Posted on 05/21/2023 3:13:32 PM PDT by algore
Outrageous egos battling each other across the cosmos? Check.
Sci-fi nerds who’ve definitely watched too much Star Trek? Check.
Humanity’s next chapter in a space left in the hands of insanely rich tech billionaires happy to take NASA’s tax-payer billions? Check.
This is Mission Control: We have lift-off!
Just a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s most powerful rocket to date - the 400-ft long, $67 million Starship - only for it to explode mid-air just four minutes into flight, a phoenix has risen from the flames to bravely take on the quest for space travel.
Or at least, that may be how bitter rival Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos sees it.
On Friday, NASA awarded his space-exploration company Blue Origin a coveted $3.4 billion to build a ‘lunar lander’ to take astronauts to the Moon.
As part of NASA’s Artemis V mission, scheduled for 2029, the lunar lander will collect astronauts from a NASA outpost orbiting the Moon, take them down to the lunar surface - and then bring them back again.
But, given that Musk’s company is already working on doing precisely the same thing for the Artemis program, we now face the prospect of two of Silicon Valley’s most contentious figures competing head-on in a bizarre new 21st-Century space race.
And this is no ordinary commercial contest. These are two ultra-competitive international business titans, both of whom have held the title of world’s richest person, and whose fierce rivalry goes back two decades.
Most recently, in 2021, SpaceX beat Blue Origin and another US company, Dynetics, to win a $2.9 billion contract to build a lunar-lander version of its vast Starship rocket - called the Starship HLS (Human Landing System) - to put man back on the Moon for the first time since 1972.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I just got back from Kennedy, taking the tourist route of visiting. Musk was pretty much left out of most things, while Blue origin was prominent in all thins NASA. Heck, even the BO facility is across the street from the visitors center.
It was plainly obvious that NASA hates SpaceX.
“ Politics most likely entered into the bid. Musk is not woke enough.”
******************************************************
Well, Musk would be perfectly capable of putting a manned lander on the moon INDEPENDENTLY FROM NASA. And he could likely include some paying passengers who could cover most or all of his variable cost for the mission.
“NASA sponsorship? We don’t need no stinkin’ NASA sponsorship.”
I would love to see that.
Which government leaders are as smart as these guys?
Maybe Xi (who could match their resources)? But who else?
Wrong nasa already did in 2021, this was for a 2nd lander.
Starship was the first in 2021.
U guess you didn’t take the bus tour past 39a and all things spacex there.
Musk is running rings around Bezos. But hey, at least Bezos has a penis rocket like Dr. Evil.
Musk wrote a 6? billion dollar check to end world starvation last year to the UN. I wonder how that worked out....
Bezos hasn’t managed to get anything in to orbit yet has he?
Makes him the perfect choice for government over a man who has repeatedly (with some setbacks yet)
Yes, the Blue Veined Throbber rocket with the Meatus-1 capsule. OK for short suborbital flights, but it can't get up for much else.
Musk is smarter than Bezos.
Bezos spent years selling books online and did a good job of it. He was good at getting products placed on the search engines. He then got a lot of companies to put their products online and he would put them in warehouses (charging a fee for what was sold). It was a pretty common-sense idea and it took someone to bring it all together. He was fortunate to be able to get all the financial backing too.
Musk is on another level.
That is because SpaceX leased it, under NASA protest. That doesn’t mean NASA likes them.
Bull Shit........ pure drivel
Competition makes the world go round. A trivial journalist in his Ivory Tower tries to make it a personal feud. Journalistic ignorance is just pure old tripe.
stop it on a floating raft in the middle of a liquid ocean on a planet 6x the gravity on earth.
—
Yesterday: The latest SpaceX-Axium partnership saw the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and the SpaceX Dragon capsule with a crew of 4 arrive at ISS, while the boaster successfully landed on a Canaveral landing pad - for the first ever landing on land.
Is this a contract...
Or a laundered pay-off for services rendered?
Musk would be perfectly capable of putting a manned lander on the moon INDEPENDENTLY FROM NASA.
—
Yes that is so, but he’d never get launch and environmental permits from the FAA and EPA.
Because, unlike governments they have vision and can act upon them.
They don’t need to fight the internal struggles of government inertia and political cowardice and can decide I want to do something and work to make it happen
Well said
Small people resent their betters with money and brains.
This is why the media is so untrustworthy and cannot be relied on to deliver even the most basic information in a non-biased way.
The Starship launch was a TEST FLIGHT. Thus, it was expected to fail all along. The very purpose of test flights is to identify failure points and work on them for the next launch. Many expected Starship to just blow up on the pad. That fact that it nearly got into orbit on the very first try should be celebrated, not ridiculed.
Has Bezos even reached orbit yet?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.