Jeff Bezos wants to take you into SPAAAAAACE!

My only job at the launch was to open the champagne, and I broke the cork off in the bottle. : ) Fortunately, our other valve operations went more smoothly.

Not very reassuring.

http://public.blueorigin.com/img/GFWEB200.jpg

And innovative too!

http://public.blueorigin.com/img/pic4.jpg

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

there is another thread

I hope this goes well

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57386049

fingers crossed

Why do so many people want to go to space? Is it just that they are so rich they have literally run out of things to do?

important meeting with the Elder Gods

Cosmic rays give you fantastic powers

"Fantastic powers" is a terrible euphemism for "cancer."

Giving rays to Jeff Bez’ feels fantastic

Why do so many people (billionaires) want to go to space?

Guillotines need gravity to work.

It's not just billionaires that want to go to space!

https://i.insider.com/5858374bca7f0c5c008b69c1?width=1200&format=jpeg

Though yeah, undoubtedly right now it's only rich people that have the option. But perhaps also the only ones with the desire, too.

I'd go to space tbh

Me too, though not at the expense of $2.8m or being Jeff Bezos's brother.

Indeed.

i would love to go to space, that would be everything

but first i need to become one of the richest people

I don't get it, but I get that some people clearly dig the idea.

Going to space, that is, not getting rich. Me, given the choice? Just write me the check and I'm happy to stay down here.

There are no laws in space so you can murder Jeff Bezos and get off scot-free.

I’d much rather than go to space and have no money than the other way around. Money is bad

There are no laws in space so you can murder Jeff Bezos and get off scot-free.

Sure way to get Space Force on your tail, imo.

I'd rather explore the deep than space, really. James Cameron is the rich guy for that one iirc.

yeah, I'd rather go to the bottom of the ocean than to outer space.

idk they scare me about equally and in space there are no fish to laugh at me as I die

There’s nothing at the bottom of the ocean except for trash and blind minibosses. In space there is absolutely no trash, zero debris, and the lack of gravity makes you strong and hardy

@milo - not sure if the fact it's a private craft changes things at all, but:

According to Article VIII of the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies whenever one of the nations that's a party to the treaty launches an object — i.e., a spacecraft, satellite or space station — into space, or builds one on a celestial body, that nation retains jurisdiction and control over it.

So we need to wait for a rocket launched from Peter Thiel's floating microstate to start murdering?

Getting a letter of marque to assassinate Elon Musk on his rocket to Mars.

"Why did you murder Mr. Bezos?"
"I'm a legal scholar"

Karl, pretty sure space is *nothing* but orbiting trash.

Soon including Bezos.

(i know :))

anything within visual distance of earth is bound to be full of trash soon

(xp the lack of gravity makes one weak and cranky, too, i suspect)

didn't realize this company was from 2007!

I'm all for this-- as long as Bezos has to pee into a bottle for the entire trip

the superrich probably have less access to the sublime than the average person, ordinarily. the world feels malleable to them, small. this probably produces a severe sense of despair, you know, the unfathomable loneliness of god and all that, so they are trying to heal themselves by going into space and experiencing a reality that makes them feel small again.

what he should do instead is give away his money, change his name, and get a job at the burger king in paramus.

Rockets are explosive and inherently dangerous. So is falling to earth from a great height. I would like Jeff Bezos to experience this situation as often as possible. Once a day would be excellent.

idk they scare me about equally and in space there are no fish to laugh at me as I die

― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Monday, June 7, 2021 12:03 PM (one hour ago)

a good one for the 100 drawings thread

I'd like to go into space if the spacecrafts weren't blowing up all the time

https://t.co/cN3nzyBCwr pic.twitter.com/uytubJ02ho

— hollywood brett thousand (@BrettThousand) June 7, 2021

This could be excellent fodder for the Punky Brewster reboot.

men will literally go to the edge of space with their brother instead of going to therapy

— blaire erskine (@blaireerskine) June 7, 2021

This could be excellent fodder for the Punky Brewster Fantastic Four reboot.

"There's nothing."
"I know. Have a good journey, Mr. Bezos."

the superrich probably have less access to the sublime than the average person, ordinarily. the world feels malleable to them, small. this probably produces a severe sense of despair, you know, the unfathomable loneliness of god and all that, so they are trying to heal themselves by going into space and experiencing a reality that makes them feel small again.

I hear making minimum wage and shopping at the dollar store gives you direct access to the sublime. Like literally downloading Barnett Newman into your optic nerve. You should try it some time.

thoreau thought that poverty helped make one more receptive to aesthetic experience. it's not an insane idea. but i was sort of being semi-ironic. like, i do think it is true that the space thing has to do with bezos feeling dead inside, but also whatever.

or *could* help rather. and maybe not poverty, really -- the brutality of lived poverty -- but simplicity, which is different. either way, i feel like it probably is a little disorienting to wield the kind of economic power bezos does.

Fuck amazon

thoreau thought that poverty helped make one more receptive to aesthetic experience.

treeship badly paraphrasing thoreau isn't the same as what thoreau thought or wrote -- and treesh amplified and corrected his bad paraphrase,

yeah, poverty means living in a state of constant stress and uncertainty. often you have little control over your own life. i wasn't trying to romanticize that sort of condition. but i also think vast wealth, on the order of what bezos has, is corrupting in a different way.

The poor get their rewards in heaven iirc

While for Bezos, heaven is a place on earth.

(By "on," I mean slightly above, looking down with contempt.)

treeship is otm about extremely rich people having no access to spirituality and otm about why bezos is doing this imo. it's also extremely pathetic and funny.

it's not necessarily that the wealthy can't access spirit but that obsession with money/capital/exploitation is incompatible with it.

exactly. thanks map.

I remember an interview with some Japanese shipping magnate who had spent years in a Zen monastery before coming back to run the family business. The interviewer asked him how his spiritual training informed his shipping magnate-ism. The guy said, "Zen is good for many things. But not so much for business."

odd then that spiritual people tend to gravitate toward money/capital/exploitation

o rly

If by "spiritual people" you mean "religious institutions," sure. But that's probably not the best way to define that.

society is sick in a lot of ways, fabrication of spiritual well-being for capital is one of them

prosperity gospel, sea org, sexual exploitation of followers, etc. etc. etc.

i don't think cult leaders who sexually exploit their followers are necessarily spiritually enlightened either.

i was talking about the sublime specifically, or an aesthetic/spiritual intuition of infinity. it requires a kind of humility and an ability to step beyond your immediate attachments and strivings.

anyway, I told my 6 yo that Bezos was going into space and he said, "I guess the people on earth will be free for a few days then."

lol for real?

I guess when your dad's the president you get political at an early age

yes, he hates Jeff Bezos. Not sure where he picked that up.

it's only human to hate these motherfuckers

Please god https://t.co/wPcLbKtS4W pic.twitter.com/zT74NrKEcR

— Mr Demos of Pnyx (@gem_ste) July 20, 2021

Bezos announces in post-launch presser that he’s starting a new initiative called the “courage and civility award,” a $100 million award so the recipient can give that money to a charity of their choice. Van Jones is the first recipient. pic.twitter.com/ZboaXTNYuX

— Joey Roulette (@joroulette) July 20, 2021

Bezos really needs to be chucked out of a helicopter

i just learned that his little "space" flight this morning lasted 11 minutes

I know rockets are phallic by design but come on

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/iDedHLpCQNbdQmJdXWN63P.jpeg

I figured there was already a thread for this which is why I didn't create a "Jeff Bezos launched himself into space on a dick" thread

the billionare version of a jacked up gmc sierra

elsewhere it says the recipient can give to charity or keep it. so he just gave a rich person money that they could just keep. what a guy.

if you told me at 18 i would live to see a second space race, except infinitely stupider than the first, i would have turned 40 in a day.

this is so silly it's honestly difficult for me to believe.

Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick
Fuck Jeff Bezos's dick

Presumably Bezo's rocket was designed with that particular shape so that it could neatly dock in the center of the ship from Battle Beyond the Stars.

https://www.monstersinmotion.com/cart/images/18SFP25_Nellship_02.jpg

oh my god! WHAT?

ilx posts with striking imagery

gotta love a man with a singular vision:

Jeff Bezos, hours after flying to space: "We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space. And keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is." https://t.co/MibdgfkTFd

— Axios (@axios) July 20, 2021

Is there a way to make all toilets flush directly into the troposphere

what an unbelievable asshole

“Oh my god, I’m in space! We should put all of our trash here!”

Good of Jeff to reinforce that he is That Neighbor

lol

I know "Bezos is a supervillain" jokes have been around a while, but like: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/20/jeff-bezos-space-travel-philosophy-500300

But Bezos, a billionaire who made his fortune building Amazon into a global online marketplace but has dreamed of space travel since he was a child, has said that he believes almost religiously that sustaining the human race will require building space colonies — beginning on the moon — where millions can live and work and develop new resources to meet growing demands on Earth.

He has described these as “very large structures, miles on end, and they hold a million people or more each.”

this reminds me of something but I can't quite put my finger on it...

as bezos himself said earlier today, he wouldn't have gotten to go there, to space, if it weren't for all of the amazon employees and customers.

he has us to thank

i would rather die than live on the moon with jeff bezos

what if offered you life & death on the moon in a massive structure you cannot leave and receives no sunlight, but JB will stay on earth?

only if there is a way to make him spend the rest of his days moving boxes around in a sweltering warehouse as we laugh at him from the moon

space
how high can you go
once again
what a magnate know

xp
a Wall-E sequel I could support

Excuse my (mostly) incurable optimism, but could two successful private space launches in 9 days be something all Americans rally around together?

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) July 20, 2021

another CNN person who loves jeff bezos. which is why i hate CNN and hate that my parents watch it several hours a day.

looooooooooool

it's time to rally behind our space barons

fuck me for spreading that term, sorry.

i was annoyed that the post kept referring to them as "Space Barons" in their recent headlines. then i looked into the term and realized the only person using the term "Space Barons" was the journalist, who had also recently written a book with the title "Space Barons" in it. and now i'm here spreading his dumb term. space baron.

we can call them "space knobs" instead

also lol @ Jim Sciutto invoking the American exceptionalism of... Richard Branson

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/41/8f/31/418f310896dc7dca4896e287d4d2bda8.jpg

i keep hearing people make the same joke -- "can jeff bezos *stay* in space!" -- and then chortling to themselves. this is more annoying to me than anything else, the impotent hatred of bezos that everyone has. and with everything like this, this hatred is really a self-hatred because i also despise amazon in a pointless way, cringing whenever one of those trucks drive by with the half-smiles, those fucking smirks.

thank u Amazon employees for pissing in bottles so Jeff can go play spaceman!!

Tapping the sign that sez: He didn’t technically even go to “space”.

Right.

thank u Amazon employees for pissing in bottles so Jeff can go play spaceman!!

Pretty incredible clip. “Thanks, schmucks.”

Jeff Bezos decided it would be a great idea to thank every Amazon employee and customer for 'paying' for his space flight.

It's hard to believe that someone can possibly be this out of touch. pic.twitter.com/hnmVjfDkH5

— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) July 20, 2021

cowboy hat

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YUd7InM5kKA/TaRn_S5zecI/AAAAAAAAAG0/pZIWLLPLaK0/s1600/Slim_Pickens_bomb_Dr_Strangelove.jpg

the way he laughs

it's so incredibly infantilizing to see all these powerful people / media institutions celebrate this. truly a new low. it makes me furious. i just can't imagine the average american dude, who isn't a fucking lizard, witnessing this and not desperately needing to wipe the floor with this asshole's face????? it makes 'let them eat cake' look like a thank you card.

i have been holding this inside because no one wants to hear how much i hate this person but i hate jen psaki so much

Psaki on Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin: "The United States is the first country to have private companies taking private individuals to space. This is a moment of American exceptionalism. That's how we see it."

— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) July 20, 2021

We must properly celebrate our multi-billionaires and their hobbies.

A sub-orbital flight... just like Alan Shepard did sixty years ago...

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Was even wondering if he said "fix your little problem and light this Kindle."

They're making a big fuss about his 'private company' but all those U.S rockets were built by Chrysler, McDonnell, etc... sixty years ago

a friend of mine posted this, based on an essay from author David Gerr0ld, and ugh, I wanna be sick. dude has been a great friend to me for years, is a Trump-hating liberal, but man, this is such.....*vomit*:

"I am fairly disappointed in some of you.
No, this is not me being snarky. I'm serious.

A lot of you love sci-fi movies, and stories about the future. And yet, some of you sound like you've all been programmed by John Birch Society, go back to the 1950s, this is not God's will, anti-technology luddites.
Yes, it's funny that the vehicle Jeff Bezos took to the edge of space looks like a penis.

But so many of you mocking him for it, as if the entire thing that he did ends now that he took his ride, and it was all for the gratification of a billionaire's ego.

Yes, he's an asshole. Yes, he should pay his workers better. Henry Ford was an anti-semite. Thomas Edison was a thief. Gene Roddenberry had a bunch of affairs. Guess what, sometimes the people who push our society forward are assholes.

This is not about the fact that a really rich dude did something selfish to show he had a big dick. Yes, that's part of it, but this thing doesn't end with him, and almost every one of you is missing that.

This is about the amazing possibility of space flight, and what it means for the journey that our species needs to take.
Even the most conservative estimates on NASA from the 1960s and 1970s show that every dollar spent on the space program brought back eight to ten dollars worth of investment in the rest of the economy.

You use any of these things?
Memory foam mattresses
Scratch resistant glasses
Baby formula
Dustbusters
UV blocking sunglasses
Radial tires
Freeze dried fruit
Foil blankets
Invisalign
Solar cells
Pool Purification Systems
Home Insulation
Wireless headphones
CAT Scans
Computer mice
Camera phones
Portable computers
GPS
oh, and yeah, THE INTERNET.

Thank the space program. None of those existed until NASA and their partners had to invent them.
(And note that there was tremendous criticism of the Apollo program at the time for wasting money.)
Look what's happened to our space program from the 1980s to the 2010s. Less progress, less dreams, less vision. Private industry, rather than government, with goals, is obviously a part of our future. We've seen just how badly the government handles long term vision, especially when the GOP runs it.

We needed public investment initially to get us over and through the dangerous beginnings in the truly massive investment at the beginning. But now that the technology is more available, private investment is where we will get the diversity of applications that public infrastructure does not bring. Or at least does not bring easily.
The great inventors and progressive forces of the past were also likely the "billionaires" of their time in many cases. They had the CAPACITY to create and achieve - however it was possible for them. The same is happening now.
Yes, space tourism will be a thing for the rich for a while, but so was air travel. Seriously, until the late 1960s it was prohibitively expensive for anyone but the very well off to fly. (The average person in the 1950s would pay up to 5% of his yearly salary for a chance to fly one way from NYC to Chicago.)

Having private industry investing in space will create competition to provide lower prices and increased services — and that will be a good thing in the long run, for everyone.

Having more access to space means we can have more access to scientific progress.
We can talk about employers paying a living wage and
billionaires paying their fair share of taxes. Those are all valid conversations to have.
But it's also important to recognize that when billionaires invest in grand projects like this, it's not just a dick-measuring contest, it's not just a giant thrill-ride, it's a genuine expression of human ambition.

When people are hurting to pay rent and you don't go to the doctor because of the cost, I get why this shit can make you mad.
It's easy to see it as wealth-flaunting. It's easy to resent it. Especially when the long-term benefits are still beyond this horizon. The benefits of the Apollo program weren't immediately obvious either.

But technology does trickle down. And as a result of our investment in space last century, we have tools available to us today that will make it possible to design and build a better future for ourselves and our children.

As Alvin Toffler noted in his book Future Shock, not only is the rate of change accelerating, but the rate of acceleration is accelerating. One small example: In less than 20 years, we have gone from NTSC to 4K television. Microprocessors have made most of our machines far more efficient. And our computers give us near-global communication skills. 20 years ago, we could imagine this stuff, but people had to design, develop, engineer, and market these advances. The smartphone is less than 15 years old, but we not only take it for granted, most of us can't live without it.

So ... yeah. The privatization of space is one more piece of evidence that our technological abilities are advancing at an incredible rate.
And one more thing.
"He needs to spend that money on Earth!"
Um, he did.

His company created thousands of jobs — designers, researchers, engineers, developers, testers, and all the support systems and people running them necessary to test and retest every piece of necessary technology. And that made it necessary for the creation of additional support systems to create the spaces for all these people to work, designing, developing, engineering, testing and retesting. All of those jobs were filled by qualified, dedicated people.

And they're not just doing it for joy rides. They're doing it to demonstrate that space is accessible.
Those jobs that they created, all that expertise will be applied to creating the next generations of reusable craft which will make access to orbit easier and less expensive. It will enable larger payloads. It will enable additional explorations of the moon and probably Mars as well. This is the foundation on which future development will be built.

I would have hoped that those of you who grew up watching Star Trek would see past the simple media narrative of rich guys = bad and recognize that progress is sometimes made by people we don't like. And be excited for what this could mean.

typical "ready, fire aim", moment, but perhaps I should ask for this thread to be deindexed

wow that is impressively incoherent and historically inaccurate even before you get to the woeful "and one more thing" bit

I don’t agree with your friend, but I do think they’re coherent. Unlike most people who make arguments in public, at least there’s a logic to it and footholds where you make points. Your friend references real life objects and people that I recognize too. I really appreciate that in their writing, even if it’s adapted from some author I don’t know.

They kind of sound like me in the early 2000s! in my default state, before I joined antifa, I might have said things like that.

we’re often angrier at the people that are closest to us, or the ideas that are relatively nearby to our own. I know your friend’s words seem a million miles from what you think, but a million miles from what you think is real, it’s a tv station with fascists on it barking disinformation at a bunch of people who don’t even understand that they’re the prey.

Astronauts didn't eat baby formula, they ate TANG!

in space tang eats you

Karl, I think I understand where you're coming from, but there can be more than multiple kinds of incoherence or disinformation.

i feel like this person is trying to resolve some cognitive dissonance he is feeling from his friends saying this is bad while he thinks rich guys going to space is cool. sort of a bedtime story.

haha, yeah i think you're right harbl!

xp rob i think you're right about multiple kinds, but there are also multiple degrees of incoherence. i think i may have spent too much time growing up around the worst kind, because this facebook friend seems like he would be the mayor of my hometown :-o

I myself really won't be impressed until Bezos launches a ICBM strike on Microsoft or Cosco.

I wrote an absurdly long post explaining my take that no one needs to read, so let me focus on what matters here: citing Star Trek in defense of your belief that space should be privatized is very irritating! I did skip a few Ferengi eps of DS9 though, so maybe I missed something

reminded me of the time in high school choir when we were impeaching our Choir President for not doing anything on the job all year and her best friend wrote into the choir newspaper decrying the action, stating MUTINY WASN'T GOOD FOR THE BOUNTY, AND IT ISN'T HERE EITHER!

that...might just be the least cool post I've ever made anywhere

https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/bezos-2-630x545.png

MAKE IT SO!

reminded me of the time in high school choir when we were impeaching our Choir President for not doing anything on the job all year and her best friend wrote into the choir newspaper decrying the action, stating MUTINY WASN'T GOOD FOR THE BOUNTY, AND IT ISN'T HERE EITHER!

― making splashes at Dan Flashes (Neanderthal), Thursday, July 22, 2021 7:31 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

l
m
a
o

that is solid gold

yeah, that is amazing! lol

also just the impeaching of the choir president in general

yeah you've definitely made less cool posts :)

the choir president had abandoned any pretenses of holding office with integrity. it was as if she thought she was above the job

lmao

impeachment failed btw. she kept her job.

outrage.

the choir having its own newspaper is too many levels of extracurricular activities

my friend was the editor (even though she was terrible at spelling and grammar and editing). still friends with her, now she's married with a kid and is a neurologist.

if only her supporters had staged a jan. 6 when the new choir president took office

*image of choir reading the Choir Times newspaper in the choir room*

Neanderthal, you should pitch this as a series

xxpost

"Onlookers called it the least threatening mob in recorded history"

look, we can try to impeach the choir president. again. we know what happened last time. it will fail again. i hate to use this tired phrase, but...i kind of feel like we're preaching to the--

reluctant lol

sponsored by MeMayMahMoMooveOn.org

loooooooooooooool Karl

Neanderthal, you should pitch this as a series

i would like it to be one of those series where episode 6 is entirely about the day there was a substitute choir teacher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulhz75reeAw

sponsored by MeMayMahMoMooveOn.org

Part of a historic bridge in the Netherlands will be dismantled so that a superyacht built for Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, can pass through the river that flows through Rotterdam, the city said on Thursday.

Netty Kros, a spokeswoman for the city of Rotterdam, said that the middle part of the 95-year-old Koningshaven Bridge would be removed this summer so that the sailing yacht could pass. The bridge, known locally as “De Hef,” will then be restored, potentially on the same day, she said.

Mr. Bezos’s yacht should be able to fit under all the other bridges in Rotterdam, Ms. Kros said. She did not have an estimate of how much the deconstruction would cost but said that the shipbuilder, not residents of Rotterdam, would pay.

There will not be any structural changes to the bridge, Ms. Kros said, adding that the city had to weigh the economic benefits of having the yacht built in Rotterdam and the jobs that would create.

posted this in the Amazon thread before I saw this. Jesus christ that last line :(

yeah I wasn't sure which thread was best for this depressing example of modern capitalism, lots of options!

what gets me is it is both a depressing example of modern capitalism and of almost comically feudalistic insanity

lords of the manor: the original job creators

yeah this sort of thing was par for the course for early modern royalty. like if the princess was travelling with her 250-person retinue it would simply be understood that if he had to a truly gracious host would dismantle an exterior wall in order to carry her bed into the best room of the house

It's really the fault of Rotterdam's founders for not anticipating that a future billionaire's mega-yacht might need to get through, sheesh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGhcSupkNs8