Blue Origin thread.

[Okhin]

Maybe Bezos can print 1 000 000 000 $ bills ? It would make it easy to wield two cash gun than this hge backpack.

On a side note, do Blue origin gets any money from government contract ? That would be outrageous, especially given the size of Bezos pile of cash (I mean, the income that guy has does not makes any sort of sense whatsoever) and the little his companies usually pays taxes (but I say that has an european, maybe Bezos do pays taxes in the US, even if I doubt it)

Edited September 17, 2020 by Okhin
typos

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, Okhin said:

especially given the size of Bezos pile of cash 

Bezos doesn’t have piles of cash sitting around. Most of his wealth is in the form of Amazon stock. He once said he would sell $1B a year of stock to fund BO. 

it would be fascinating to know how much liquid cash Bezos has available. Musk once said when he needs a sizeable chunk of cash he borrows against his stocks in Tesla and SpaceX

[tater]

1 hour ago, Okhin said:

Maybe Bezos can print 1 000 000 000 $ bills ? It would make it easy to wield two cash gun than this hge backpack.

On a side note, do Blue origin gets any money from government contract ? That would be outrageous, especially given the size of Bezos pile of cash (I mean, the income that guy has does not makes any sort of sense whatsoever) and the little his companies usually pays taxes (but I say that has an european, maybe Bezos do pays taxes in the US, even if I doubt it)

They are getting money for the Human Landing System contract. A few hundred million for dev (as are other companies, the lowest $ award is to SpaceX for HLS).

Companies don't pay taxes anyway, their customer's do, ultimately (taxes are a cost of business, and get reflected in customer pricing).

 

[Okhin]

Well, that's nice of him, but did he actually did it (the 1B$ thing)? Also, does 1B$ really have any impact on him, given the amount of money he makes everyday ? I mean, it's not even a week of his income (which is estimated around 2B$ a week), so he probably won't miss it. So he could probably invest a bit more, instead of grabbing state money, to which he's reluctant to contribute.

[wumpus]

2 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Well, that's nice of him, but did he actually did it (the 1B$ thing)? Also, does 1B$ really have any impact on him, given the amount of money he makes everyday ? I mean, it's not even a week of his income (which is estimated around 2B$ a week), so he probably won't miss it. So he could probably invest a bit more, instead of grabbing state money, to which he's reluctant to contribute.

Since Blue Origin appears only to be getting relatively small contracts from NASA and slightly larger subcontracting jobs from others (which means the prime helps themselves to 25%+ of whatever Blue Origin would get), I'm guessing they need around that much money.

 It is mainly what keeps Blue Origin in discussions on a level with ULA, Spacex, and Roscosmos, even if they've so far only done unmanned suborbital launches.   This cartoon is wrong: planes don't fly thanks to aerodynamics.  Planes fly on money (something that was in a coworker's pilot and/or A&R mechanic training).  Rockets fly thanks to much more money.  There's also no indication that lack of money is a problem at Blue Origin, or that adding even more money would help.  It may be their slow progress is intentional, either to learn from the mistakes of others, or merely guessing that others are moving to fast and will hit big problems.

Spacex (and Tesla) seem to consume Elon Musk's entire life.  Blue Origin appears to be a hobby that Bezos pays CEO Bob Smith to run.  Bezos is probably limited by how much attention he can give to Blue Origin, especially with Microsoft trying to eat Amazon's AWS lunch.  Lack of money seemed to be what killed Armadillo Aerospace: as rich as John Carmac may seem, he couldn't afford to run a space company as a hobby.

[Okhin]

Well, for the difference between Bezos and Musk and the place things takes in their lives, I would be very cautious about all the story telling both of them are doing. Also, I'm not sure they see space as a hobby. Bezos seems kind of focused on sending heavy industries in space to turn the Earth in a private garden for rich people, while it seems Musk seems to be motivated by the planet B strategy. Both ways of seeing things seems quite important in their world view (even if they have to deal with pesky small town competitor such as MS).

[tater]

23 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Well, that's nice of him, but did he actually did it (the 1B$ thing)? Also, does 1B$ really have any impact on him, given the amount of money he makes everyday ? I mean, it's not even a week of his income (which is estimated around 2B$ a week), so he probably won't miss it. So he could probably invest a bit more, instead of grabbing state money, to which he's reluctant to contribute.

That is not his income. You are conflating net worth with income.

His ownership stake in Amazon is worth 100 B$, say. He'd have to sell that to realize that gain—for which he'd pay tax, and afterwards, he'd have zero stake in Amazon. In short, you don;t seem to have a good grasp on income or taxes.

The company (Amazon) of course should always seek to minimize costs, including taxes, to maximize profit, it's literally their job.

[tater]

25 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Well, for the difference between Bezos and Musk and the place things takes in their lives, I would be very cautious about all the story telling both of them are doing. Also, I'm not sure they see space as a hobby. Bezos seems kind of focused on sending heavy industries in space to turn the Earth in a private garden for rich people,

Wow, you seem to either not actually listen to what Bezos has actually said, or not understand it. Else you parrot something someone else has told you.

Bezos wants to send industry to space to turn Earth into a garden—for everyone.

If there are no dirty industrial zones on Earth, no one has to live in... dirty industrial zones.

If there are no terribly polluting industries on Earth, no one has to drink polluted water, or breath polluted air.

If you are concerned about the impact humans might have on the climate, if there are no heavily polluting industries on Earth, that problem also goes away—for everyone.

That all makes everyone "richer," I'm not seeing how these benefits would somehow be limited to "the rich." (arguably all of us in the first world are already "rich" by any global standard)

 

25 minutes ago, Okhin said:

while it seems Musk seems to be motivated by the planet B strategy. Both ways of seeing things seems quite important in their world view (even if they have to deal with pesky small town competitor such as MS).

Musk sometimes pitches the "backup for humanity" thing, but if you actually listen, he says what I think really motivates him—the fact that it's a more interesting future to live in where humans are space faring.

[sevenperforce]

26 minutes ago, tater said:

That is not his income. You are conflating net worth with income.

His ownership stake in Amazon is worth 100 B$, say. He'd have to sell that to realize that gain—for which he'd pay tax, and afterwards, he'd have zero stake in Amazon. In short, you don;t seem to have a good grasp on income or taxes.

The company (Amazon) of course should always seek to minimize costs, including taxes, to maximize profit, it's literally their job.

His net worth via stake in Amazon is currently $185B but yes, haha.

People say "Bezos made $2B this week" because that sounds like an amazing sum of money but they are ignoring how stock prices work. Based on stock price fluctuation, Bezos lost $2,480,000,000.00 in the last hour and a half, which comes to an "income" of negative $1.1 trillion per month.  

[tater]

12 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

His net worth via stake in Amazon is currently $185B but yes, haha.

People say "Bezos made $2B this week" because that sounds like an amazing sum of money but they are ignoring how stock prices work. Based on stock price fluctuation, Bezos lost $2,480,000,000.00 in the last hour and a half, which comes to an "income" of negative $1.1 trillion per month.  

Yeah, I was thinking of his post-divorce numbers, but that was from a while ago, before the State governments put many of his local competitors out of business "for safety."

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Okhin said:

Maybe Bezos can print 1 000 000 000 $ bills ? It would make it easy to wield two cash gun than this hge backpack.

On a side note, do Blue origin gets any money from government contract ? That would be outrageous, especially given the size of Bezos pile of cash (I mean, the income that guy has does not makes any sort of sense whatsoever) and the little his companies usually pays taxes (but I say that has an european, maybe Bezos do pays taxes in the US, even if I doubt it)

Blue origin get money from the Artemis contract if meeting requirements. Not sure if they have other contracts with government but probably some stuff. 
Being very rich don't block you from competitive governmental contracts. Being very small or broke might. 

Read a fun story, two guys making custom guns mostly for competition shooting entered an military contract for an new sniper rifle mostly for free publicity. 
Problem they won and some from the government would look their facility. So they rented an machine shop they used a lot for their projects for a few hours and put gun parts around. 
The officials looked inside the door and, walked away, panic, don't you want to inspect the shop? No we just want to make sure you was not two guys in an shed, who they was  

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Musk sometimes pitches the "backup for humanity" thing, but if you actually listen, he says what I think really motivates him—the fact that it's a more interesting future to live in where humans are space faring.

Yeah, pretty much anybody who's serious about this stuff is just spinning their wheels when talking about the "economic potential" or "benefit to humanity" on Earth, and just have to say those things to get money from boring folks. The real reason is because space is cool and we want to jump around on other planets and turn over pretty rocks.

[tater]

2 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Yeah, pretty much anybody who's serious about this stuff is just spinning their wheels when talking about the "economic potential" or "benefit to humanity" on Earth, and just have to say those things to get money from boring folks. The real reason is because space is cool and we want to jump around on other planets and turn over pretty rocks.

It's a legit reason, IMO. Musk said a few times in Q&As, (paraphrase) "What makes you want to get up in the morning? I want to live in a time where we are a multiplanetary civilization!"

The other arguments... yeah, I can't make the math work (nor can anyone), but I like the idea.

[Okhin]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Wow, you seem to either not actually listen to what Bezos has actually said, or not understand it. Else you parrot something someone else has told you.

Bezos wants to send industry to space to turn Earth into a garden—for everyone.

If there are no dirty industrial zones on Earth, no one has to live in... dirty industrial zones.

If there are no terribly polluting industries on Earth, no one has to drink polluted water, or breath polluted air.

If you are concerned about the impact humans might have on the climate, if there are no heavily polluting industries on Earth, that problem also goes away—for everyone.

That all makes everyone "richer," I'm not seeing how these benefits would somehow be limited to "the rich." (arguably all of us in the first world are already "rich" by any global standard)

Well, the thing that worries me is that those high industries needs people to be manned and to function. Which are usually dangerous jobs, currently manned by underpaid people (most of factories workers are well less paid than your average office worker). And I do not think you can daily commute to space at a low cost, you said it, companies are meant to reduce cost. So it probably is cheaper to maintain some people in space to operate the heavy industries up there.

Which means you need to have people who agrees to go live into space (a dangerous environment) to do a menial and at times dangerous job. Or to stay on earth do whatever you do that does not involve taking hard risks with your health (current pandemics sets aside). So, how do you get people to go there and work for you? You create a social group of workers, usually uneducated people, usually poor people. And you work on your union busting skills (which Amazon is very good at, by the way).

This is how you create Belters (Elon Musk wants to create the Mars Republic, let's get a live enactment of the Expanse).

So yes, he never actually said "I want to turn earth in a private paradise", but given his strategy with Amazon (privatize everything, and maintain its low grade worker either as "sub contractors" or as barely paid drones), this is what it might come too

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Well, the thing that worries me is that those high industries needs people to be manned and to function. Which are usually dangerous jobs, currently manned by underpaid people (most of factories workers are well less paid than your average office worker). And I do not think you can daily commute to space at a low cost, you said it, companies are meant to reduce cost. So it probably is cheaper to maintain some people in space to operate the heavy industries up there.

I honestly don't think people are required all that much, even though "millions of people living and working in space" is the official goal of Blue Origin. Such a worker population would require housing, and that means orbital habitats (spinning?) or lunar bases. Still, that's the goal, and travel to space at a cheap cost is required.

Quote

Which means you need to have people who agrees to go live into space (a dangerous environment) to do a menial and at times dangerous job. Or to stay on earth do whatever you do that does not involve taking hard risks with your health (current pandemics sets aside). So, how do you get people to go there and work for you? You create a social group of workers, usually uneducated people, usually poor people. And you work on your union busting skills (which Amazon is very good at, by the way).

Meh, the jobs will demand skills, and would likely pay pretty well to the extent any are needed. Amazon will solve the labor issue by eventually replacing humans with robots, then the workers can organize themselves into artisanal goat cheese manufacturing collectives (or whatever) and go into business.

Quote

This is how you create Belters (Elon Musk wants to create the Mars Republic, let's get a live enactment of the Expanse).

LOL. Not gonna happen.

Quote

So yes, he never actually said "I want to turn earth in a private paradise", but given his strategy with Amazon (privatize everything, and maintain its low grade worker either as "sub contractors" or as barely paid drones), this is what it might come too

The only reason we have any of this interesting stuff (this online conversation, or the game that spawned this forum, etc, ad nauseum) is that things are "privatized." When I first got on the net it was the early 80s, and the only people on were military, some gov people, and science/engineering people at universities. No doubt it would still be that way now, short of turning it into a product.

 

Edited September 17, 2020 by tater

[mikegarrison]

Bezos reminds me a lot of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie seems to have genuinely been a philanthropist. He established libraries and universities and gave away most of his huge fortune. But at the same time he was ruthless to his employees, always demanding maximum efficiency and squeezing labor costs as hard as he could. He delegated the problem of the Homestead Strike to his partner Frick, then went on vacation. People were killed when Frick handled the strike by hiring a private security force to break it up.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Bezos is funding Blue Origin just because it's where he has decided to put his money to use. Carnegie built libraries and universities. Gates went hard into medicine and public health. Bezos decided to fund space infrastructure.

[tater]

29 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Bezos is funding Blue Origin just because it's where he has decided to put his money to use. Carnegie built libraries and universities. Gates went hard into medicine and public health. Bezos decided to fund space infrastructure.

He's said as much. Something to the effect that Blue Origin is his most important work. The whole, "Earth is the best planet, protect it by moving messy stuff elsewhere" line.

[mikegarrison]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

He's said as much. Something to the effect that Blue Origin is his most important work. The whole, "Earth is the best planet, protect it by moving messy stuff elsewhere" line.

Right. I was just putting this in context with other people who similarly made huge fortunes and then decided to spend them on what they saw as a benefit to humanity.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Right. I was just putting this in context with other people who similarly made huge fortunes and then decided to spend them on what they saw as a benefit to humanity.

Was just agreeing, lol. The context is useful. People do what interests them, support the causes that interest them, ot they feel needs a champion, etc. Interesting times with a couple with similar goals...

[wumpus]

On 9/17/2020 at 12:31 PM, tater said:

Wow, you seem to either not actually listen to what Bezos has actually said, or not understand it. Else you parrot something someone else has told you.

Bezos wants to send industry to space to turn Earth into a garden—for everyone.

If there are no dirty industrial zones on Earth, no one has to live in... dirty industrial zones.

If there are no terribly polluting industries on Earth, no one has to drink polluted water, or breath polluted air.

If you are concerned about the impact humans might have on the climate, if there are no heavily polluting industries on Earth, that problem also goes away—for everyone.

That all makes everyone "richer," I'm not seeing how these benefits would somehow be limited to "the rich." (arguably all of us in the first world are already "rich" by any global standard)

 

Musk sometimes pitches the "backup for humanity" thing, but if you actually listen, he says what I think really motivates him—the fact that it's a more interesting future to live in where humans are space faring.

I remember (20th century) reading about "is the surface of an inhabited planet the right place for an expanding industrial economy".  While I have as much trouble as anyone else coming up with justifications of space economy as anyone else familiar with the rocket equation, some of the bits about the modern economy is that you can always push the dirty parts "somewhere else".  Right now, China is that "somewhere else", but China* has historically been either the dominant civilization on Earth or close enough (and the rival civilizations only seem to last a few centuries, China has been around 40 (ignoring the odd barbarian conquest)), so don't expect to be getting rare earth elements from there much longer.  I think Brazil is enough source, but the inclusion of the "BRIC" nations imply that sooner or later they will reject this type of thing.

I can only see the worst of heavy industries getting moved off planet, especially mining, ore extraction/smelting, and possibly energy production (although Earthbound solar and wind are making huge strides, and there is always the chance that fission may rise again).  Moving the goods to other space-based areas makes tons of sense, but has the chicken&egg issue of why you would want the goods in space in the first place. Electricity could be beamed to Earth, metal pigs could simply be dumped into the desert, possibly with parachutes (more like drogue 'chutes, hit hard, but don't leave a crater.  You only have to leave a steel/Al/Ni pig intact).  I'd assume that the rare earths and "need to be made in 0g" materials could either come down in regular transport craft or possibly tiny capsules (I'd expect that re-entry scales better smaller, but doing the math would be silly assuming that there would have to be regular flights to/from space anyway).

* Any Civilization [n] player would be impressed by the function of China's "civ-score" over time, especially compared to the "competition" (which really isn't worth the term).  Musk sometimes mentions that he's competing with China, and I suspect that some of it is that China simply is the dominant civilization on Earth and that if the US wants to compete, it will have to expand into space.

[RCgothic]

 

18 months ago. BE-4 is a year ahead of Raptor.

 

18 months later BE-4 is definitely not ahead. In fact I can't think of any metric on which it competes.

Engine cycle? Raptor's full flow staged combustion is more advanced.

Development? Raptor is further along.

Prototypes? Raptor has at least 40.

Testing? Raptor has flown actual flight articles.

ISP? Raptor is ahead.

Thrust? Raptor is already topping BE-4's 2.4MN.

Cost? Raptor is certainly a lot cheaper.

TWR? Raptor is on course for better than Merlin.

Size? Raptor fits all the above in a much smaller package.

 

It's a little bit amazing how completely you can squander a twelve month lead in 18 months. Blue needs to pick its game up. This is too Gradatim. More Ferociter is needed!

 

Edited September 20, 2020 by RCgothic

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

18 months later BE-4 is definitely not ahead. In fact I can't think of any metric on which it competes.

Engine cycle? Raptor's full flow staged combustion is more advanced.

Development? Raptor is further along.

Prototypes? Raptor has at least 40.

Testing? Raptor has flown actual flight articles.

ISP? Raptor is ahead.

Thrust? Raptor is already topping BE-4's 2.4MN.

Cost? Raptor is certainly a lot cheaper.

TWR? Raptor is on course for better than Merlin.

Size? Raptor fits all the above in a much smaller package.

 

It's a little bit amazing how completely you can squander a twelve month lead in 18 months. Blue needs to pick its game up. This is too Gradatim. More Ferociter is needed!

 

You appear to be confusing design choices with being ahead or behind in the development cycle.

Almost everything you just listed there are design choices, except "prototypes", "testing", and to some extent "cost". (I'm excluding "development" because that's circular. You can't say they are ahead in development and then give "being ahead in development" as a reason.)

Cycle, ISP, thrust, TWR, size, and to a great extent cost are all outcomes of decisions made in preliminary design, not evidence one way or another for an engine being "ahead" of another engine.

(And since both companies are private, and only one of them sells their engine, I wonder how it is that you think you know "cost" anyway?)

I'm completely willing to say Raptor is at a higher TRL than BE-4, but you should clean up your thinking on what this means and why it is so. Flight test prototypes are a higher TRL than ground test prototypes.

Edited September 21, 2020 by mikegarrison

[tater]

So May 2019, BO said they just did an 87 second test of Be-4 in what they expected was the last dev engine.

ULA had gotten 2 "pathfinder" engines for Vulcan, but not flight engines.

I understand the 2 companies have very different cultures. Also as was said above, BO is selling their engine, so it has to be frozen at some point since ULA has to design around it. Because of that, I'm sort of surprised they are no longer "ahead" in terms of delivering their flight engines. ULA certainly has to be wishing they had some engines right now (they're pretty far along with Vulcan).

The other aspect—which engine is better—is another story.

[RCgothic]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

You appear to be confusing design choices with being ahead or behind in the development cycle.

Almost everything you just listed there are design choices, except "prototypes", "testing", and to some extent "cost". (I'm excluding "development" because that's circular. You can't say they are ahead in development and then give "being ahead in development" as a reason.)

Cycle, ISP, thrust, TWR, size, and to a great extent cost are all outcomes of decisions made in preliminary design, not evidence one way or another for an engine being "ahead" of another engine.

(And since both companies are private, and only one of them sells their engine, I wonder how it is that you think you know "cost" anyway?)

I'm completely willing to say Raptor is at a higher TRL than BE-4, but you should clean up your thinking on what this means and why it is so. Flight test prototypes are a higher TRL than ground test prototypes.

I take your point, but part of this comes from one of the tweets surrounding the conversation quoted above in which BE-4 was described as "more advanced", ambiguously conflating TRL and sophistication, which is why I went into every metric like I did.

Also some of Raptor's design aspirations have legitimately moved, such thrust of up to 3.1MN.

The point stands I think, that I can't think of any metric on which BE-4 is better than Raptor.

[sh1pman]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

The point stands I think, that I can't think of any metric on which BE-4 is better than Raptor.

Commercial availability. SpaceX is not selling their Raptor to anyone else.