I disagree that we should deride rich people for spending money the way they want. I splurge on things sometimes as well. Unlike a lot of modern social media, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about being wealthy.
If someone has an argument about what these specific people did that was specifically immoral to achieve their wealth, then they should call that out specifically and suggest a systemic change.
I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
And I say all this even not being a fan of the way Bezos has sometimes falsely claimed credit for “firsts” that were not really firsts, like when they landed a rocket (propulsive landing) while pretending that SpaceX had not done so in a much more challenging way already.
> I find the mindless rich-people-hate to be nothing more than juvenile hate.
maybe it's the fact that a small school's population of people own 60% of all wealth on earth that gives these vanity shows of wealth a bad taste in their mouths.
To rephrase: I felt that the entire flight was a bit underwhelming, and that it felt more like an amusement park ride (with a very expensive ticket price) than an actual spaceflight with astronauts, even though it was communicated that way.
He could hire the smartest people in the world to work on breakthrough propulsion, SETI, blue sky physics, and computing research. The money would barely be a rounding error in his wealth.
He could fund the greatest space observatories in history, fund game changing contributions to cancer research, genomics, and other experimental medicine, and set up international STEM education programs.
Instead he builds a toy rocket that looks like a penis and goes on a 2 minute joyride to the edge of space. And something something space hotels, maybe.
It's debatable if it's evil. But it's certainly lacking ambition and boring.
He's the richest man on earth - who started one of the biggest and most successful companies on the planet, I'd say he had plenty of ambition. Excuse him for having a little fun. "He could do this, that and the other thing." Well thank you for telling him what he should/could do with his money. You know what, why don't you go start a company with a 1.8T market cap, and you can do all these noble things. All you need is some ambition to do something less boring, right?
This has rapidly become my least favorite neologism.
As for Bezos, he also started the $10 billion Earth Fund to support climate change solutions. He could do a lot more, but he can't do it all at once; most of his wealth is in Amazon stock, and if he sold it all at once then it wouldn't be worth $200B anymore.
I assume his future rockets can launch space telescopes, although they have spent 7 years not getting their engines to work.
Its not; the ambition is commercial ambition (which given Bezos shouldn't be surprising), but its certainly present.
Why?
Is it ok if I deride people who molest their own kids? I mean, it's how they choose to spend their time, who am I to judge right?
The way society works is by deciding collectively what's ok, and that's decided based on people's tastes.
My tastes are that no small group of people should have power over large groups of people without their ongoing consent. Any system that isn't like that is garbage and anyone interested in power over other people is human garbage.
Today's society is wage slavery in developed countries, colonialism and barbarism everywhere else - it is garbage and anyone with a modicum of power doing anything but attempting to change the status quo is clueless or human garbage.
Why would wage slaves not resent their masters, or people colonized, not resent colonialists? Anything but deep resentment and derision is surprising, frankly.
It's nowhere near orbit. Orbit is about 10km of delta-v, then there's the reentry problem.
Reaching the Karman line is about 2km of delta-v.
I very much doubt Blue Origin intends to freeze rocket development after this launch.
Blue Origin now has a successful manned flight under their belt, and a revenue stream.
While it might surprise some here, Amazon started by selling just books...
It feels like similar attitude comments on that would have been "They'll never compete with Walmart. Real retail stores sell all kinds of things."
As a company that started a year before SpaceX and funded by the richest man in the world, the company should have no problem with being aggressive.
Yes, walk before you run. SpaceX did this too, but their leadership has a sense of urgency. Blue Origin don't.
New Glenn would be great if it existed. As it stands it's likely to be eclipsed by Starship. B.O. are going to have to change into a whole new gear if they want to compete. I have far more confidence in rocketlab scaling upwards from electron than in Blue Origin scaling anywhere.
Walking is a precursor to running, though.
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's current spacecraft are dead-ends. They can't ever go to orbit. New Glenn can, but it's vaporware thus far; if it sees a development schedule like New Shepard's there'll be a SpaceX Mars base before it manages its first hop.
Eh... that's not really true, it's about 1.45x the revenue, not 2x. And that's not the whole picture.
Revenue for 2020:
Walmart: $559 billion
Amazon: $386 billion
Walmart: $20.6 billion
Amazon: $22.9 billion
Walmart: $15.2/14.9 billion
Amazon: $22.1/21.3 billiona. Amazon solves brick and mortar b. Walmart solves online sales.
Given the way things are going with Amazon essentially throwing in the towel with counterfeit reviews and products, I would put my money on Walmart eating Amazon's lunch this decade.
Don't forget political influence as well. Walmart has a large fraction of congress on bankroll.
I don't think you understand just how insignificant the counterfeit issue is. Amazon reports it as 0.01% of sales, but even they're off by a factor of 100 that's just 1%. And 1% of their .com revenue is still less than 0.5% of their overall revenue because most of Amazon's profits come from AWS.
> Amazon solves brick and mortar
What is there to solve? Amazon has a logistics infrastructure that Walmart can't touch. If they decided to open a big box store do you really thing the counterfeit issues in their affiliate program would harm them? It's not like they'd put affiliate merchandise on the floor. I feel like they could figure out how to unload trucks to retail shelves and do in person payment processing at least as well as Walmart.
> Walmart solves online sales.
Walmart has been competing with Amazon in online sales for a decade, how's that going? Walmart has nothing to compete with Amazon's Audible, Echo, Ring, Blink, or Prime offerings. Sure they have free shipping with Walmart+ and an affiliate program but is that enough? They've tried countless times to compete against Amazon and failed, most recently they sold Vudo off. At the same time Amazon has launched countless brands and new products with great success.
Amazon.com's tone deaf Billionaire founder and their treatment of their workers are a far greater risk to them than Walmart. But bad reputation and consumer dislike aren't going to kill Amazon anymore than they've done so with Walmart who has infamy for destroying both small town America and America's manufacturing infrastructure.
Honestly I'm not sure why you'd want either of these companies to succeed.
I said "about" 2x. Ok, about doing some heavy lifting, so it's closer to about 1.5 for 2020, during a pandemic. What's a typical year? Ah but you are so focused on technically correct, you missed the forest for the trees. My point still remains. The gulf between what Amazon sells and Walmart sells is so wide, it's hardly seen as "competing". Amazon themselves have admitted to this fact (and have used this fact to shield themselves from anti-competitive legislation. One of their favorite moves is to point at Walmart and say "they are the big guys, not us") So these are just established facts, not moving any sort of goal posts. I am not here to defend a thesis or dissertation, we are having a casual conversation on the internet.
I guess you must be one of those guys who demands zero margin of error in their conversations? If so, you must be fun at parties.
> Honestly I'm not sure why you'd want either of these companies to succeed.
Speaking of fallacies, never did I say I want them to succeed, so here's your straw man back. I am observing the reality of what is, and what is likely to happen.
Your supporting arguments include counterfeiting and soon to be dead politicians as reasons why Amazon will fail but are reality based observations about what's likely to happen?
Also if you don't think Amazon/Bezos has any political sway then you're not paying attention to what's been happening with Pentagon or NASA contracts.
Walmart's affiliate program allows them to cater to the long tail market that Amazon has long dominated but that alone isn't going to convince people to switch to Walmart.com. Why not go to Ebay or Newegg instead?
Walmart+ costs 2/3 of Amazon Prime but doesn't offer any of the digital services available like Audiobooks, ebooks, Videos, Music, Gaming, and photo storage/backup. For many those services are more valuable than free shipping or pharmacy discounts.
What does Walmart.com offer that's going to convince people to shop their over Amazon, Newegg, Ebay or other online retailers?
While Amazon has stores for all regions of the world that count.
You don't need to go all the way around to have a story. Low earth orbit is apparently around 84 minutes per revolution. There's a lot of space in the middle for ballistic orbits of 5-15 minutes, right?
We got in a rocket in Texas and had a light dinner on a yacht off Morocco 90 minutes later.
For a 2,400km downrange though you'd need 4.2k of delta-v (a Thor IRBM). You'll be reaching a 450km apogee too. Forget Hawaii and Morocco, you won't even make Seattle from Dallas.
You'll need 5.6k to get to places like Hong Kong and Israel, with an apogee of 1500km. That's 3 times the New Shepard.
(delta-v calc from https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABM/DeltaV_BMs.htm)
I'm sure there is some innovation coming out of this, but compared to the insane progress of SpaceX it's super underwhelming.