Branson, Bezos take a hop but NOT Musk

I don't understand the point of this post ?

 

Some people just like to fuss.
Sometimes they can also draw.

Branson, Bezos, AND Musk have all built companies, employed many thousands, paid their taxes and used some of their loot to try and "change the world" in their own ways.
Branson especially.
He might have won the 'lucky sperm' club by being born into the family of a wealthy barrister, but GOD knows he paid taxes, being a Brit!!
Sir Richard is worth more or less 5 giga-bucks, and if he wants to employ a bunch of folks to fulfill a lifelong dream and spark a conversation about where the Kármán line is, then he's earned the right, IMHO.
Even the ever prickly and never predictable Musk looked 'out there' to the bigger picture and personally and warmly congratulated him on his work.
As far as sheep-feeding, Rich started his first (of many) charities at the age of 17, and he's done some considerable philanthropic work in the years since. Unlike SOME I might name, on BOTH sides of the great political divide, HIS foundations do not appear to be used to launder political donations or for self enrichment.

Even Bezos and Musk, warts and all, have probably fed more families and made a more positive contribution to 'world hunger' than some political cartoonists I might think of.

Yeah, Bezos earned his ride too.


@bwilson4web and I probably agree on many, many, MANY more political issues that I ever would with the likes of Jeffery, Sir Richard or even Elon but one cannot argue that each of these will leave this world a little better than they found it when they're called before their Creator to give an accounting......

REAL WORLD mileage will vary.

 

Well...if I understand it correctly, Branson and Bezos are trying to build "space tourism" companies. Musk is not. So Branson and Bezos going into space as an 'example' certainly makes sense to me. Personally though...I think 'space tourism' is a dangerous road to go down. It will only be 'accepted' until the first accident/death.

I also view the entire planet as a 'spaceship'....because the entire solar system is, in fact, traveling through space. I just wish we would take better care of it.

 

That's not what happened when the first airliner crashed.
History geeks like myself like to point out some interesting (and tragic!) lessons that were learned when jet travel first started to become available to the <1% with BAE's he de Havilland DH.106 Comets, but the truth is that the earlier days of commercial air travel BEFORE that were pretty hazardous too.

Last time I checked, people are still flying across big ponds.
In fact our own @jerrymildred just got back from Togo.
It was a long flight, but TRUST ME it would have been a MUCH longer boat ride, speaking from personal experience!

...and BOATS were not always safe either!

My favorite USN Admiral once said that "Ships are safe in port, but that's not what ships are FOR!"
Me?
I don't think she was speaking about the ship itself, but rather those riding them.

YMMV

 

Strapping yourself to a huge rocket is far, far different than an airliner...lol. Frankly, comparing the two is absolutely silly.

Were you alive for the Challenger disaster? It effectively ended 'space tourism' for that era.

The lessons learned from the fatal Challenger shuttle disaster echo at NASA 35 years on | Space

 

YMMV

I was aboard my first submarine, returning from patrol, and manning the radar while we were on the surface.
Like most Americans, I knew about it while the orbiter was still in the air.
Our radio operator ran out of the shack with a P4 (personal-for the skipper) telling is to prepare to turn back around, since we happened to be in in a little conflict I like to call the Cold War at the time, and it wasn't initially clear why the vehicle failed.
The Shuttle programme was always a military gig, dressed up as a commercial enterprise, and with a large side order of science......just like it's predecessors.

Yeah.
I remember.

'Pends on what kind of 'era' you're talking about.
An era in geology is a time of several hundred million years.
Dennis Tito got his ride in a little less time than that.

Again.....it's a matter of perspective.
Orville Wright himself was severely injured in an airplane crash several years after the famous 'might have been a controlled flight' in '03....and his passenger was killed.
Despite that, the US Army would go on to become belatedly interested in slipping the surly bonds.

It's dangerous 'out there.'
If we, as a species, aren't prepared to deal with that then we should stay home and draw cartoons.

 

space doesn't represent hope for me. i see nothing out there but uninhabitable planets and etc. that would require more energy and labor than making earth more inhabitable.

i do like the science though, and see nothing wrong with them having different goals.

 

I can barely hack winters here; wouldn't appreciate absolute-zero and boiling blood.

come out and play...:

 

maybe that's why i'm old before my time...

 

Glad you remember...

Like I said..I really don't think of space as a place for 'tourism'. This is going to end badly and some point...sooner rather than later.

Also like I said...let's take care of our darn home first...which is our real 'spaceship'. Unfortunately, us humans haven't been doing that. Humans aren't the brightest bunch.

 

Or we're bright, but in the wrong way?

 

I respect that opinion, but it's important to remember that these folks (the billionaires) and their customers (most of whom are 'mere' millionaires) are not conscripts, but rather they are eager volunteers.
Paying customers, all.
It may also surprise many that the first terrestrial, aeronautical, bathymetric, and technological explorers were also followed by civilian 'tourists' if they were not in fact civilian "tourists" themselves.

Climate change is real.
Any devotee of Disney movies had known that since childhood, and while we may quibble amongst ourselves about the anthropogenic component, or (especially LATELY!) whether it would be wise to let dot.gov try to "solve" climate change......one thing is pretty sure to anyone with any passing knowledge of the universe.
If we're going to survive as a species, we're going to have to adapt.
Musk himself believes that if we're to survive then we're going to have to go multi-planet.

There's a short dozen things that could fundamentally change our own little planet that are completely independent of the activities of the insignificant primates that busy themselves upon its crust.
Adaptation TO these "changes" may take the form of mitigating against the next super volcano eruption, dynamically changing the table of our little solar system's ongoing billiards game, or studying our sun to predict the next Carrington++ Event.
Even studying some of the very small life forms here on Earth could be more useful...."up there."
It's a LOT harder to leave a door propped open on a space station!!

Absenting colonization, which is one of the traditionally more successful adaptation techniques, we're still going to have to leave this little mote to go "out there" if only to study our home from a more advantageous angle.

We can shake (more) money out of poor people's pockets in the form of confiscatory taxes, or we can let people with lots of commas in their bank accounts work out the hard expensive stuff on their own hook.
THAT way, when we loft cargo into space for more "serious" work, it will be a lot cheaper, AND the vehicles will be a little more reliable so that we don't have to suffer the same "success" rate as say......the Space Shuttle program, two orbiters of which (out of 6!) were involved in hull-loss accidents.

Seems kinda simple to ME, but the only thing I manufacture is dial tone......soon to be about as useful as a buggy whip or a whale-oil lamp.

 

That "ending of space tourism" 35 years ago, lasted only 15 years.

The ending, has itself ended.

 

are you breaking out the family album?

 

Sounds like you have it all figured out...haha.

You do have a point about 'paying customers'...but I'm still of the belief that once an 'accident' happens ( ship go boom ), it will really set the whole thing back. Of course, I'm sure the billionaires 'sign a waiver' before they do it.

On Musk...I really do think too many people follow him blindly. It's literally a C... Ok...I won't say the 'C' word out loud...because people around here don't seem to like that...but it's what I think and I'm sticking with it. I really respect Musk as a businessman...but some of his ideas are pretty far out there ( in MY opinion....ok? Don't roast me folks! ).

And I'm real glad Musk wants to go 'multi planet'...just dandy. However, my point again is...I'd much rather have billionaires spend at least *some* of the money on taking care the earth before getting too excited about going 'multi planet'. But I suppose that's not cool enough for them?

 

Earth will eventually become uninhabitable by natural action, if we don't ruin it first by our own actions. If our descendants don't move on to other places, they will perish, by baking or by vaporization.

Though that path to earthly demise is still a very long way off. We will need quite a lot of time to figure out where to go, how to get there, and to build up the technological and economic resources to do so. Avoiding self destruction is still a much more immediate priority than this natural destruction.

 

Nonsense