Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Thinks Space Can Be the New Internet (theverge.com) 90
Speaking at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco today, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said space is essentially a new internet, as it is the next frontier that needs new infrastructure to support new entrepreneurs. He said the purpose of Blue Origin is to build out a similar kind of infrastructure for space that Amazon used to operate during the days of the early internet, such as the United States Postal Service and long distance phone network. The Verge reports: "Two kids in their dorm room can reinvent an industry," Bezos said, referring to the strengths of the modern internet. "Two kids in their dorm room cannot do anything interesting in space." Bezos says rocket reusability needs to be improved, and both Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are working toward the goal of vastly reducing the cost of sending payloads to space. Bezos said there's also a number of restraints right now that prevent the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that helped create Amazon do the same for a next-generation space venture. "We need to be able to put big things in space at low cost." Bezos talked of his earliest days at Amazon more than 20 years ago, where he was driving packages himself to the post office with a 10-person team. "We were sitting on a bunch of a heavy lifting infrastructure," he said. "For example, there was already a gigantic network called United States Postal Service. The internet itself was sitting on time of the long distance phone network." This is the kind of infrastructure Bezos hopes to build out with Blue Origin. "Every time you figure out some way of providing tools and services that allow other people to deploy their creativity, you're really onto something," Bezos said. But building that infrastructure space is still the grandest dream. "I think space is about to enter a golden age."
So does this imply that if I live in the ISS... (Score:3)
Yeah, right. (Score:2, Insightful)
So now that the costs of research and experimentation have been paid for by the public, "entrepreneurs" are willing to step up and reap the profits?
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great! (Score:1)
So your all for increasing NASA's budget in the off chance other new profitable opportunities will arise?
Re:Great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets be honest, no one wants to increase government budgets, what most would consider reasonable is shifting some of the budget from the War Industrial Complex. Some of that War Industrial Complex spending should also be shifted to infrastructure spending and well, what is development of space but quite simply the building of off earth infrastructure to allow access for humanity, not only to the rest of the solar system but also the galaxy beyond that. It will also not be one nations goal but the majority of democratic nations working together to achieve a goal for the entirety of humanity on this planet.
The comparison of what that exploration provides, is the gap between cave persons and where we are today. So, why leave the cave, why climb past that mountain range, why cross oceans, well, if we hadn't there would still be a tiny number individuals squatting in caves, terrified of all the far more physically capable predators around us and continually under threat of immediate extinction.
It is not destiny, it is just another challenge, just another goal, just another step in working together to become more than what we were. We will either fail or succeed but we will most certainly fail ie extinction inevitable, if we do not try. Personally I see that step next step of becoming a galactic species to be the greatest ever possible achievement of humanity, every other fear pales against it (consider that trillions of species over billions of years did not manage to escape this planetary cocoon and we are now in a position to do so). Humanity on many worlds and scattered throughout the galaxy, writing their history across this galaxy, possibly hundreds of millions of year of it. How can you deny that, in all good conscience, to future generations. This versus turning in on ourselves, squabbling ever more violently over diminishing resources and tearing down this planet down around ourselves.
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I'm just saying if anyone benefits all who paid should profit. Why would you have a problem with that?
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The only problem with th
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I'm just saying if anyone benefits all who paid should profit. Why would you have a problem with that?
Why should that be the case? Money isn't always helping, especially when a) the research would happen anyway, or b) you're paying scientists to do less productive work? Those two problems are particularly common with publicly funded research.
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Lets be honest, no one wants to increase government budgets, what most would consider reasonable is shifting some of the budget from the War Industrial Complex. Some of that War Industrial Complex spending should also be shifted to infrastructure spending and well, what is development of space but quite simply the building of off earth infrastructure to allow access for humanity, not only to the rest of the solar system but also the galaxy beyond that. It will also not be one nations goal but the majority of democratic nations working together to achieve a goal for the entirety of humanity on this planet.
I'm pretty sure that war complex is already performing a lot of that kind of research. Just shifting from classified military development to publicly available research would be freaken awesome.
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Keep in mind, not just the US but a whole bunch of countries spending ludicrous amounts on the war black hole, all those investments either thrown away or blown up. Once the leading spender refocuses their excess war spending so the rest will follow, else get left behind, seriously left behind. Governments would suffer huge loss of prestige for failing to participate and effectively, permanently, limiting the future of their society.
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The U.S. government budget for 2016 was $3.999 Trillion. The U.S. Defense Dept. budget for 2016 was $597 Billion. So, that's, 14% of the budget. Of that, approx. 1/2 is due to personnel costs. Another $100 Billion goes into physical plant, leaving about $200 Billion for everything else. A chunk of that goes into R&D and not fielded weapons.
Now, about the War Industrial Complex. Most companies do not rely on U.S. Defense dollars because the money isn't big enough. The U.S. has approx. at $19 Trillion eco
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Damn, this is tiresome !
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Then don't waste so much time on trivial matters.
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If you can't get this trivial thing right, what kinds of trivial mistakes are you making in your programming?
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If I were a programmer I MIGHT worry about such minutia, but would bank on AI eventually becoming smart enough to interpret the usual human error. After all, people have been doing it since there were people.
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The way this is going can only be beneficial
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Fine, but don't pretend this is some sort of private space industry, when it's just a giant welfare program.
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Just like with... the Internet?
I was going to agree... (Score:1)
They can turn it into just as big of a cesspool as the internet has become, funnelling all the profits into an ever decreasing group's pockets while they first flaunt then pay fines to get back on the good side of the law. And all the while the little guy will be fucked as there is less opportunity to earn the money necessary to own your own property and as the physical resources are cornered more and more first by corporate might and then by legal capture.
Space as Internet makes Sad Panda stuffed panda.
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So now that the costs of research and experimentation have been paid for by the public, "entrepreneurs" are willing to step up and reap the profits?
As long as they don't try to patent it for themselves, why in hell not?
Economic benefits (Score:2)
So now that the costs of research and experimentation have been paid for by the public, "entrepreneurs" are willing to step up and reap the profits?
Yes! That's one of the great things about publicly funded research. It turns into economic benefit to society via technology transfer. You seem to be implying (wrongly) that this is somehow a bad thing. Quite the contrary - this is a hugely awesome good thing. It means tons of jobs, new industries, and economic benefits all around. It grows the economy. Keeping the research in a lab where it will do nothing would be pretty much the worst thing you could do with it because then you spend the money and
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You seem to be implying (wrongly) that this is somehow a bad thing.
Most tax payers would consider it a bad thing if they had to pay for some expensive technology to be developed, just for some parasitic CEO to come along and use it for free and make billions.
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True or not but... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a chance of slightly more than zero that something like that is going to happen and ignoring it may mean to miss it or to come too late. Of course there is a dream of tricking out the limits of growth by just growing out of Earth. Then someone else already is sitting on the juiciest resources out there.
Well, either that or we will be increasingly fighting over diminishing resources down here, sooner or later. In case you haven't noticed the world is becoming smaller and smaller.
Bezos is just spending some money on trying not to miss the ultimate growth opportunity in history. In the worst case he will just be selling engines to ULA (and he's is already developing the BE4 engine for them).
Two kids in their dorm (Score:3, Insightful)
Can do nothing on the internet now; people expect polished products and most markets are getting saturated and if you do start to gain traction in some new area, the big guys like Amazon can easily spin up their own version of whatever you're doing rather than buy you out.
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Tired of this space obsession (Score:1)
What is this obsession with shoving stuff into space? There are already so many satellites in orbit that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much space debris flying around that it'll be self generating and dangerous for humans to venture there especially if this idiotic idea of microsatellites takes off (pun intended). As for deep space - until someone invents a serious much faster and practical competitor to the chemical rocket we ain't going anywhere and thats only going to happen if the laws of phys
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What is this obsession with moving out of the basement? There are already so many people in cars driving around that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much cars driving around that it'll be self generating and dangerous for humans to venture there especially if this idiotic idea of autonomous vehicles takes off. As for flying vehicles, called aeroplanes - until someone invents a serious much faster and practical competitor to ships we ain't going anywhere and thats only going to happen if the laws of
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Oh look, lame sarcasm in place of a reasoned response. How unlike slashdot.
"The Microsat movement isn't going to contribute much to space pollution as low lifetime sats deployed to low orbits aren't the problem."
Who said they're only in low orbit?
"Creating an space-based economy and self sustaining workforce"
And what exactly does that hand waving soundbite mean in practise? What will the economy be based on, how will they be self sustaining in a hard vacuum with everything having to be shipped up from earth
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So in your opinion "shoving stuff into space" is insightful commentary.... Nope, it's knuckle-dragging commentary well deserving of ridicule.
If you want to come off as informed/insightful why don't you inform us exactly what orbit categories microsats have been launched into up to now, proving that microsats are a long term menace due to their multiplication in long term orbits and not a category of objects that reenter and burn up before ever becoming one. Ah but that'd be _hard_, certainly too hard for a
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Two specific points: The Microsat movement isn't going to contribute much to space pollution as low lifetime sats deployed to low orbits aren't the problem.
We already have a government/military component spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year tracking every single piece of space junk we've put out there in our artificial asteroid belt. And if the planet is any indication, any place we humans occupy we manage to fuck up with garbage. This will become a problem because of the exponential growth in interest they're hoping to drum up with this capitalist space race. Forget low orbit. Higher orbits will become the issue when human arrogance labels
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Two specific points:
The Microsat movement isn't going to contribute much to space pollution as low lifetime sats deployed to low orbits aren't the problem.
We already have a government/military component spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year tracking every single piece of space junk we've put out there in our artificial asteroid belt. And if the planet is any indication, any place we humans occupy we manage to fuck up with garbage. This will become a problem because of the exponential growth in interest they're hoping to drum up with this capitalist space race. Forget low orbit. Higher orbits will become the issue when human arrogance labels low orbit for "losers" who "can't get it up" or some stupid shit. You know, kind of like the bigger-dick syndrome we suffered from in the 60s with planting a flag on a moon.
Millions of $$$ every year just to track space debris?!? You're delusional. The tracking radars were not developed and paid for in order to track space debris, but to detect attacks upon the U.S. Until the U.S. no longer fears missile attack, the cost will be borne by the military. Use of those radars to track debris in an incidental and beneficial side effect that is almost free, not the reason we continue to spend hundreds of millions/year to do so. If, in your opinion, mankind is such a problem I'd sugg
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Since the Jules Vernes times, we've learnt that no civilizations exist on Mars and Venus. Two or three habitable planets in the same solar system would have been awesome and we'd be there already, but too bad.
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The way I look at is if the reusable rocket guys get the cost of orbital rockets down to 1/10th of the cost that it is now, lots of options open up. If you can get 10 trips up for the cost of 1 now, suddenly assembling a Mars-distance ship in orbit and all the fuel and supplies to make it happen seems pretty plausible.
We aren't going interstellar without some new physics, but with a much less expensive orbital lift platform, interplanetary starts to look much more within reach even if it is initially limit
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The way I look at is if the reusable rocket guys get the cost of orbital rockets down to 1/10th of the cost that it is now, lots of options open up. If you can get 10 trips up for the cost of 1 now, suddenly assembling a Mars-distance ship in orbit and all the fuel and supplies to make it happen seems pretty plausible.
Assuming the rocket is really the blocking cost. A Falcon 9 expendable is around $62M * 130% = $80M for 22,800 kg to LEO. Even a hundred launches for 2,280,000 kg payload (Saturn V had 140,000 kg to LEO) would be "just" $8 billion and they've spent more on that developing the SLS before it's flown once. Granted it'd be some assembly required but >20 ton modules aren't trivially small either if we design good interlocks and docking in space is pretty routine now with the ISS. So for the sake of argument,
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There isn't any one fix that makes it cheap, but making orbit much cheaper to get to seems one of the more major steps to going anywhere.
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Re-usability doesn't just lower cost, but increases launch cadence because you don't need to build a hundred rockets for a hundred launches.
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What's cool about your post is that I can swap your space references with Internet references and it still stands up pretty good!
"What is this obsession with shoving stuff into the Internet? There are already so many things in the Internet that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much Internet debris flying around that it'll be self generating and dangerous for humans to venture to the Internet especially if this idiotic idea of IoT takes off (pun intended). As for deep web - until someone invents a ser
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What is this obsession with shoving stuff into space? There are already so many satellites in orbit that we'll soon be at a critical point of so much space debris flying around that it'll be self generating and dangerous
Maybe with lower costs, some of this extra stuff could actually take the other old stuff out of the way?
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The Final Frontier! (Score:2)
Growth at any cost is the human way. When humanity stagnates we start getting antsy and when we start getting antsy people start to do things that are destructive.
We need to figure out how to navigate space. We need to figure out how to colonize other worlds. There are asteroids out there filled with all sorts of lovely minerals for the taking.
Saying, "There's no financial incentive to go up there" is a defeatist mindset. It's the logical next step in our cultural and technological advancement as a spec
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Growth at any cost is the human way. When humanity stagnates we start getting antsy and when we start getting antsy people start to do things that are destructive.
We need to figure out how to navigate space. We need to figure out how to colonize other worlds. There are asteroids out there filled with all sorts of lovely minerals for the taking...
Minerals you say? Well then, let's go! After all, nothing "destructive" has ever followed mans quest for minerals on our planet, right? I mean that whole thing about blood diamonds, I'm sure it's just a myth. And scientists have now proven that the vacuum of space is going to suck all the evil from capitalistic greed and turn it into a magical utopia of growth and prosperity.
Human behavior will not change in a vacuum, so I fully expect to see countries waging warfare over asteroids or planets. History h
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Mineral resources on Earth are becoming increasingly difficult to reach on environmental grounds alone. At some point wil become cheaper to get our metals from asteroids than from ever-deeper, ever more environmentally problematic terrestrial mines. Here in Arizona, a multibillion dollar copper mine is on hold to protect the habitat of a single individual panther.
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Growth at any cost is the human way.
No it's not. That is the defining feature of western civilization, not humanity.
Metaphor? I dont' know what it's for. (Score:2)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Thinks [a cheap* heavy launch infrastructure] Can Be the New Internet
There, fixed that for you. What Bezos is saying is that Amazon's rise was possible because some one had already deployed a long distance phone network and a postal system, and had already invented the Internet and the web. He is proposing to invent*/deploy the systems that will make startup companies for applications in space feasible.
*This is the step of his proposal, where a miracle occurs, is not going to be as h
Space Porn? (Score:2)
After Hubble ... (Score:1)
... the Space Bubble ! ...
Sorry, it's Friday, I'm tired
Unless... (Score:2)
What if their dorm room is in space? Then the possibilities are endless.
I'm not convinced (Score:2)
I'm not convinced that space is the next internet. How is space going to bring more porn to the masses?
can't pay for life support = legal to kill (Score:1)
can't pay for life support = legal to kill. As in legal to kick someone out of an air lock to there death.
That is the GOP view of space
Barrier to Entry Much? (Score:2)
Um...the thing that makes the Internet the Internet is that anyone with $100 or a computer can contribute something new, whether open source, artwork or, for a little more investment, hardware. Space has a significant barrier to entry that will keep the vast majority of us...er...grounded.
can't have a golden age "soon" (Score:2)
We've got to bootstrap our way into space before we can have a golden age thereof. We can't feasibly have a golden age of space until we're building spacecraft in space out of stuff we mined in space.
We're going to have to have a boring age of mining before we can have a golden age of exploration.
Not enough space? (Score:2)
Obviously.
The Wright brothers didn't create the aircraft in their dorm room - they needed a garage and wide areas in order to do their stuff. Plus they needed wealth, which two kids in their dorm room are much less likely to have nowadays. They need space to construct that sort of stuff, much more than what's needed to build a hot-rod or small aircraft.
As for something interesting in space, the only things left is to colonize another p
Taxes (Score:2)