Billionaires Blast off

[Canard DuJour]

I think it's greatly underestimated. Neoliberalism, which has transformed society, wouldn't have happened without them.

Most of them want to go to space, clean up the oceans, support the arts, and etc.

They also like buying policies which restrict public spending and create vast inequality so that our ability to do these things becomes subject to their whims. Which is morally repugnant, not to mention dangerous.

Wow. If they are using their vast wealth to restrict public spending, then they are incredibly weak! Not sure if you've noticed, but public spending has exploded in the US!

Yep, because cutting public spending does not reduce the debt to GDP ratio. The tax cuts the rich have secured for themselves, OTOH, tend to increase it.

Public spending programmes like interstate highway systems and Apollo have positive fiscal multipliers, i.e. pay for themselves and then some in GDP. Tax cuts for the rich do not.

But govts have been redirecting the money supply to the 'supply side' of demand-constrained economies since ~1980 at the behest of the rich. And it's been stubbornly not working. Govts end up paying ever more to support people who are actually employed by the likes of Bezos.

 

[barbos]

I watched it.
My only complain is Blue Origin not being metric.

See? Even the Russians are blasé about it.
Not like the day they "lost" the race to the moon.
I wanna puke.

And I learned a new word. A great day.

 

[lpetrich]

Blue Origin | Home - Replay - New Shepard First Human Flight - YouTube

I watched the later part of it.

The capsule was named RSS First Step.
37:09 (T-0:54:25) - looks like some transparent hatch is closed, a hatch with a vent in the middle.
48:02 (T-0:45:00 and holding) - Jeff Bezos and his fellow astronauts enter a Rivian SUV.
54:20 (T-0:40:54) - after a 2-mile trip, the car reaches the launchpad and stops near it.
55:43 (T-0:39:33) - they get out, look at the launchpad, then return to their car.
56:43 (T-0:38:42) - after a short drive, they stop again, close to the crew tower. They then climb the tower.
59:01 (T-0:36:16) - they enter a small room at the top of the tower.
1:02:15 (T-0:33:01) - inside that room, an astronaut shelter
1:04:01 (T-0:31:15) - they leave that room, ring a bell, cross a bridge to the capsule, then get inside
1:07:10 (T-0:28:06) - they are all inside with a Blue Origin support person (?) That earlier hatch is gone.
1:14:31 (T-0:20:45) - the support people have closed the capsule's hatch
1:20:17 (T-0:15:00 and holding)
1:28:13 (T-0:14:59)
1:31:56 (T-0:11:15) - go/no-go poll of the Mission Control people
1:33:06 (T-0:10:05) - they all agree: go
1:41:06 (T-0:02:05) - retraction of the capsule bridge. The rocket is in auto-sequence
1:43:11 (T+00:00) - engine start
1:43:18 (T+00:09) - rocket release

1:45:32 (T+02:21) - MECO (main engine cutoff)
z = 189,000 ft, 36 mi, 58 km
z' = 2168 mph, 3489 km/h, 969 m/s

About 30 seconds later, the booster rocket and the capsule separate

About 1 minute later, the capsule crosses the von Karman line

1:47:14 (T+04:03) - the booster reached apogee
z = 351,000 ft, 67 mi, 107 km

1:47:56 (T+4:44) - "One minute warning"
(booster)
z = 324,000 ft, 61 mi, 99 km
-z' = 808 mph, 1300 km/h, 361 m/s

A minute later, the capsule and the booster start getting farther and farther apart

1:49:22 (T+06:11) - the booster reaches maximum descent speed
(booster)
z = 95,000 ft, 18 mi, 29 km
-z' = 2597 mph, 4179 km/h, 1161 m/s

1:50:35 (T+07:23) - the booster successfully lands

1:50:55 (T+07:44) - on-screen tracking switches to the capsule
z = 18,700 ft, 3.5 mi, 5.7 km
-z' = 251 mph, 404 km/h, 112 m/s

1:51:33 (T+08:22) - the three drogue parachutes deployed
z = 6024 ft, 1.14 mi, 1.84 km
-z' = 186 mph, 299 km/h, 83 m/s

1:52:01 (T+08:50) - the three main parachutes deployed
z = 2066 ft, 0.39 mi, 0.63 km
-z' = 16 mph, 26 km/h, 7.2 m/s

1:53:30 (T+10:18) - the capsule successfully lands

The rest of the video featured family members and a Blue Origin crew going out to meet the capsule. The astronauts departs from it and they were welcomed back.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

That spacecraft looks like a giant dildo. They should have named it Son of Steely Dan.

 

[lpetrich]

 Robert H. Goddard - highest altitude of his rockets was 2.6 km, in 1937.

 V-2 rocket -  V-2 sounding rocket -  List of V-2 test launches

On 1946 Oct 10, a V-2 reached the maximum altitude achieved by that rocket, 173.8 km.

 V-2 No. 13 reached 105 km / 65 mi / 344,000 ft and took the first picture of our planet from outer space. Wikipedia has  Timeline of first images of Earth from space

 X-15 Flight 91 - the highest altitude of a spaceplane launched from an airplane, 107.96 km, on 1963 Aug 22.

Blue Origin on Twitter: "Key Mission Stats from #NSFirstHumanFlight:
Crew capsule apogee: 347,563 ft AGL / 351,210 ft MSL (105 km AGL / 107 km MSL)
Booster apogee: 347,188 ft AGL / 350,835 ft MSL (105 km AGL / 106 km MSL)
Elapsed mission time: 10:10
Max ascent velocity: 2,233 mph (3,595 km/h)" / Twitter

 New Shepard - the booster, a H2-O2 rocket.


So Richard Branson hasn't beaten the X-15's record, and Jeff Bezos hasn't beaten the V-2's record.

 

[TSwizzle]

I watched the launch live on the news this morning and I thought it was kinda cool and interesting. I would have been terrified throughout. Something else for the super rich to launder spend their money on rather than yachts, helicopters and English Premier League football teams.

 

[lpetrich]

The first Americans to make it into outer space went up in  Project Mercury

The first two Americans in space went into space on suborbital trajectories with a single-stage booster:  Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle - just like Jeff Bezos.

• Alan Shepard - 1961 May 5 - max altitude 188 km / 117 mi - max speed 8,262 km/h / 5,134 mph
• Virgil "Gus" Grissom - 1961 Jul 21 - max altitude 190 km / 118 mi - max speed 8,317 km/h / 5,168 mph

Much greater than Jeff Bezos's flight.

 

[Elixir]

The first Americans to make it into outer space went up in  Project Mercury

The first two Americans in space went into space on suborbital trajectories with a single-stage booster:  Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle - just like Jeff Bezos.

• Alan Shepard - 1961 May 5 - max altitude 188 km / 117 mi - max speed 8,262 km/h / 5,134 mph
• Virgil "Gus" Grissom - 1961 Jul 21 - max altitude 190 km / 118 mi - max speed 8,317 km/h / 5,168 mph

Much greater than Jeff Bezos's flight.

Largely because it was "OUR" accomplishment, not J. Paul Getty's.
(And Yuri Gagarin was scaring the crap out of us.)

 

[lpetrich]

 List of human spaceflights -  Yuri Gagarin -  Vostok 1

His flight was one orbit, and he exited orbit with a retrorocket burn, so it was a real orbit and not an almost-orbit suborbital flight.

Altitude: 181 * 327, period: 89.1 min

World record

The FAI rules in 1961 required that a pilot must land with the spacecraft to be considered an official spaceflight for the FAI record books.[13]:283 Although some contemporary Soviet sources stated that Gagarin had parachuted separately to the ground,[56] the Soviet Union officially insisted that he had landed with the Vostok; the government forced the cosmonaut to lie in press conferences, and the FAI certified the flight. The Soviet Union did not admit until 1971 that Gagarin had ejected and landed separately from the Vostok descent module.[13]:283

When Soviet officials filled out the FAI papers to register the flight of Vostok 1, they stated that the launch site was Baykonur at 47°22′00″N 65°29′00″E. In reality, the launch site was near Tyuratam at 45°55′12.72″N 63°20′32.32″E, 250 km (160 mi) to the south west of Baykonur. They did this to try to keep the location of the Space Center a secret.[13]:284 In 1995, Russian and Kazakh officials renamed Tyuratam Baikonur.

FAI -  Fédération Aéronautique Internationale

So by that standard, both Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos beat Yuri Gagarin. Also Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom.

 

[Trausti]

Heh. The African-American billionaire whose company has been most consequential for private space flight has yet take the trip himself. Failed the drug test, apparently.

 

[Bomb#20]

It was better decades ago, but the gulf between the super rich and the rest of us has been growning out of all proportion, economically, morally, ethically, and the trend shows no sign of improving.

What has been happening is indefensible.

Inequality is decreasing.

(Source: https://www.nber.org/papers/w15433.pdf)

Your graph is deceptive. It doesn't represent the true picture. It doesn't account for both relative and absolute terms;

quote;
''When measured in relative terms, global inequality has been decreasing. However, in absolute terms it has been increasing. ... While it remains vital to continue reducing the global incidence of poverty, inequality has risen both in international and national agendas.''

''For instance, if incomes for all people (or households) increase by 10%, inequality would not be affected. However, a 10% rise for a millionaire is much more money than a 10% rise for someone who has very little to begin with. Therefore, it also makes sense to measure inequality in absolute terms and/or using so-called centrist measures, which are a combination of absolute and relative indices.''

If decades ago I was making $1000 a year and you were making $2000 a year, but now after a lot of economic development, today I'm making $50000 a year and you're making $60000 a year, then yes, "in absolute terms it has been increasing". Well, in the first place, no normal person would perceive the current situation as more unequal -- our lives are a lot more alike today than they were back decades ago when I was living on $3 a day while you were living on $6 a day. And in the second place, why is the increase in so-called "absolute terms" a problem? Explain to me in what way "It was better decades ago". That's ludicrous. It was worse decades ago, in every way, obviously.

The so-called "Absolute Gini" (which I'm pretty sure Professor Gini had nothing to do with) is typically defined as the Gini coefficient times the mean income. The Gini coefficient falling while the "Absolute Gini" is rising simply means inequality is falling at the same time incomes are rising even faster. So the same information on your chart could have been shown by superimposing the graph of rising incomes on top of the graph of falling inequality. That would show us two very "defensible" graphs. And you call my graph deceptive. Can you explain the mathematical reasoning that implies "defensible" plus "defensible" equals "indefensible"?

The "Absolute Gini" index is a stellar example of "How to Lie with Statistics".

 

[Bomb#20]

Does anyone else find themselves secretly hoping that one of them explodes?
...

I kinda do hope for that.

I see modern manned space flight as immoral. It's horribly inefficient, given current propulsion systems. One could give a million kids vaccination and mosquito nets instead of giving a big company the resources to send someone into space for a thrill.

It costs less than making Marvel Comics movies. And provides more of a thrill. Do you regard Marvel Comics movies as immoral and hope someone is killed in production?

There was somebody here a few years back who posted about how immoral it was for people to spend resources on medical care for their dogs and cats when there were humans going without. He also said he enjoyed "MacGruber" so much he was going to go see it a second time. Don't be that guy.

That's not the same as sending manned missions to the Space Station. Those can be justified by the knowledge collected, somewhat.

What knowledge that couldn't be gotten cheaper on Earth or with unmanned missions? The Space Station is a vanity project too, just of countries instead of individuals.

But, yeah, if one of those vehicles blew up like Challengers did it would probably be worth losing a billionaire or two. Other billionaires would be less likely to invest the resources of the Human Family in a thrill ride, which I see as a moral outcome.

Yeah, I kinda hope one blows up.

The practice of viewing an individual's private property as "the resources of the Human Family" doesn't have a great track record at providing kids with vaccination and mosquito nets; what it has a great track record at is creating famines, megamurders, and police-states that people will risk their lives to escape from.

 

[TomC]

The scale of power, wealth and status has now well and truly shifted in favour of the super rich.

That's all.

And so we should prevent Branson launching himself into space by taxing all his wealth into oblivion because....

There's a huge grey area between the status quo and "tax all his wealth into oblivion..."

I'm in favor of somewhere in that grey area.
Tom

 

[Trausti]

The scale of power, wealth and status has now well and truly shifted in favour of the super rich.

That's all.

And so we should prevent Branson launching himself into space by taxing all his wealth into oblivion because....

There's a huge grey area between the status quo and "tax all his wealth into oblivion..."

I'm in favor of somewhere in that grey area.
Tom

Spending personal wealth to create aerospace jobs?

 

[Bomb#20]

Rightly or wrongly, GINI is usually measured WITHIN one country. Looking at Worldwide GINI may be a very good idea, but it is confusing and intellectually dishonest to quote world-wide GINI without explicitly labeling it as such.

That's ridiculous. DBT didn't say the gulf between the super rich Australians and the rest of us Australians has been growing out of all proportion;...

He didn't say anything about Australia at all. And in the context of a discussion about billionaires, the relevant polity is the US, home to most of the world's billionaires (including two of the three who are engaged in the 'space race', and to plenty of genuinely poor people.

You're making my point for me. If he'd been talking about within-country inequality, which country? The US? He's not an American. He said "the gulf between the super rich and the rest of us" not "the gulf between the super rich and the rest of Americans", so he obviously meant to include himself. Well, how the bejesus can anyone figure "the rest of us" includes DBT but doesn't include poor Chinese people? A Gini chart that wasn't cherry-picked clean of poor Chinese people is the only reasonable kind to use.

<US & British Gini charts snipped>

Since those charts show a rise when in fact inequality is falling, they can't be measuring inequality. They're indicating not that the gap between rich and poor is rising, but rather that richer and poorer people live in the same country more often than they used to. Single-country Gini charts are not measurements of inequality; they're measurements of street-address. DBT says the trend is unethical and indefensible. Well, what's unethical and indefensible about changing the geographical distribution of income in the process of reducing world-wide poverty? Ethically, what difference does it make whether a poor person is in Britain or China?

Poor Chinese people may be an issue, but it's not one likely to be resolved by US or UK taxes, which will inevitably help poor Americans and poor Britons (respectively) disproportionately.

Indeed. The inequality issue is trending to resolve on its own without raising US/UK taxes; the issue that isn't trending to resolve on its own is the street address issue. DBT says the trend is unethical and indefensible; well, why is street address an ethical issue?

Though having more money in the pockets of poor Americans and Britons will arguably help poor Chinese people more than having that money in the hands of billionaires.

Back when within-country inequality in the US and UK were less and "it was better decades ago", that evidently didn't help poor Chinese a whole lot.

After all, it's not the billionaires who buy all the mass-produced Chinese tat at Walmart.

Um, yes, it is. That tat is at Walmart because Sam Walton's multi-billionaire heirs buy it from the Chinese.

 

[Elixir]

Since those charts show a rise when in fact inequality is falling, they can't be measuring inequality. They're indicating not that the gap between rich and poor is rising, but rather that richer and poorer people live in the same country more often than they used to..

I see it as talking around the fact that the American standard of living is becoming more in line with the rest of the world, by decreasing the SoL for most people and concentrating wealth among a very few. All the while other countries have raised their standard of living. Yes, overall globally I think it's fair to say that inequality is decreasing, as was obviously coming to those who grew up in the Mayberry/Leave it to Beaver 50s.

That's not our problem though, if there is one.

 

[DBT]

Your graph is deceptive. It doesn't represent the true picture. It doesn't account for both relative and absolute terms;

quote;
''When measured in relative terms, global inequality has been decreasing. However, in absolute terms it has been increasing. ... While it remains vital to continue reducing the global incidence of poverty, inequality has risen both in international and national agendas.''

''For instance, if incomes for all people (or households) increase by 10%, inequality would not be affected. However, a 10% rise for a millionaire is much more money than a 10% rise for someone who has very little to begin with. Therefore, it also makes sense to measure inequality in absolute terms and/or using so-called centrist measures, which are a combination of absolute and relative indices.''

If decades ago I was making $1000 a year and you were making $2000 a year, but now after a lot of economic development, today I'm making $50000 a year and you're making $60000 a year, then yes, "in absolute terms it has been increasing". Well, in the first place, no normal person would perceive the current situation as more unequal -- our lives are a lot more alike today than they were back decades ago when I was living on $3 a day while you were living on $6 a day. And in the second place, why is the increase in so-called "absolute terms" a problem? Explain to me in what way "It was better decades ago". That's ludicrous. It was worse decades ago, in every way, obviously.

The so-called "Absolute Gini" (which I'm pretty sure Professor Gini had nothing to do with) is typically defined as the Gini coefficient times the mean income. The Gini coefficient falling while the "Absolute Gini" is rising simply means inequality is falling at the same time incomes are rising even faster. So the same information on your chart could have been shown by superimposing the graph of rising incomes on top of the graph of falling inequality. That would show us two very "defensible" graphs. And you call my graph deceptive. Can you explain the mathematical reasoning that implies "defensible" plus "defensible" equals "indefensible"?

The "Absolute Gini" index is a stellar example of "How to Lie with Statistics".

It's not the only indicator. The deception lies within the limitations of your graph, for the given reasons. Wages for ordinary workers have been stagnating for decades in Australia, the US and other developed nations, even while the high end of town has enjoyed gains in leaps and bounds.

 

[Ford]

Well, I'd say the issue is far broader and deeper than Branson and his flight to the edge of space.

Anyone who was around and awake in 1969 knows how much deeper and broader. The difference is quite palpable.
Landing on/walking on the moon was the culmination of 10+ years of national co-operative effort, and it was a success that in one moment united hippies and cops, liberals, conservatives and a-politicals, intellectuals and line workers. There was a collective sense of accomplishment and pride that these private ventures will never approach. By contrast, this Bozos in Space mini-series is mere pablum for relatively disinterested masses.

I was around, and awake, but I was four, so I had to go to bed pretty early.

The big difference now is that we're just not doing that stuff anymore. At least not to the scale of landing on the Moon. And with the exception of Apollo 13, the public was not exactly captivated with the later missions on the same level. The viewership dropped, the program was ended, and our next big adventure into space was arguably a lot less ambitious. Now when it comes to manned space flight, we've farmed it all out to the Russians (until now), because the public support was just not there anymore. The "collective sense of accomplishment and pride" faded. NASA has been doing some great things - like flying a helicopter on Mars - but the percentage of the public that even knows about it, let alone cares? Minimal. People aren't excited about space travel anymore. Oh, some of us are, but the general population could not give a sub-orbital fuck.

So if some rich assholes give the relatively disinterested masses some pablum, and get another generation of kids thinking "maybe someday I'll get to go into space," that's a good thing. Would it be better if a President gave a stirring speech like Kennedy and personally pushed to make the next great leap into space happen? Yes.

That's not happening. Will these private adventures match the accomplishment of the first Moon landing? No, but in the total absence of a "national co-operative effort," it's all we've got.


p.s. During that "national co-operative effort," aerospace companies made a metric fuck-ton of money off their government contracts. The Saturn V rockets and the Space Shuttle were not built by charities. Shareholders, executives, board members, etc. of these companies made a mint at taxpayers' expense in the noble quest to land men on the Moon.

 

[DBT]

Here's an interesting article by Charles Creitz | Fox News

''Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, thanked his employees and customers on Tuesday for subsidizing his Blue Origin spaceflight, during which he and three others spent 11 minutes inside the "New Shepard" capsule after lifting off from the desert in Van Horn County, Texas.

" want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this. So seriously, for every Amazon customer out there, and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart, very much. It’s very appreciated," said a cowboy hat-sporting Bezos upon returning to Earth with his fellow passengers, younger brother Mark Bezos; aviation pioneer Mary Wallace "Wally" Funk, 82, and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen.

The New Shepard, named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, took off on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the automated capsule reached an altitude of about 66 miles, more than 10 miles higher than Virgin founder Richard Branson’s July 11 ride. The 60-foot (18-meter) booster accelerated to Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound to get the capsule high enough, before separating and landing upright.

Upon his return to terra firma, Bezos was roasted by critics for his comments thanking customers for the reported $5.5 billion cost of the Blue Origin endeavor.'

The New York Daily News reported that the ticket cost for one seat on Tuesday's flight was $28 million, with the Big Apple publication remarking a New Yorker could buy 5.4 million hot dogs at Nathan's Famous on Coney Island for that amount.

Stars & Stripes journalist David Choi also retweeted video of Bezos' comments, remarking "I'd like a refund."

In the U.S. Senate, progressive Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tore into the billionaire, repeating her call for a "wealth tax" and accusing Bezos and the company he founded, Amazon, of paying no taxes:

"Jeff Bezos forgot to thank all the hardworking Americans who actually paid taxes to keep this country running while he and Amazon paid nothing," Warren tweeted.

Warren's fellow Bay State lawmaker, Assistant House Speaker Katherine Clark, further criticized Bezos' remarks, saying they remind Americans that it doesn't take "a rocket scientist to know it’s time for billionaires to pay their fair share."

Across the northern border, the leader of Canada's far-left New Democratic Party echoed Warren, calculating that Bezos became $1.6 million wealthier during the 11-minute flight, and accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of allowing Amazon to pay "$0 in taxes."

"Jeff Bezos's space flight lasted 11 minutes During the pandemic, every 11 minutes, he got about 1.6 million dollars richer… It's time the ultra-rich pay their fair share," MP Jagmeet Singh of British Columbia province wrote on Twitter.

"Just ordinary people coming together to do extraordinary things for Jeff Bezos," tweeted Mother Jones reporter Timothy Murphy.

 

[Bomb#20]

I see it as talking around the fact that the American standard of living is becoming more in line with the rest of the world, by decreasing the SoL for most people and concentrating wealth among a very few.

But the US standard of living for most people is increasing*. "More in line with the rest of the world" means poorer countries are rising faster and catching up. They're converging on us; we're not converging on them.

(* On a scale of decades. Probably not in 2020 for obvious reasons.)