Blue Origin thread.

[tater]

11 minutes ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

Weren't they supposed to be $250k? Wait, wrong company.

This is for the first seat along with Blue Origin staff (maybe Bezos going?). The money is for charity.

I suppose if you have millions to spare, but not enough to know Bezos personally it might be a sensible spend, maybe Jeff is now in your contacts.

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

The high bid for a seat on New Shepard is currently $2.4M.

Unbelievable.

Aren't you the same guy trying to get a ride to the moon with someone who is spending some insane amount of money to charter a flight around the Moon?

[tater]

$2.6M now.

23 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Aren't you the same guy trying to get a ride to the moon with someone who is spending some insane amount of money to charter a flight around the Moon?

Maezawa spent what, $500M?

Course the flight would be maybe 6 days? 8640 minutes. $57,870/minute. And that is for some indeterminate number of seats. Personally I would assume they might have to use Dragon and not do a EDL in SS, so 7 would then be the max seats.

NS flight is 11 minutes. So with the current bidding it's $236,363/minute. For 1 seat.

If Maezawa took only 6 others, that's "only" $8267 per person, per minute. Regardless, the SpaceX lunar mission is certainly worth more on multiple levels, yet costs a fraction per minute what that bidding is up to. Inspiration-4 (Crew Dragon) later this year is ~$13,888/minute per person (3 days) in LEO, assuming $60M/seat.

NS looks even worse when you look at the 0g time as a fraction of the total trip (which is about the time "in space"). Honesly, if you look at that, the 2 SpaceX options (or Soyuz for that matter) looks like a far, far better deal.

For ridiculously rich people. (goes without saying)

Edited May 19, 2021 by tater

[mikegarrison]

I'm just saying that rich people have money to spend, and many of them choose to spend it.

[tater]

54 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I'm just saying that rich people have money to spend, and many of them choose to spend it.

Yeah, that just made me wonder about value for money. Obviously orbital costs more, but the return seems substantially better. At Crew Dragon cost per minute (3 day trip to LEO), NS should cost ~$150,000 to have the same value. Obviously still a large chunk of change.

On the plus side as Eric Berger pointed out, they can get the bid way up to some millions, and then when they announce the actual cost per seat later, it looks like a deal.

Now $2.8M

 

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, that just made me wonder about value for money.

Value is inherently subjective, and money is pretty nearly so -- the value of $1000 to Jeff Bezos is probably very different than to most of the people he interacts with.

[tater]

7 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Value is inherently subjective, and money is pretty nearly so -- the value of $1000 to Jeff Bezos is probably very different than to most of the people he interacts with.

Good point.

Still, I tend to think people with large amounts of money are actually thoughtful about money—that's why they have a lot. If the price ends up being a couple hundred grand, that's one level of rich customer. At some point if the price is high enough, you end up with only people at a much higher level looking, and maybe anyone who can afford $3M for 11 minutes can afford $60M for 9000 minutes and can see the difference in value.

[mikegarrison]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Good point.

Still, I tend to think people with large amounts of money are actually thoughtful about money—that's why they have a lot. If the price ends up being a couple hundred grand, that's one level of rich customer. At some point if the price is high enough, you end up with only people at a much higher level looking, and maybe anyone who can afford $3M for 11 minutes can afford $60M for 9000 minutes and can see the difference in value.

It may be shocking to people in this forum, but not everybody wants to risk his/her life to go to the moon.

[tater]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

It may be shocking to people in this forum, but not everybody wants to risk his/her life to go to the moon.

Yeah, the #dearmoon thing seems crazy to me. Maybe for 7 people brought to LEO and returned with Crew Dragon... but from TX on SS? Good luck!

I should have said $60M for ~4500 minutes instead of 9000 minutes (the moon flight)—Inspiration4 to LEO on Dragon.

Still better than 11 minutes.

 

[sh1pman]

11 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, the #dearmoon thing seems crazy to me. Maybe for 7 people brought to LEO and returned with Crew Dragon... but from TX on SS? Good luck!

I should have said $60M for ~4500 minutes instead of 9000 minutes (the moon flight)—Inspiration4 to LEO on Dragon.

Still better than 11 minutes.

 

Due to its full and rapid reusability, launching on SS should be a lot cheaper than on Crew Dragon with rendezvous/docking/transfer. I see it as a discount for higher risk and no launch escape system.

[tater]

7 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Due to its full and rapid reusability, launching on SS should be a lot cheaper than on Crew Dragon with rendezvous/docking/transfer. I see it as a discount for higher risk and no launch escape system.

Yeah.

Minus LES, etc, I will assume SS has a risk level about equal to how many fights it has flown without a fatal accident. Will take a while.

[SOXBLOX]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

It may be shocking to people in this forum, but not everybody wants to risk his/her life to go to the moon.

I believe you, cause I don't want to either.

[sevenperforce]

19 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Aren't you the same guy trying to get a ride to the moon with someone who is spending some insane amount of money to charter a flight around the Moon?

Oh, I have no qualms about people bidding $3M for a seat on New Shepard. It's their money; they can spend it how they like.

It was just a very good marketing strategy, that's all. Allows them to set the official per-seat ticket price high but still lower.

[tater]

44 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Oh, I have no qualms about people bidding $3M for a seat on New Shepard. It's their money; they can spend it how they like.

It was just a very good marketing strategy, that's all. Allows them to set the official per-seat ticket price high but still lower.

Yeah. The money is for education (their program to get kids interested in STEM), so that's a win. Then whatever they end up charging it looks like a deal. People might see a news report that some rich dude paid $3M/whatever, then when a less rich guy says he went on the flight later, people remember the huge number, but he paid 10X less. He gets to signal multiples of his wealth.

Edited May 20, 2021 by tater

[YNM]

15 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

It may be shocking to people in this forum, but not everybody wants to risk his/her life to go to the moon.

Yeah. I think the combination high-and-low G's aren't going to be great. I'll just watch safely from the ground at 1 G.

[GuessingEveryDay]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Yeah. I think the combination high-and-low G's aren't going to be great. I'll just watch safely from the ground at 1 G.

Eh? The highest force you'll experience is 3 Gs during takeoff and landing, while you'll be spending as long as you want in 0g with Starship. Meanwhile NS will have 3 Gs on takeoff, 2Gs(?) on parachute opening, and 4 minutes of 0g.

[YNM]

9 minutes ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

3 Gs during takeoff and landing

Yeah during launch it's 3 Gs, but re-entry and landing ?

OK with Shuttle at re-entry it was only 1.7 Gs max apparently. But idk, in any case honestly I'll not jump on to a seat on anything going to space anytime soon, even if it was available. We'll see what kind of forces they end up doing.

[GuessingEveryDay]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Yeah during launch it's 3 Gs, but re-entry and landing ?

OK with Shuttle at re-entry it was only 1.7 Gs max apparently. But idk, in any case honestly I'll not jump on to a seat on anything going to space anytime soon, even if it was available. We'll see what kind of forces they end up doing.

From the latest Everyday Astronaut video:

 

[YNM]

1 hour ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

From the latest Everyday Astronaut video

Well... penultimately we'll have to see how it is. I'm not jumping on any rocket just yet, I think there are others who're more useful off-planet than me for the time.

Also, not exactly the SpX/SS/Flop thread.

[Meecrob]

On 5/16/2021 at 8:46 PM, wumpus said:

According to the infallible google, maximum speed of a Cessna 152 (cruising speed is maybe 5km less) is ~200km/h or 120mph.  Or in rocket lingo: 55m/s.

It'll go way faster than that (Vne is 149 KNOTS, not miles), but its the same as a car, you drive it floored you can expect to overhaul your engine like every few months! The old saying: if it floats, flies or...it begins with the same letter (but I don't want a mod to have to tell me not swear), its going to be expensive!!

Edit: having said that, rich people know that and will pay to fly! The price clearly is what the market will bear, not what it actually costs to fly New Shepard, because they currently have a monopoly on tourist suborbital flights.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Meecrob

[SpaceFace545]

New glenn is cool  

[tater]

16 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

New glenn is cool  

I wish it was farther along. I've said for a while that I desperately want to be a BO fan... they need to move things along.

Not least because if a goal is reducing the price for access to space (Bezos talks about this a lot, as does Musk), there must be competition, as minus that, there is no reason to leave money on the table. ULA was really expensive, now launch is cheaper because of SpaceX, but only as cheap as "cheaper than ULA." With BO competing, we see where the bottom is—and the goal of both is to create new markets with lower cost.

Bezos has been pretty vocal about that with his (my paraphrase, not a real quote), "I didn't need to invent credit cards or parcel delivery to build Amazon" statements. Implicitly (and he says it out loud as well) is that smaller, innovative companies can then figure out a use for those cheaper launch services and leverage them.

[SpaceFace545]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

I wish it was farther along. I've said for a while that I desperately want to be a BO fan... they need to move things along.

Not least because if a goal is reducing the price for access to space (Bezos talks about this a lot, as does Musk), there must be competition, as minus that, there is no reason to leave money on the table. ULA was really expensive, now launch is cheaper because of SpaceX, but only as cheap as "cheaper than ULA." With BO competing, we see where the bottom is—and the goal of both is to create new markets with lower cost.

Bezos has been pretty vocal about that with his (my paraphrase, not a real quote), "I didn't need to invent credit cards or parcel delivery to build Amazon" statements. Implicitly (and he says it out loud as well) is that smaller, innovative companies can then figure out a use for those cheaper launch services and leverage them.

Same, New Glenn seems really interesting but there is almost zero public progress unless they are keeping it hush-hush what is a complete possibility.  Blue Origin's design philosophy is by taking baby steps to insure complete success and that is clear with New Shephard as it looks to be safe and reliable. The same being done with New Glenn could easily prove it to be 100% reliable as is other ULA rockets. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens to them.

[sevenperforce]

48 minutes ago, tater said:

if a goal is reducing the price for access to space (Bezos talks about this a lot, as does Musk), there must be competition, as minus that, there is no reason to leave money on the table. ULA was really expensive, now launch is cheaper because of SpaceX, but only as cheap as "cheaper than ULA." With BO competing, we see where the bottom is—and the goal of both is to create new markets with lower cost.

Exactly. I want to see multiple companies vying for payloads.

[tater]

1 hour ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Same, New Glenn seems really interesting but there is almost zero public progress unless they are keeping it hush-hush what is a complete possibility.  Blue Origin's design philosophy is by taking baby steps to insure complete success and that is clear with New Shephard as it looks to be safe and reliable. The same being done with New Glenn could easily prove it to be 100% reliable as is other ULA rockets. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens to them.

The chances of BO doing everything perfectly from day one are not great. Landing NG at sea will be non-trivial—and I think they will likely have to demonstrate attempts at sea (expending boosters) before they are allowed to send one towards shore.