Watching Jeff Bezos Go to Space Was More Depressing Than Inspiring

Re:Watching Jeff Bezos Go to Space Was More Depressing Than ... by taway_scott on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @03:04AM (#27903180)

Sure if you want to be pedantic. My response to the parent comment was more around trying to provide a possible answer to a natural question of "Why spend so much money on anything new while there are several million problems to be solved on Earth?".

And I don't think 50-70 miles is going to be the norm. This is more of a "test" flight, which is pretty normal. Everything has to start somewhere with a baby step.

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Re:Watching Jeff Bezos Go to Space Was More Depressing Than ... by input_sh on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @03:50AM (#27903518)

> And I don't think 50-70 miles is going to be the norm.

It is going to be for the foreseeable future, and I'll tell you two reasons why:

1. FAA and USAF considers everyone that's been above 50 miles (~62 kilometres) as an astronaut.

2. Von Karman line (at 100 kilometres, or 62 miles) is the closest we have to the consensus over what constitutes "space".

We could've drawn it pretty much everywhere because Earth's atmosphere disappears gradually, but these are nice round numbers previously agreed upon.

Therefore, if you're after commercial space flights (like Bezos and Branson are), that's the minimum you need to do to be able to charge millions for a "space flight". There is no incentive to go above that for commercial purposes.

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