It felt a bit cringe to me, the whole vibe of it just seemed off. The presenter's adoration/reaction was very cringe/over the top for me.. even the engineer guy's face kept falling.. watch it again.. imagine you put your efforts into something, building the rocket, then not being the one to fly it. And when they landed and all the camera men gathering around.. I thought "Is this it? Some guy just go to space for a few minutes and then have his pictures taken like it's some epic moment?" Meanwhile, we are in the middle of a pandemic, people suffering around the world, never mind amazon employee's issues, climate changing slowly starting to wreak havoc.. but hey, lets celebrate that guy going to space. Felt hollow in my stomach and not in a good way. When SpaceX landed those two rockets at the same time next to each other, I shed a tear of how insignificant my own career is, where with this event I felt nothing but hollowness.
I couldn’t care any less about watching rich people launch them selves to the edge of space.
I would much rather spend my time watching rich people launch things into space that will end up benefiting everyone like SpaceX using a Tesla as the dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy test flight.
I understand the whole 'space tourism' thing, but the reality is that it's only going to be the Jeff Bezos and Richard Bransons of the world who will be able to afford this stuff for a long time to come.
The scientific return from space tourism from companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin seems far less important than the work that companies like SpaceX are doing.
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here, But i just feel that rich folk launching them self to the edge of space is more entertainment/marketing vs actual scientific progress.
Theres something different in my head between Branson and Bezos, it's likely just much better personal branding from the Brandon camp.
One thing, though, is that Virgin never ran a monopoly, but a series of successful (and many failed) ventures which often displaced an incumbent in an industry where consumers were genuinely being screwed (mobile, airlines, to some extent health care).
Bezos is an unrepentant monopolist. Sure, he played the game well, but ultimately built what is now a sticky, foul smelling heap with strong lock-in effects.
Strangely I was much more accepting to see Branson in space. Bezos comment about Amazon shoppers paying for his little joy ride was unadulterated tone-deafness.
I wouldn't put Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin in the same category. I think Blue Origin is actually closer to SpaceX.
Blue Origin has demonstrated a very sophisticated rocket, fully automated, with re-useable booster able to land vertically. They are the second in the world to have this after SpaceX, as far as I know. Next year they plan to fly their new rocket (New Glenn) that will have orbital capabilities (about 13t of payload to GTO).
SpaceX launching a Tesla into space for a test flight is firstly benefiting SpaceX and then Tesla. It is first and foremost a commercial entity working for profit and not scientific progress. That might be a side-effect, but I wouldn't frame it like that.
I don’t disagree, but the "side-effects" of the things that SpaceX are doing for profit are much more substantial than any "side-effects" from any 'space tourism' company.
Like with Dragon - SpaceX returned NASA/Americas ability to fly NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station for the first time since 2011.
SpaceX developed the first NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system in history.
Indeed SpaceX is a commercial entity working for profit, Just like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but I'd much rather throw my support behind the companies where the scientific benefits will flow much quicker into the public arena vs "rich dudes competing to get to the edge of space so they can call themselves astronauts"
“Perhaps someday Bezos might reveal that he was, as former astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield dared to hope on his CNN panel, brought back down to Earth metaphorically as well as physically by experiencing the planet he’s so thoroughly conquered from so many miles away. For now, though, the visual of the richest man in the world fist-pumping his way out of a rocket and into a giddy champagne toast says more than either he or the gushing pundits ever could.”
I think if this happened an Bezos has such a revelation, then this whole thing might have been worth it. However, given that his ex-wife seems to be spreading her wealth around and he hasn't caught the "bug" yet, I think this seems like a very remote possibility.
I don't understand why people dedicate so much of their daily energy hating on billionaires' hobbies. The real waste of resource, in my mind, isn't in billionaires spending their pocket money in space exploration. It's in the millions of average persons dedicating 2 or 3h of their 16h/day budget on negative thoughts about other people's lives, poisoning their mood and ruining the 13 to 14 other hours they have left awake in those days. Whereas a positive outlook on things would probably provide them with a state of mind more fertile for ideas and improvements.
I think a lot more human ingenuity-capacity is wasted in jealousy and resentment of others, than what these billionaires may be spending on their hobbies.
* * *
I think the Blue Origin/Virgin Galactic "buy a tourist flight to space" is not my cup of tea, and I'd rather they were doing actually useful industrious space exploration stuff. But I think their puerile vanity hobbies are also not bad for technological advancements. The engineers working on this are going to develop more skills and knowledge, and that will not be lost. It'd be better if it was to do science or some industry, but it's not a net negative either.
That's fine and all if you're talking about people in your immediate social circle. Why waste time worrying about what someone else has?
But then there's this overall trend of stagnating wages for everyone except owners of capital. Industries become more and more concentrated. Billionaires get richer. We have trillion dollar companies, while inflation is increasing.
We're told "Don't be a hater, let billionaires do their thing!" But then they don't pay taxes and they spend their money on space bullshit. The world they are trying to create is not a better one. They are a hog on resources and the human race is right to be sick of it.
Fuck them, they should pay taxes and everyone should stop worshipping them like some kind of golden calf. It's not about being a hater, it's about stopping an economic tumor from getting any bigger.
> stagnating wages for everyone except owners of capital
I don’t think this tells the full story. I know I have somewhat esoteric views about finance, but I believe that wages in terms of what they can buy have in fact been increasing faster than you’d expect just based off of the dollar amount of wages. Even though minimum and average wages have increased more slowly, the buying power hasn’t decreased (and maybe even increased).
This is based on the rate of technological progress causing massive deflation in prices of things that can be made more efficiently by said technology. Our lives have also become more convenient in the last 20-ish years, with a significant chunk of inflation being caused by people actually buying more expensive versions of things.
Think of a 2005 cell phone. Motorola Razr era. Those things cost a few hundred dollars. You could buy something with comparable (or likely even better) capability today for pennies, or even find one for free. Which means massive deflation of comparable goods. You can get full-blown smartphones now for $50 total (budget android phones). Same thing applies to lots of products.
But our lifestyles have also gotten much more expensive — it’s fairly normal to spend 2-3x what we would’ve spent on the fancy Razr phone, or even more, because we want the latest and best. If we lag behind the cutting-edge with our purchases, we’ll find that we are spending less each year on comparable products.
Look through some of these[0] inflation charts — I tried apparel and bananas for example, but it looks like inflation has been extremely low on some standard household items (trying to ignore things that people are buying more luxury versions of these days).
All this to say — yes, income inequality is worth keeping an eye on. And yes, our tax system needs to be massively simplified to prevent loopholes. But some level of wealth inequality isn’t necessarily bad, it seems to be a pretty natural behavior that some small number of people hyper-optimize for some successful path & win — in all sorts of activities, not just wealth-building.
And, even though wages haven’t gone up a ton recently, neither have prices. People spend so much more of their money on luxuries now that it seems that cost of living has gone up, though. (Housing is an exception here that definitely has gone up)
I think the economic model that leads to widespread inequity is absolutely a problem, and a thorny one that will need to be solved for sure.
But while I'm happy to dedicate mental-space to that question, I see no advantage in dedicating that mental space on hating billionaires, nor in dedicating mental space to what the Kardashians are doing. This stuff is hero-vs-villains thinking, grounded in a comic-book like view of the universe.
"then there's this overall trend of stagnating wages for everyone except owners of capital."
So people should better buy some capital!
Also the lament about stagnating wages glosses over the amount of people that have been added to the workforce. The average wage per person may have stagnated, but the sum of wages that are being paid out has increased a lot.
I think it is not a small achievement to provide jobs for so many more people.
I believe it's a result of social media that has (falsely) taught us that anger and resentment are valuable contributions to society.
Anger and resentment are highly charged emotions, and so they make people click, like, retweet and subscribe. So it's unsurprising that those takes are highlighted and encouraged by the social networks.
Not to say that we shouldn't fight for a better world, but we lost our way when we started attempting to do so through anger.
I've started to think the most dangerous parts of social media are the things which we agree with the most, whatever side of politics you're on.
In the case of Bezos, Musk and Branson, I think it's a case of hate the game, not the player. There are plenty more low-profile billionaires exploiting workers and using their gains for worse things than going to space (like lobbying), but we rarely talk about them because they're not in the news. Instead of hating on specific people as if their disappearance would solve the problem, we could be channeling that energy into changing the system to be fairer for all.
The billionaire class are destroying our planet and exploiting us. If people spent as much time hating them as others do brown-nosing them we’d live in a better world.
> average persons dedicating 2 or 3h of their 16h/day budget on negative thoughts about other people's lives, poisoning their mood and ruining the 13 to 14 other hours they have left awake in those days
Does that happen? I think most people that criticize a billionaire don't dwell on it and are onto something else five minutes later. Voicing your opinion is quick and easy, and even if it changes nothing, it's too little to ruin your day.
Only a psychopath would devote that much brainpower to issues out of their control.
Billionaires became billionaires by collecting economic rent from the actual wealth-producers - their employees, i.e., the rest of us. When they turn around and spend it on what's basically the tech equivalent of bling, the resentment is fully justified.
I can totally see a justification for feeling resentment. However, deciding to indulge into resentment is a choice, probably not a conscious one most of the time, but a choice. That's what "irks" me, if you will. Arguably, my "irk" boils down to the same thing I criticize: discontent with how other people spend their energy. =P
I'm sure negative thoughts about Jeff Bezos are the sole reason why a tired Amazon warehouse worker with no other employment opportunities in their decaying town might be unhappy.
Also, there's a lot of context missing from your analysis. Many people find Elon Musk annoying, even a dick, but his space company has done genuinely innovative stuff and is reliably doing commercial deliveries. Bezos is an even more successful businessman, but he's also almost cartoonishly self-absorbed and increasingly looks like a guy with more money than sense. You could see everyone around him cringing today when he was 'thanking' Amazon customers and employees for paying for his Very Big Adventure.
millions of average persons dedicating 2 or 3h of their 16h/day budget on negative thoughts about other people's lives
Calling bullshit on bullshit isn't dedicating hours to negative thoughts. People dislike Jeff Bezos because his company does things like putting anti-union posters on the insides of employee toilet stalls so people can't have even a moment of privacy at work.
> But I think their puerile vanity hobbies are also not bad for technological advancements. The engineers working on this are going to develop more skills and knowledge, and that will not be lost.
Maybe they made some useful advancements (any examples?), but overall this feels like saying a complicated tax code shouldn't be hated on, because it keeps accountants sharp and full of new knowledge.
I would guess that people "waste this time" because the riches gained by the greed and immorality of these obscenely rich folk is directly proportional to the misery that people experience in their daily lives from the impact of the income inequality. The Bozos of this world are the most visible targets in a cruel system that is not functional, that is destroying people and this planet.
Compared to what SpaceX is doing I find this type of space tourism boring. I think it makes a difference to me that they're not in orbit, no matter what the actual definitions are to me it doesn't feel like they're actually in space.
And the interesting part about SpaceX are all the technical details, especially as they are more public with this stuff.
SpaceX is a bad replacement for a well funded NASA, but they're at least interested in doing similar sorts of things whereas Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are purely for tourists in barely-space.
I mean, the entire Blue Origin stream was an extremely annoying fake-hype sales pitch for the less than 1% of viewers who could actually afford it.
I don't claim to be representative of the general opinion of HN, but my opinion is that a dick measuring contest between billionaires is slightly less worse than a dick measuring contest between parochial and aggressive nation-states.
Unfortunately, space exploration is so expensive and useless* that these are the only two known ways to fund it.
* it appears useless to the people who are funding it, but of course we on HN know better than that
It's just a penis measurement contest amongst billionaires. Couldn't care less. If anything, it showcases how the media keeps lifting up these figureheads as entertainment while completely ignoring the mass protests against vaccine passes.
Their own quality of life is probably not very high for various reasons, billionaires are more a symptom of this trend rather than a direct cause imo. It just makes them an easy scapegoat.
I found the Blue Origin live stream pretty awful, not only the extremely over the top female moderator paired with the almost silent Gary Lai, but also the constant cheering from the capsule seemed pretty fake somehow. This took away a lot from the technical feat and made it into a pretty cheesy ad for the company, which I guess it was. Also calling the passengers astronauts all the time, we get it, they sat in a chair for 10 minutes that technically went to space, yeez...
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, he did fund a spaceship company. On the other, I'm not sure how much input he had into the actual construction of a spaceship.
It's kind of like how a person that builds a hot-rod car gets much more respect from me than a person that buys a Bugatti supercar. WooHoo, you can whip out your checkbook and write a $1MM check. Big deal. That other guy worked on the suspension and knows how the fuel system works. That's much more impressive.
To me it comes down to Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, and specialization. We live in a market economy where you trade one form of specialized goods and services for another; this being a most extreme example so still impressive. But I hear what you’re saying for sure. The relative value of all such specializations should weighed by the time commitment and expertise required for mastery and that experience measured on its own merits.
Readit News
I would much rather spend my time watching rich people launch things into space that will end up benefiting everyone like SpaceX using a Tesla as the dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy test flight.
I understand the whole 'space tourism' thing, but the reality is that it's only going to be the Jeff Bezos and Richard Bransons of the world who will be able to afford this stuff for a long time to come.
The scientific return from space tourism from companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin seems far less important than the work that companies like SpaceX are doing.
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here, But i just feel that rich folk launching them self to the edge of space is more entertainment/marketing vs actual scientific progress.
One thing, though, is that Virgin never ran a monopoly, but a series of successful (and many failed) ventures which often displaced an incumbent in an industry where consumers were genuinely being screwed (mobile, airlines, to some extent health care).
Bezos is an unrepentant monopolist. Sure, he played the game well, but ultimately built what is now a sticky, foul smelling heap with strong lock-in effects.
Strangely I was much more accepting to see Branson in space. Bezos comment about Amazon shoppers paying for his little joy ride was unadulterated tone-deafness.
I am 100% on board with this in terms of comparing how i feel about the both of them.
> Bezos comment about Amazon shoppers paying for his little joy ride was unadulterated tone-deafness.
Agreed - It was so cringe it felt like he slipped up and said his inner thoughts out loud... Whoops!
Blue Origin has demonstrated a very sophisticated rocket, fully automated, with re-useable booster able to land vertically. They are the second in the world to have this after SpaceX, as far as I know. Next year they plan to fly their new rocket (New Glenn) that will have orbital capabilities (about 13t of payload to GTO).
Like with Dragon - SpaceX returned NASA/Americas ability to fly NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station for the first time since 2011.
SpaceX developed the first NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system in history.
Indeed SpaceX is a commercial entity working for profit, Just like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but I'd much rather throw my support behind the companies where the scientific benefits will flow much quicker into the public arena vs "rich dudes competing to get to the edge of space so they can call themselves astronauts"
I think a lot more human ingenuity-capacity is wasted in jealousy and resentment of others, than what these billionaires may be spending on their hobbies.
* * *
I think the Blue Origin/Virgin Galactic "buy a tourist flight to space" is not my cup of tea, and I'd rather they were doing actually useful industrious space exploration stuff. But I think their puerile vanity hobbies are also not bad for technological advancements. The engineers working on this are going to develop more skills and knowledge, and that will not be lost. It'd be better if it was to do science or some industry, but it's not a net negative either.
But then there's this overall trend of stagnating wages for everyone except owners of capital. Industries become more and more concentrated. Billionaires get richer. We have trillion dollar companies, while inflation is increasing.
We're told "Don't be a hater, let billionaires do their thing!" But then they don't pay taxes and they spend their money on space bullshit. The world they are trying to create is not a better one. They are a hog on resources and the human race is right to be sick of it.
Fuck them, they should pay taxes and everyone should stop worshipping them like some kind of golden calf. It's not about being a hater, it's about stopping an economic tumor from getting any bigger.
I don’t think this tells the full story. I know I have somewhat esoteric views about finance, but I believe that wages in terms of what they can buy have in fact been increasing faster than you’d expect just based off of the dollar amount of wages. Even though minimum and average wages have increased more slowly, the buying power hasn’t decreased (and maybe even increased).
This is based on the rate of technological progress causing massive deflation in prices of things that can be made more efficiently by said technology. Our lives have also become more convenient in the last 20-ish years, with a significant chunk of inflation being caused by people actually buying more expensive versions of things.
Think of a 2005 cell phone. Motorola Razr era. Those things cost a few hundred dollars. You could buy something with comparable (or likely even better) capability today for pennies, or even find one for free. Which means massive deflation of comparable goods. You can get full-blown smartphones now for $50 total (budget android phones). Same thing applies to lots of products.
But our lifestyles have also gotten much more expensive — it’s fairly normal to spend 2-3x what we would’ve spent on the fancy Razr phone, or even more, because we want the latest and best. If we lag behind the cutting-edge with our purchases, we’ll find that we are spending less each year on comparable products.
Look through some of these[0] inflation charts — I tried apparel and bananas for example, but it looks like inflation has been extremely low on some standard household items (trying to ignore things that people are buying more luxury versions of these days).
All this to say — yes, income inequality is worth keeping an eye on. And yes, our tax system needs to be massively simplified to prevent loopholes. But some level of wealth inequality isn’t necessarily bad, it seems to be a pretty natural behavior that some small number of people hyper-optimize for some successful path & win — in all sorts of activities, not just wealth-building.
And, even though wages haven’t gone up a ton recently, neither have prices. People spend so much more of their money on luxuries now that it seems that cost of living has gone up, though. (Housing is an exception here that definitely has gone up)
[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/inflation-cpi-categories
But while I'm happy to dedicate mental-space to that question, I see no advantage in dedicating that mental space on hating billionaires, nor in dedicating mental space to what the Kardashians are doing. This stuff is hero-vs-villains thinking, grounded in a comic-book like view of the universe.
So people should better buy some capital!
Also the lament about stagnating wages glosses over the amount of people that have been added to the workforce. The average wage per person may have stagnated, but the sum of wages that are being paid out has increased a lot.
I think it is not a small achievement to provide jobs for so many more people.
Anger and resentment are highly charged emotions, and so they make people click, like, retweet and subscribe. So it's unsurprising that those takes are highlighted and encouraged by the social networks.
Not to say that we shouldn't fight for a better world, but we lost our way when we started attempting to do so through anger.
I've started to think the most dangerous parts of social media are the things which we agree with the most, whatever side of politics you're on.
In the case of Bezos, Musk and Branson, I think it's a case of hate the game, not the player. There are plenty more low-profile billionaires exploiting workers and using their gains for worse things than going to space (like lobbying), but we rarely talk about them because they're not in the news. Instead of hating on specific people as if their disappearance would solve the problem, we could be channeling that energy into changing the system to be fairer for all.
Castigating people for negative thoughts and how they "ruin" ingenuity is ultimately a self-defeating argument.
Dead Comment
Does that happen? I think most people that criticize a billionaire don't dwell on it and are onto something else five minutes later. Voicing your opinion is quick and easy, and even if it changes nothing, it's too little to ruin your day.
Only a psychopath would devote that much brainpower to issues out of their control.
Also, there's a lot of context missing from your analysis. Many people find Elon Musk annoying, even a dick, but his space company has done genuinely innovative stuff and is reliably doing commercial deliveries. Bezos is an even more successful businessman, but he's also almost cartoonishly self-absorbed and increasingly looks like a guy with more money than sense. You could see everyone around him cringing today when he was 'thanking' Amazon customers and employees for paying for his Very Big Adventure.
millions of average persons dedicating 2 or 3h of their 16h/day budget on negative thoughts about other people's lives
Calling bullshit on bullshit isn't dedicating hours to negative thoughts. People dislike Jeff Bezos because his company does things like putting anti-union posters on the insides of employee toilet stalls so people can't have even a moment of privacy at work.
Maybe they made some useful advancements (any examples?), but overall this feels like saying a complicated tax code shouldn't be hated on, because it keeps accountants sharp and full of new knowledge.
My opinion: There is definitely a billionaire brag race on the space frontier, but I do think it's going to benefit space exploration overall.
And the interesting part about SpaceX are all the technical details, especially as they are more public with this stuff.
I mean, the entire Blue Origin stream was an extremely annoying fake-hype sales pitch for the less than 1% of viewers who could actually afford it.
Please, explain exactly how you came to this conclusion. And use numbers, costs of R&D, costs of launches, etc.
I'm absolutely baffled you could think this.
Unfortunately, space exploration is so expensive and useless* that these are the only two known ways to fund it.
* it appears useless to the people who are funding it, but of course we on HN know better than that
Everyone on HN: how can so many people be wrong?
the self awareness, it's lacking.
It's kind of like how a person that builds a hot-rod car gets much more respect from me than a person that buys a Bugatti supercar. WooHoo, you can whip out your checkbook and write a $1MM check. Big deal. That other guy worked on the suspension and knows how the fuel system works. That's much more impressive.
He knew he didn't have the skills or manpower to build a rocket himself, so he assembled an organization of people who would help him build it.
Then, he risked his own LIFE to be one of the first people to ride the rocket. If that's not putting trust in your engineers, I don't know what is.
Sure, you can hate on him for being rich, but at the end of the day, the man knows how to build successful companies.