself in the Moon's gravitational well if you're planning to leave on an interplanetary voyage? The moon makes a great gravitational slingshot, but you have to slow down considerably to enter orbit, and once you're in orbit you can't use it as a slingshot anymore.
The only reason to stop at a space station would be to refuel, and you can do that just as easily in a high Earth orbit.
That's one of the biggest draws to a Mars or Moon colony - all the radiation shielding you could want is just lying around on the surface, you just have to scoop it up and pour it over your habitat. Or dig down into it. Or maybe get lucky and find some old lava tubes that you just have to make airtight.
The Moon is small and close enough that a colony, once it's reached sustainability, could start exporting fuel and radiation shielding to orbit for a tiny fraction of the cost to get it from Earth.
Meanwhile, there's no particular need for serious radiation shielding in short-range ships, nor for propulsion in long range ships on regular transportation routes such as between Earth and Mars. Thanks to the "Interplanetary Transport Network" (essentially gravitational slingshot navigation) once you're in space you can get pretty much anywhere in the solar system while spending almost no energy - just a little bit of navigation thrust to fine-tune your path. Find a small, resource-rich asteroid, and start mining it while nudging it into a Mars Cycler orbit. Turn the mining tunnels into habitats behind you, and use short-range ships to get from it to either planet when you're passing by. Even something relatively tiny, like 1km across could contain a truly huge amount of space - 300 times the size of Disneyland with generous 5m ceilings, and without gravity there's no difference between walls, floors, and ceilings, so the useful space would actually be quite a bit larger than that.
Unfortunately you need the vision to care about the our species separate from yourself for that to matter. All the space colonies in the world won't do a damned thing for Earth, except offer inspiration and a route for a tiny percentage of the the best and brightest to jump ship.
Though I suppose if you consider yourself to be among the best and brightest, and think you can avoid being decrepit and useless by the time such colonies are established, then maybe you might imagine you'd benefit.
Heck, I'm hopeful that there'll be a demand for smart, hardworking old folks in the early years - it seems reasonable to assume most manual work will be done by telepresence robots anyway (what can't be automated completely), while the operators are safe inside, but close enough to eliminate light speed lag. So it shouldn't much matter how strong you are. And there's value in people with wisdom and experience under their belt - especially if they've already accepted their remaining life will be short, and don't mind shortening it further by being on the front lines of space colonization. Heck, a dismaying number of people die shortly after retiring - the sense of purpose in helping to build a dream might actually extend your life beyond what it would be in a safe and pointless retirement on Earth.
Hmm, my post seems to have self-destructed. To summarize:
Less sunlight, but days the almost same length as Earths. Solar panels are already lighter and cheaper than the batteries to support an off-grid system on Earth. 2.3x as many panels, to compensate for the dimmer sunlight on Mars, is going to be radically lighter and cheaper than the 29.5x as many batteries needed for the longer nights on the Moon.
Dust storms would pose a problem though, since the most extreme ones can block out 99% of the sun at their worst. Some sort of back up power would be needed for those, but for most of them just doubling or quadrupling the amount of solar panels would compensate, and provide a huge surplus of power under normal circumstances. An the plus side, the low density of the air means that even the most ferocious Martian winds have less force behind them than a light breeze here, so visibility is really the only problem.
The atmosphere is plenty thick enough to be useful though - we've already developed prototype drones capable of flying on Mars, and a nigh-unlimited source of nearly-pure CO2 is an incredible resource source for producing air, food, and construction materials using little more than a greenhouse. I'm a big fan of low-tech solutions in space colonies - far less to go wrong.
Where's the profit? That's always the downfall of privatization. Lots of demand for launch services, so it's not surprising we have several private enterprises developing launch capability. But a lunar outpost? That's going to cost billions, and there'll probably be no return on investment whatsoever for decades - not until there's enough space activity to fuel demand for lots of raw materials in orbit, and enough industrial capability is established on the moon to provide it.
Plus there's not really much guarantee that there will be any first-mover advantage - the first attempts are going to be extremely dangerous and expensive, and nothing stops the next guy from poaching some of your experts and leapfrogging your capability once the path forward becomes clear.
You've got to wonder what the motive is. I mean sure, the SLS is a boondoggle in progress with existing contracts (aka pork flow) that would have to be cut off. And in fairness, it's not actually obsolete until the BFR proves itself - SpaceX has done incredible things, but that's no guarantee of future successes.
But a "lunar gateway"? A lunar outpost would create at least as much pork, and actually involve doing something useful while they were at it. We've already got a space station, building another one around the moon doesn't seem to serve any purpose whatsoever.
Since when? What fantasy world do you live in, and how can I get there?
A fine is generally a one-time payment. Continue breaking the law, go to court again, pay another fine. That's what MS did for decades - except that they usually managed to avoid even being fined since the US government is such a corporate pushover - it took the EU actually making the punishments hurt (including some ongoing fines as I recall) to get them to behave even as decently as they do now.
They don't though - they're no more a US company that any other international corporation. They have offices and data centers all over the world, and the always popular Irish tax-dodging offices to hide their profits.
If they don't want to comply with EU law, they're quite welcome to simply not do business in the EU - geoblocking is quite simple, and the EU can block them as well. But that would means giving up all the profit from selling ads targeting Europeans.
>in situ resource utilization gets you water and CH4 propellant
Also food and oxygen, which are rather important. And 90+% of the raw materials to grow biomass, which is going to be one of the most important things for creating a viable colony. And not just for creating a sustainable ecosystem, but also for construction materials - cellulose is really a rather incredible material. Two of the more exotic (and not super difficult to make) forms are nanocellulose, which is easily worked, translucent, gas impermeable, and has a tensile strength comparable to aluminum, and "superwood" which is stronger than steel. Nanocellulose can be produced with just heat and mechanical processing - with no unpleasant chemicals introduced into your composting stream. Superwood requires an acid bath, which is potentially more challenging, but then it just needs heat and compression. I imagine something fast growing like bamboo would be extremely useful feed stock for such processes.
I have to agree - I really don't even seen the point of a lunar gateway at all, at least not before there's a thriving lunar outpost getting lots of traffic. Exactly what value does a lunar space station offer? If there's a lunar outpost producing fuel or whatever, then yeah, an orbital station starts to be useful, you don't want to have to land to refuel for an interplanetary flight. But before then?
It's not going to help with building a lunar outpost - there's precious little to be gained by stopping in orbit on your way to/from the surface. At most you might want a refueling depot for the trip home, or just a BFR tanker ship. But even that's probably overkill - getting to the moon is the hard part, the return trip is almost all down hill.
A space station isn't that great for surveying - satellites are far superior and far cheaper. And there's no point in keeping supplies in orbit when they're only useful on the ground. And microgravity research doesn't care what it's orbiting, and the ISS has that covered. So what's a lunar gateway for?
>So they can continue this practice indefinitely and just pay the tax if they want. That's pretty much standard for corporations, regardless. Fines are pretty much the only punishments applicable to corporations, short of dissolving their charter or banning them from doing business.
So, corporation breaks law, corporation gets fined, corporation pays fine and continues breaking the law because paying the fine is more profitable than obeying the law - that's how it's been done the world over for decades - Microsoft was notorious for that. The EU seems to have taken the lead however in establishing future fines as well, so that the company doesn't have to be re-sued for continuing to break the law, they just automatically get continuing fines so long as they're not in compliance, which increases their cost and decreases costs on the legal system.
I would like to see it go a step further myself. Say a 10% increase for every month they continue to break the law. Make sure their bean counters can see the oncoming storm of exponential growth looming in the future, so that they have serious incentive to set things right, rather than just regarding it as an overhead cost of doing business.
Doesn't matter what they're shipping if they can't get it anywhere close to orbit - and Blue Origin can only get about 10% of the way there. Getting out of the atmosphere is easy - we've got space enthusiast groups launching balloons that can make it almost all the way out (see Airship to Orbit). The hard part is getting up to orbital velocity, which requires about 10x as much energy as required to reach to the right altitude.
While Blue Origin is doing some interesting and impressive things in rocketry that are fun to see done, and may eventually prove useful for space launches, for now they're engaging strictly in scale model R&D. Nothing they've done so far is even remotely capable of reaching space, unless you define "reaching space" as nothing more than crossing a completely arbitrary line somewhere above where the atmosphere has become too thin to be useful. Which might turn out to work well enough for casual "experience tourism" purposes, but is mostly irrelevant to space travel and research. They can get above more of the atmosphere than air-breathing aircraft, and can offer about 6x the free-fall duration of Vomit Comet parabolic aircraft flights, but that's about it. (And with 15 parabolic segments in a typical flight plan, the Vomit Comet still provides roughly twice the total freefall time per flight)
Now, they could design a second stage to replace the current passenger capsule that might indeed be able to reach orbit. Unfortunately the completely fueled second stage probably couldn't weigh much more than the mostly-empty passenger capsule while using the New Shepard booster, and that severely limits the maximum payload that could be delivered, but there is a market for micro-satellite launches.
So for now, while they're doing some interesting research that might eventually pay off, the only real contribution they're making to space travel is PR and a weak reminder to SpaceX that if they drop the ball to hard and long, they may eventually face real competition. And, I suppose, helping show governments around the world that reusable rockets can be done
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Yeah, but you're the only halfway civilized country in the Americas, so it's not surprising you'd feel that way. You do provide a nice counterpoint to the Russians though, I'm sure the rest of the Arcticans appreciate it.
>isn't chemistry all maths? can't you just calculate the same reactions and have a 100% success rate?
Because chemistry is applied quantum mechanics, and the math is HARD. I think they finally managed to simulate the chemical properties of a hydrogen molecule, but last I heard that was the most complicated molecule we've been able to simulate accurately - and it's literally the simplest molecule that exists, by a wide margin.
Who says there was an increase in substance *abuse*? There was certainly a surge in substance *use*, primarily because it was closely tied to the cultural revolution. The abuse didn't seem to really set in until the 70s, when the combination of disillusioned revolutionaries and the consolidation of the black market started making for some real unpleasantness.
And what is your proposal for reducing demand? Criminalization does little to reduce it, which we knew quite well from the last time we tried prohibition. And it makes it a *lot* more difficult for people who've developed an addiction they're having trouble breaking to get help.
They said that job performance was maintained in four days - so presumably the employees were still getting a full weeks worth of work done in only four days. Which really isn't that surprising - several studies have shown that total weekly productivity drops dramatically for people working more than 40 hours per week, it's hardly a stretch to think that maybe 40 hours is longer than the "optimal total productivity point" as well. Sounds like they found that, at least for this company, 32 hours yielded roughly the same total productivity, along with a substantial increase in employee satisfaction.
They also said performance improved, though they kind of skimmed over that. Several other studies have shown the same thing, especially for working more than 40 hours per week. It seems that working more than somewhere around 40 hours per week starts to consistently have a rather dramatic negative effect on your total weekly productivity, but there have been far fewer studies trying to locate the point of maximum total productivity.
Why the sarcasm? I find it legitimately astonishing that people in the US think we have a real public transportation system. :-D
In the US, no contest. And I think somewhat in Europe, etc. But I understand it's a point of consternation for many other North- and South- Americans. And reasonably so.
I prefer US myself, but it comes down to context - If you're talking about sovereign states, there's only one country with "America" in it's name - search for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On the other hand, the term "American" should probably be in the same class as European, African, or Asian - a continental identifier, rather than a country. Except, its not specific enough - There's two very different continents that include American in the name - are you North American, or South American? Or Central American I suppose - which isn't a proper continent on it's own, but has it's own thing going on (And I mean, Europe and Asia aren't exactly separate continents by any reasonable geographic distinction either)
So, not ideal, but pretty unambiguous all the same. Plus, USian doesn't really roll off the tongue very well.
You missed the part where they said employee performance also improved - which is what the company paying them undoubtedly cares about. If you can pay your employees the same amount, they do more/better work, morale improves, AND they get an extra day off every week to focus on their own life, then everybody wins.
Maybe you could maintain/improve performance further with a three-day week, but I suspect the combination of the larger increase in per-hour productivity required, in combination with the smaller incremental reduction in stress, would make that difficult. Though it might well be worth investigating, in smaller increments to try to find the optimal "sweet spot". Perhaps 3 10-hour days, or 4 7-hour days or something would yield even greater productivity.
I think the problem is far more insidious than just an entrenched system - a system of unevenly applied laws, especially when the laws are so overreaching as to criminalize everyone, is a system in which those with power can arbitrarily punish anyone for any reason, using whatever crimes they've committed as the excuse.
Hmm, so what happened in the 60s that caused all that crime - prohibition maybe? Lets criminalize the possession of many widely used recreational substances, and suddenly we have a huge crime problem, create massive black markets and the violence associated with them. The gang warfare. The militarization of police in order to be able to compete.
All of that was completely predictable - it all happened when we tried alcohol prohibition, and continued getting worse until that was repealed. You have to ask yourself - what was the real motive in trying it again?
>The only way the system works is if the balance between cost of prosecution and magnitude of the crime worth prosecuting remains stable
An alternative would be to enforce the law at all times and for all people, with no exceptions of any kind - the public backlash from that would be sufficient (in a legitimate democracy) to severely prune the law to the point that obeying all the laws at all times is actually an relatively easy thing to do.
Correction - they want the ability to illegally invade our privacy *back* - they've been invading it at will for many decades, and for the last couple decades have been doing it at a scale and invasiveness to dwarf anything ever before seen in all but the most dystopian fantasies. The rise of encryption has been a direct response to that unbridled power grab, and now they're trying to cast off those unwelcome limits on their unsupervised power. I mean hell, when they flat out lie to Congress about their activities, repeatedly, you've got to realize that they are no longer in any way a legitimate government agency.
That's even worse - why would you willingly trap yourself in the Moon's gravitational well if you're planning to leave on an interplanetary voyage? The moon makes a great gravitational slingshot, but you have to slow down considerably to enter orbit, and once you're in orbit you can't use it as a slingshot anymore.
The only reason to stop at a space station would be to refuel, and you can do that just as easily in a high Earth orbit.
That's one of the biggest draws to a Mars or Moon colony - all the radiation shielding you could want is just lying around on the surface, you just have to scoop it up and pour it over your habitat. Or dig down into it. Or maybe get lucky and find some old lava tubes that you just have to make airtight.
The Moon is small and close enough that a colony, once it's reached sustainability, could start exporting fuel and radiation shielding to orbit for a tiny fraction of the cost to get it from Earth.
Meanwhile, there's no particular need for serious radiation shielding in short-range ships, nor for propulsion in long range ships on regular transportation routes such as between Earth and Mars. Thanks to the "Interplanetary Transport Network" (essentially gravitational slingshot navigation) once you're in space you can get pretty much anywhere in the solar system while spending almost no energy - just a little bit of navigation thrust to fine-tune your path. Find a small, resource-rich asteroid, and start mining it while nudging it into a Mars Cycler orbit. Turn the mining tunnels into habitats behind you, and use short-range ships to get from it to either planet when you're passing by. Even something relatively tiny, like 1km across could contain a truly huge amount of space - 300 times the size of Disneyland with generous 5m ceilings, and without gravity there's no difference between walls, floors, and ceilings, so the useful space would actually be quite a bit larger than that.
Unfortunately you need the vision to care about the our species separate from yourself for that to matter. All the space colonies in the world won't do a damned thing for Earth, except offer inspiration and a route for a tiny percentage of the the best and brightest to jump ship.
Though I suppose if you consider yourself to be among the best and brightest, and think you can avoid being decrepit and useless by the time such colonies are established, then maybe you might imagine you'd benefit.
Heck, I'm hopeful that there'll be a demand for smart, hardworking old folks in the early years - it seems reasonable to assume most manual work will be done by telepresence robots anyway (what can't be automated completely), while the operators are safe inside, but close enough to eliminate light speed lag. So it shouldn't much matter how strong you are. And there's value in people with wisdom and experience under their belt - especially if they've already accepted their remaining life will be short, and don't mind shortening it further by being on the front lines of space colonization. Heck, a dismaying number of people die shortly after retiring - the sense of purpose in helping to build a dream might actually extend your life beyond what it would be in a safe and pointless retirement on Earth.
Hmm, my post seems to have self-destructed. To summarize:
Less sunlight, but days the almost same length as Earths. Solar panels are already lighter and cheaper than the batteries to support an off-grid system on Earth. 2.3x as many panels, to compensate for the dimmer sunlight on Mars, is going to be radically lighter and cheaper than the 29.5x as many batteries needed for the longer nights on the Moon.
Dust storms would pose a problem though, since the most extreme ones can block out 99% of the sun at their worst. Some sort of back up power would be needed for those, but for most of them just doubling or quadrupling the amount of solar panels would compensate, and provide a huge surplus of power under normal circumstances. An the plus side, the low density of the air means that even the most ferocious Martian winds have less force behind them than a light breeze here, so visibility is really the only problem.
The atmosphere is plenty thick enough to be useful though - we've already developed prototype drones capable of flying on Mars, and a nigh-unlimited source of nearly-pure CO2 is an incredible resource source for producing air, food, and construction materials using little more than a greenhouse. I'm a big fan of low-tech solutions in space colonies - far less to go wrong.
Where's the profit? That's always the downfall of privatization. Lots of demand for launch services, so it's not surprising we have several private enterprises developing launch capability. But a lunar outpost? That's going to cost billions, and there'll probably be no return on investment whatsoever for decades - not until there's enough space activity to fuel demand for lots of raw materials in orbit, and enough industrial capability is established on the moon to provide it.
Plus there's not really much guarantee that there will be any first-mover advantage - the first attempts are going to be extremely dangerous and expensive, and nothing stops the next guy from poaching some of your experts and leapfrogging your capability once the path forward becomes clear.
You've got to wonder what the motive is. I mean sure, the SLS is a boondoggle in progress with existing contracts (aka pork flow) that would have to be cut off. And in fairness, it's not actually obsolete until the BFR proves itself - SpaceX has done incredible things, but that's no guarantee of future successes.
But a "lunar gateway"? A lunar outpost would create at least as much pork, and actually involve doing something useful while they were at it. We've already got a space station, building another one around the moon doesn't seem to serve any purpose whatsoever.
Since when? What fantasy world do you live in, and how can I get there?
A fine is generally a one-time payment. Continue breaking the law, go to court again, pay another fine. That's what MS did for decades - except that they usually managed to avoid even being fined since the US government is such a corporate pushover - it took the EU actually making the punishments hurt (including some ongoing fines as I recall) to get them to behave even as decently as they do now.
They don't though - they're no more a US company that any other international corporation. They have offices and data centers all over the world, and the always popular Irish tax-dodging offices to hide their profits.
If they don't want to comply with EU law, they're quite welcome to simply not do business in the EU - geoblocking is quite simple, and the EU can block them as well. But that would means giving up all the profit from selling ads targeting Europeans.
>in situ resource utilization gets you water and CH4 propellant
Also food and oxygen, which are rather important. And 90+% of the raw materials to grow biomass, which is going to be one of the most important things for creating a viable colony. And not just for creating a sustainable ecosystem, but also for construction materials - cellulose is really a rather incredible material. Two of the more exotic (and not super difficult to make) forms are nanocellulose, which is easily worked, translucent, gas impermeable, and has a tensile strength comparable to aluminum, and "superwood" which is stronger than steel. Nanocellulose can be produced with just heat and mechanical processing - with no unpleasant chemicals introduced into your composting stream. Superwood requires an acid bath, which is potentially more challenging, but then it just needs heat and compression. I imagine something fast growing like bamboo would be extremely useful feed stock for such processes.
I have to agree - I really don't even seen the point of a lunar gateway at all, at least not before there's a thriving lunar outpost getting lots of traffic. Exactly what value does a lunar space station offer? If there's a lunar outpost producing fuel or whatever, then yeah, an orbital station starts to be useful, you don't want to have to land to refuel for an interplanetary flight. But before then?
It's not going to help with building a lunar outpost - there's precious little to be gained by stopping in orbit on your way to/from the surface. At most you might want a refueling depot for the trip home, or just a BFR tanker ship. But even that's probably overkill - getting to the moon is the hard part, the return trip is almost all down hill.
A space station isn't that great for surveying - satellites are far superior and far cheaper. And there's no point in keeping supplies in orbit when they're only useful on the ground. And microgravity research doesn't care what it's orbiting, and the ISS has that covered. So what's a lunar gateway for?
>So they can continue this practice indefinitely and just pay the tax if they want.
That's pretty much standard for corporations, regardless. Fines are pretty much the only punishments applicable to corporations, short of dissolving their charter or banning them from doing business.
So, corporation breaks law, corporation gets fined, corporation pays fine and continues breaking the law because paying the fine is more profitable than obeying the law - that's how it's been done the world over for decades - Microsoft was notorious for that. The EU seems to have taken the lead however in establishing future fines as well, so that the company doesn't have to be re-sued for continuing to break the law, they just automatically get continuing fines so long as they're not in compliance, which increases their cost and decreases costs on the legal system.
I would like to see it go a step further myself. Say a 10% increase for every month they continue to break the law. Make sure their bean counters can see the oncoming storm of exponential growth looming in the future, so that they have serious incentive to set things right, rather than just regarding it as an overhead cost of doing business.
Doesn't matter what they're shipping if they can't get it anywhere close to orbit - and Blue Origin can only get about 10% of the way there. Getting out of the atmosphere is easy - we've got space enthusiast groups launching balloons that can make it almost all the way out (see Airship to Orbit). The hard part is getting up to orbital velocity, which requires about 10x as much energy as required to reach to the right altitude.
While Blue Origin is doing some interesting and impressive things in rocketry that are fun to see done, and may eventually prove useful for space launches, for now they're engaging strictly in scale model R&D. Nothing they've done so far is even remotely capable of reaching space, unless you define "reaching space" as nothing more than crossing a completely arbitrary line somewhere above where the atmosphere has become too thin to be useful. Which might turn out to work well enough for casual "experience tourism" purposes, but is mostly irrelevant to space travel and research. They can get above more of the atmosphere than air-breathing aircraft, and can offer about 6x the free-fall duration of Vomit Comet parabolic aircraft flights, but that's about it. (And with 15 parabolic segments in a typical flight plan, the Vomit Comet still provides roughly twice the total freefall time per flight)
Now, they could design a second stage to replace the current passenger capsule that might indeed be able to reach orbit. Unfortunately the completely fueled second stage probably couldn't weigh much more than the mostly-empty passenger capsule while using the New Shepard booster, and that severely limits the maximum payload that could be delivered, but there is a market for micro-satellite launches.
So for now, while they're doing some interesting research that might eventually pay off, the only real contribution they're making to space travel is PR and a weak reminder to SpaceX that if they drop the ball to hard and long, they may eventually face real competition. And, I suppose, helping show governments around the world that reusable rockets can be done