Jeff Bezos Space Tourist

[Janet Voxel]

1 hour ago, Finite said:

This is literally going no where lol.

Discussions like these usually never do.....

[Maryanne Solo]

All I know is I will never list anything I make on Amazon.

[Ayeleeon]

For @Sukubia ScarmonHere is a start.

https://mspolicy.org/regulations-should-help-not-hinder-small-business-growth/

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/regulations-impact-small-business-and-heart-americas-economy

https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/how-regulations-every-level-hold-back-small-business

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/washingtonbureau/2016/04/10-regulations-that-give-small-business-owners-the.html

Edited July 22, 2021 by Ayeleeon

[Lindal Kidd]

On 7/21/2021 at 8:45 AM, Sukubia Scarmon said:

Are you compairing the effort to actively explore space and gain understanding of it and the laws of physics - which benefits most of us, with a joyride for an individual that did nothing but causing some short-lived amusement?

The New Shepard vehicle has already carried some payloads for NASA during their development program. While "space tourism" may be seen only as a benefit for the super rich, privately developed and operated space ventures are providing a number of benefits. For example, SpaceX launches cost the government far less than NASA-managed launches. The cost of getting to orbit has come down dramatically in the last decade, so much so that many companies who never dreamed of launching a payload are now doing it.

Back in the 1930s when commercial air travel began, it was "only for the rich" too. And the risk level was not all that much less than the current risk of riding a rocket into space. I expect we will continue to see costs go down and safety go up.

[Sukubia Scarmon]

55 minutes ago, Ayeleeon said:

For @Sukubia ScarmonHere is a start.

https://mspolicy.org/regulations-should-help-not-hinder-small-business-growth/

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/regulations-impact-small-business-and-heart-americas-economy

https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/how-regulations-every-level-hold-back-small-business

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/washingtonbureau/2016/04/10-regulations-that-give-small-business-owners-the.html

Okay, so if I understand that correctly, it's more or less the amount of regulations that seem to be the problem, and less a specific one like food labeling which you mentioned, which I'd see as important, thus my confusion. Okay, granted, there's some specific ones that seem to make it harder, but not food labeling.

[Innula Zenovka]

3 hours ago, Orwar said:

   That's what the plebeians 'realised' after the black plague with the whole people shortage thing, and arguably when things went downhill. 

   Feudalism got things done for a while. If you can look past the whole inequality thing .. But then, the peasantry of the middle-ages on average were less hard-worked than ye average 9-to-5-er*. When they weren't being levied to be shipped off to fight in war, or busy having their homes sacked and and being abducted to become a serf elsewhere. Which arguably didn't matter a whole lot if you were a serf in the first place.

   Then again, moving to another country to do a similar 9-to-5 job as what you did at home isn't too uncommon, and plenty of nations still have compulsory military service and, in times of war, service draft mobilisation. In the middle-ages, the number of draftees on average were 1 in 15 eligible men, the Vietnam draft was roughly 1 in 12. 

   But hey, they got to 'stick it to the rich man' and we lived happily ever after, right?

   To me it seems that the one thing that doesn't change, is the desire for change.

All I'm doing is describing what happens -- the price the employer has to pay for labour as part of his overhead represents  what he finds he has offer to attract and keep a suitably qualified candidate.   

One important qualification is how available the candidate is, since suitably qualified and experienced is one thing, but suitably qualified and experienced and looking for work here and now is quite another.

Consequences tend to follow from that, subject to all sorts of other pressures and forces, of course.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Innula Zenovka

[Sukubia Scarmon]

46 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The New Shepard vehicle has already carried some payloads for NASA during their development program. While "space tourism" may be seen only as a benefit for the super rich, privately developed and operated space ventures are providing a number of benefits. For example, SpaceX launches cost the government far less than NASA-managed launches. The cost of getting to orbit has come down dramatically in the last decade, so much so that many companies who never dreamed of launching a payload are now doing it.

Back in the 1930s when commercial air travel began, it was "only for the rich" too. And the risk level was not all that much less than the current risk of riding a rocket into space. I expect we will continue to see costs go down and safety go up.

I just wish stuff like that would not be funded by making other people suffer, that is all. 

[Finite]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Back in the 1930s when commercial air travel began, it was "only for the rich" too. And the risk level was not all that much less than the current risk of riding a rocket into space. I expect we will continue to see costs go down and safety go up.

A round trip ticket in 1930 cost the equivalent of around 4,000 usd today. Still expensive but not beyond the average person's wildest dreams. How much would a space ticket cost? Also, people in the 30s witnessed reasonably affordable fares at some point in their lifetime. When do you envision the same will happen with space tourism?

I'm not against space tourism or anything. I think it's cool and interesting and certainly demonstrates where we are as a species. I'm just not overly enthusiastic about it and don't see it as beneficial and significant as say commercial flight was in the 1930s.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Finite

[Paul Hexem]

11 hours ago, Chroma Starlight said:

That is the exact opposite of true. The Revolution was about overthrowing spiritual and political tyranny. When you look at the fabric of societies -- admittedly isolated -- of that period, you realize it wasn't actually about the economics. It was about the spiritual oppression.

Wait, you're serious?

It was about taxes and guns. Two lines that every grade school American learns; "No taxation without representation" and "The British are coming, the British are coming (for the guns)". Which is why to this day, we still fiercely debate both- especially compared to other countries.

 

8 hours ago, Moondira said:

We (in the States) pay far more for comparable basic services (through taxes AND out-of-pocket expenses) than other 1st world countries pay via their taxes.

Don't forget what we pay for out-of-pocket and at considerably higher prices (like health care), as well as higher fees for a college education, child care, and a whole slew of other services they get for their tax dollar.

That's the "funny" thing about Capitalism. People here feel better about paying out of pocket to private companies, even if there's tax on it, than paying the government for it directly. They don't trust the government to do it, or to do it right. Or they don't trust the government at all.

 

7 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Hmm.   Where do you get that definition of socialism from, and do you prefer it to , for example, the Socialist International's Declaration of principles, to which democratic socialist parties worldwide choose (or not) to subscribe?    

Quite simply, when Americans use the term "socialism," it seems to be a bit like when they talk about "football" -- that is, the word means one thing in the US and something different when just about anyone else uses it.

We still have a generation of people alive in America (that have also raised children, by the way) that remember a time when communism was the boogeyman. And to them, socialism is just "communism lite". The thing is, in many respects, they're not wrong.

[Ayeleeon]

49 minutes ago, Sukubia Scarmon said:

Okay, so if I understand that correctly, it's more or less the amount of regulations that seem to be the problem, and less a specific one like food labeling which you mentioned, which I'd see as important, thus my confusion. Okay, granted, there's some specific ones that seem to make it harder, but not food labeling.

I did read about the impacts of food labeling on small scale food producers, but can't find anything on the internet yet. I did find an article that states that food labeling had no positive effects on health

[Lyssa Greymoon]

If only we could get rid of those grinding regulations like the pure food and drug act, clean water act, child labor laws, anti-discrimination laws, wage and hour laws, anti-harassment laws, workplace safety laws and all that other nonsense we could let the invisible hand guide us to that golden tomorrow where children could find fulfilling careers working in coal mines for slave wages and the businesses could call on the well regulated militia to bomb the ***** out of them if they tried any of that commie union crap.

[Chroma Starlight]

22 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Wait, you're serious?

You're like an anachronism out of a really crappy moment when all the newspapers were flooded with low-rent demagoguery. Yeah, back when you could still comment as a member of the public on the news and interact with civil society on the newpaper's website to discuss the matters of the day. And it was completely astroturfed, the conversation deadened with the sound of incessant air horns. 

I was always wondering-- was someone paying you to shill like that, or were you trained into being your own jailkeeper for free?

[Innula Zenovka]

22 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Wait, you're serious?

It was about taxes and guns. Two lines that every grade school American learns; "No taxation without representation" and "The British are coming, the British are coming (for the guns)". Which is why to this day, we still fiercely debate both- especially compared to other countries.

 

That's the "funny" thing about Capitalism. People here feel better about paying out of pocket to private companies, even if there's tax on it, than paying the government for it directly. They don't trust the government to do it, or to do it right. Or they don't trust the government at all.

 

We still have a generation of people alive in America (that have also raised children, by the way) that remember a time when communism was the boogeyman. And to them, socialism is just "communism lite". The thing is, in many respects, they're not wrong.

A lot of people in Europe remember when communism was the boogeyman too, and many of us lived under communist government.    That's perhaps why we're more aware of the distinction between popular and necessary policies that most people, right and left, agree are necessary and desirable in a modern society and those specifically associated with communism.

Do you really think that contemporary Germany, for example, has much in common with either the contemporary US or the old GDR?    Compared with most advanced economies, the US is now increasingly seen as a strange outlier, with odd national obsessions and priorities, and what seems to us a strange view of history.    So's China, of course.  Or Russia.       

[Lindal Kidd]

Back in 1950, Robert A. Heinlein wrote a novella called "The Man Who Sold the Moon." It's the story of a successful businessman, Delos D. Harriman, who is convinced that space travel is the future of mankind and sets out to finance the development of the first manned lunar flight. He faces many obstacles, both technical and financial. (Does this sound at all familiar? Paging Elon Musk...)

In Heinlein's story, Harriman is very much a Moses figure. He is determined to be part of the crew, but weight considerations dictate that only one man, the pilot, can be accommodated. He reluctantly gives in, vowing to go on a subsequent flight. Then his business associates decide that he can't risk himself on anything as dangerous as space travel and get an injunction to prevent him from ever going, even when much better rockets are developed. Harriman is left on the ground, looking up at the Promised Land.

He finally gets his wish in a subsequent story, "Requiem."

My point, though, is that back in 1950 Heinlein could write a story about a space-crazy billionaire and his readers (if not many of the characters in the story) viewed the guy as a visionary and a hero. Today, men in similar positions with the same motivations in real life are derided by the media as entitled rich kids playing with toys the rest of us can never have. There oughta be a law! They oughta be taxed!

Nonsense. Achievements made by commercial space companies (and their owners) are every bit as much "for all mankind" as Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11. It doesn't matter a great deal whether the funding for them comes from the taxes we pay or the profits made from the products we buy. Oh wait...there is one difference. Walk up to one of these guys with a big enough checkbook and YOU can go. Just try that with NASA...

Edited July 23, 2021 by Lindal Kidd

[Katherine Heartsong]

His wife got the best divorce ever .. 1/2 his fortune and he left the damn planet.

He could have paid to have everyone in the world eligible vaccinated and still been richer than the start of the pandemic.

He's a narcissist, and one of the most unsmiling human beings I have ever seen. I genuinely thought he's rip off his human skin in sub-orbit and finally show his reptile face.

His ex-wife has donated more to philanthropy in the year since their divorce than he has in 25 years of being wealthy.

He and his kind are scum.

We don't need philanthropy, we need a rewrite of the tax system so these guys pay what the Rockefellers did and yet still lived like kings. Wealth needs to be taxed like income.

(And no, I do not shop Amazon. Obviously.)

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Katherine Heartsong

[Chroma Starlight]

32 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

My point, though, is that back in 1950 Heinlein could write a story about a space-crazy billionaire and his readers (if not many of the characters in the story) viewed the guy as a visionary and a hero. Today, men in similar positions with the same motivations in real life are derided by the media as entitled rich kids playing with toys the rest of us can never have. There oughta be a law! They oughta be taxed!

These billionaires are doing it because the applied science and technology and human capital lying around as a fruit of civilization has made it accessible to anyone who's good at finance and logistics and takes the right ethos of an approach. They're not some brave visionary creating moon-travel magic, it's all well-understood, but was tightly locked down to defense contractors and Federal agency for decades. But that exposes a strange reality which is that, if these private groups can do it, and they're doing it first, then something has gone terribly wrong with the entire system of the world for humanity if we have governments that have not, you know, "for all mankind."

Government failing to modernize progressively drove us all backwards in time against our will in so many ways that the amortized cost of it is staggering. You can't afford to not do the best things when working on scales and with visions like these. You can't make humanity's space access contingent on it satisfying Nixon's industrial investors that it is more profitable than practical, like the STS. Something has gone quite haywire with the species these last one-hundred years and nowhere is that more apparent than with space policy and what's going on today.

As for Bezos, somebody wake me when he makes orbit. This is just a stunt, though it's a tech demo, sure, but he's over a decade behind the others, now.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Chroma Starlight

[Tari Landar]

46 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

My point, though, is that back in 1950 Heinlein could write a story about a space-crazy billionaire and his readers (if not many of the characters in the story) viewed the guy as a visionary and a hero. Today, men in similar positions with the same motivations in real life are derided by the media as entitled rich kids playing with toys the rest of us can never have. There oughta be a law! They oughta be taxed!

Nonsense. Achievements made by commercial space companies (and their owners) are every bit as much "for all mankind" as Neil Armstrong and Apollo 11. It doesn't matter a great deal whether the funding for them comes from the taxes we pay or the profits made from the products we buy. Oh wait...there is one difference. Walk up to one of these guys with a big enough checkbook and YOU can go. Just try that with NASA...

There are some differences between this stupid space race and the novella, along with countless other versions of the same ideal desire, space exploration. The motivation does play a huge role in the whole concept and an even larger role to how one might be perceived. The man in the story was motivated not only by his own personal desires, but exploration, science if you will, itself, which very much does offer something to mankind.  Neil Armstrong, the majority of those who have ever joined NASA (astronauts aren't the only folks there after all), hell even Musk (and I'm no fan of him, for other reasons, lol), and countless other people are very much motivated and driven by not only personal desires (oooh space.. YESSSSS!!!) but also the betterment of mankind in general, for science, exploration, who knows how many other motivations that personally I think are awesome.  The likes of Branson and Bezos, however, are not motivated by the betterment of mankind in any fashion, really. They are merely motivated by the idea of a giant game of "just the tip", just so they can say they did it and get that whole "firsties" trophy. That's probably got a lot to lend to why some think less highly of their ilk, and more highly of those with different motivations.

Bezos didn't get there on the back of his own hard work (really, with little work at all of his own, though I digress), or with the desire to better mankind, even if some working on his particular program may have been or may be motivated by such(and thank the, whatevers, that those folks exist, otherwise Bezos definitely wouldn't have come back, lol). He just wanted to go to say he did it, and that's it. He's done countless interviews over the years regarding his success, or apparent success anyway, and a lot of his answers fall in line with "I did it because I could/wanted to see if I could". That's not really an inherently bad reason i and of itself, but it will likely change how the general populous perceives him. You can tell when his interviews or speeches have been more prompted or pre-written and staged (to be kind), because the verbiage varies and often includes some type of altruistic motivation This happens because even if he's too arrogant, perhaps willfully ignorant, to see it, folks around him know how things will come across to the rest of the world. Nothing he has ever done has been for the betterment of anyone but himself. He's not alone, surely, plenty of people take on this outlook in life, and I'm not one to quarrel about it, especially with them, if that's what they want to do. I just won't view it as anything more than it is, nor will I apply altruistic motivations to something that really has none. It is what it is, after all. 

ETA: What I mean by it is what it is...

A business venture, that is exactly what space trips are to Bezos, outside of his simple desire to say he did it, it's a business venture. It's not being done for the betterment of space exploration, science, or anything else, but is purely motivated by a potential future business venture and his desire to say "I did it first". I'm not begrudging him that whole did it first thing, or even the business venture, just don't pretend it's for science, when it's really not, lol. He didn't even actually go to space itself, more like inside outer space, at best, lol. The whole "just the tip" game, and all that jazz.

I do hope others can take things from his experience, and apply them elsewhere, and actually make good use of them outside of some business venture to truly help, for science, exploration, whatever have you. That's my actual hope about this weird pissing match they're all in. I love space, I love space exploration, and I love science. So, I am all on board if we can garner something positive from it, regardless of the motivations. 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Tari Landar

[Lindal Kidd]

I take your point, Tari, and I won't argue that Branson's and Bezos's motivations are on a much less lofty plane than Harriman's, or even Musk's.

But in the long run, the motivations of the men won't matter. What matters is that space is becoming more accessible. That is a Very Good Thing, because we are pretty close to running out of Stuff on this tired old planet, and there's a lot more Stuff out there.

[Chroma Starlight]

6 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

we are pretty close to running out of Stuff on this tired old planet, and there's a lot more Stuff out there.

No, that's really not true. The reality is that capitalism has an appetite for an endlessly ever-growing market and it has run out of easy growth opportunities because it placed all its bets on foreseeably unsustainable growth based mostly on extraction and exploitation like the worst kinds of colonialism, slavery, and imperious tyranny never fell out of favor and became the dominant tropes of this largely unregulated economic system that has become so large it makes its own weather and the weather it's making is firestorms.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Chroma Starlight

[Tari Landar]

4 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I take your point, Tari, and I won't argue that Branson's and Bezos's motivations are on a much less lofty plane than Harriman's, or even Musk's.

But in the long run, the motivations of the men won't matter. What matters is that space is becoming more accessible. That is a Very Good Thing, because we are pretty close to running out of Stuff on this tired old planet, and there's a lot more Stuff out there.

I agree, the motivations just play a role in perception, public profile, etc..It matters, but at the same time, it doesn't, it all depends on what we're talking about (including whose plan we intend to back, to so speak).

If in the end we all benefit, I'm for that part, all for it. The proverbial ***** matches are just really hard to ignore. 

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

But in the long run, the motivations of the men won't matter. What matters is that space is becoming more accessible. That is a Very Good Thing, because we are pretty close to running out of Stuff on this tired old planet, and there's a lot more Stuff out there.

This is the only sliver lining. Accessibility to space. Becoming a multi planetary species, and an end to all natural scarcity.

Let the idiots dream about access to resources worth insane amounts of money, in the end, when diamonds fall from the sky they will be precious as dust. 

[Chroma Starlight]

8 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This is the only sliver lining. Accessibility to space. Becoming a multi planetary species, and an end to all natural scarcity.

Let the idiots dream about access to resources worth insane amounts of money, in the end, when diamonds fall from the sky they will be precious as dust. 

That's why you become the De Beers of space mining and control the supply, setting your own market prices. Unless the world gets its acts together and stops this kind of oligarchy.

Congratulations! Now you've stolen the destinies of an entire planet and given them to your children, whom you elevate as gods. Not that they're godly, just that you've driven everyone else back into the stone age by erasing civilization with all the corruption that endless money can afford you.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Chroma Starlight

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Chroma Starlight said:

That's why you become the De Beers of space mining and control the supply, setting your own market prices. Unless the world gets its acts together and stops this kind of oligarchy.

The resources beyond our earth are limitless on timelines beyond our comprehension. De Beers might get the first diamond asteroid, but they can't hope to control the second, or the fifth or the five hundredth.

Our ability to impose ourselves on resources beyond our earth does not scale in any meaningful way, and the tools we develop trying to do just that will in turn make us just as irrelevant.

[Paul Hexem]

2 hours ago, Chroma Starlight said:

You're like an anachronism out of a really crappy moment when all the newspapers were flooded with low-rent demagoguery. Yeah, back when you could still comment as a member of the public on the news and interact with civil society on the newpaper's website to discuss the matters of the day. And it was completely astroturfed, the conversation deadened with the sound of incessant air horns. 

I was always wondering-- was someone paying you to shill like that, or were you trained into being your own jailkeeper for free?

You're detached from reality. Society hasn't been civil since comments sections were invented. 

[Rowan Amore]

The conversation deadened by the constant barrage of conspiracy theories and off the wall comments which had no basis in reality.  Oh wait...nvm.