{"id":302840,"date":"2021-07-19T21:55:38","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T18:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/bezos-flight-is-an-ego-trip-but-it-sets-the-stage-for-much-more\/"},"modified":"2021-07-19T21:55:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T18:55:38","slug":"bezos-flight-is-an-ego-trip-but-it-sets-the-stage-for-much-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/bezos-flight-is-an-ego-trip-but-it-sets-the-stage-for-much-more\/","title":{"rendered":"#Bezos’ flight is an ego trip, but it sets the stage for much more"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Bezos’ flight is an ego trip<\/a>, but it sets the stage for much more<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Tuesday morning, Jeff Bezos is scheduled to take off for outer space. Showing faith in his engineers, he will ride the first passenger flight of his space company Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket. With him will go, among others, the oldest and youngest people ever to fly into space. (Bezos, of course, will be the richest.)<\/p>\n

Many dismiss this as just a billionaire\u2019s ego trip, the next step beyond superyachts and private jets. But there\u2019s much more going on here than ego.<\/p>\n

As I wrote in my recent book, \u201cAmerica\u2019s New Destiny in Space<\/a>,\u201d we\u2019re now in the third phase of human spaceflight. In the first \u201cvisionary\u201d phase, people wrote, planned and dreamed, but only small rockets, a la Robert Goddard\u2019s, got off the ground. In the second, \u201ccommand economy\u201d phase, governments got involved and built spaceships, space stations and moon rockets.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff
Jeff Bezos inside his Blue Origin space capsule.<\/figcaption>
REUTERS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The command economy phase proved the visionaries right about what could be done, but it was very expensive. When the political reasons for going into space shrank, so did the budgets.<\/p>\n

But now Bezos, along with fellow billionaires Elon Musk of SpaceX and Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic, and other companies like RocketLab and Sierra Nevada, are moving us into the third phase: the sustainable phase. That\u2019s when spaceflight generates enough revenue to pay for itself.<\/p>\n

\"Richard
Richard Branson floating inside his spaceship in outer space on July 15, 2021.<\/figcaption>
Virgin Galactic<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These companies are already earning money in varying degrees \u2014 Musk even created a customer for SpaceX in his Starlink satellite internet service \u2014 and bid fair to become profitable in time.<\/p>\n

Driving down costs is key. SpaceX has already dropped the price of getting a pound to orbit by a factor of 20; Musk promises that his new rocket will drop it again by a factor of better than 10. It takes roughly the same amount of energy to get from New York to London as it does to fly from the Earth to orbit. The reason it\u2019s cheaper to fly to London is that we\u2019ve had a lot more practice. As aircraft manufacturers and airlines competed, the technology<\/a> got better and more efficient. Competition among space companies will do the same.<\/p>\n

\"Elon
Elon Musk continues to promise cheaper space travel.<\/figcaption>
ALEXANDER BECHER\/EPA-EFE\/Shutter<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Harvard\/Smithsonian astrophysicist Martin Elvis noted in his recent book \u201cAsteroids,\u201d there\u2019s a lot of wealth out there to be gathered, if you\u2019ve got the technology to gather it: everything from asteroids full of valuable materials, to solar energy that\u2019s much stronger and easier to gather than it is on Earth (the Chinese are working on this, as are we). Again, we just need to improve our ability to get there. Practice and competition are the keys, and Bezos\u2019 flight is part of that process. This is much more than just a space superyacht.<\/p>\n

Plus, a message to Elon Musk: Don\u2019t emulate Bezos and Branson by flying yourself. Unlike them, you\u2019re irreplaceable in your company. Stay on the ground \u2014 and send me instead!<\/p>\n

\"Elon
Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX successfully launched its Starship SN-8 test rocket on December 9, 2020 \u2014 before it crash landed.<\/figcaption>
Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glenn H. Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, has written numerous books on space and space law.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Bezos’ flight is an ego trip, but it sets the stage for much more” Tuesday morning, Jeff Bezos is scheduled to take off for outer space. Showing faith in his engineers, he will ride the first passenger flight of his space company Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket. With him will go, among others, the oldest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":302841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/bezos-space-ego-oped-03.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[112185,39394,71631,4947,70886,5019,112242],"class_list":["post-302840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-19-21","tag-elon-musk","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-opinion","tag-richard-branson","tag-space","tag-space-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}