MoonDAO Will Pick Two of the Next Blue Origin Astronauts With the Help of NFTs (cnet.com) 24
On June 4 a 10-minute Blue Origin flight (using a reusable rocket and capsule) carried six more people on a visit to suborbital space, reports Space.com — the fifth human spaceflight mission for the Jeff Bezos-founded company, and the second one this year. But GeekWire points out that civil production engineer Victor Correa Hespanha had his seat funded by the Crypto Space Agency — that is, funded entirely by the NFT community through mint proceeds — after he was the winner of its lottery for a ride to space.
And they're not the only crypto community buying rides into space. CNET reports on MoonDAO: Over 8,000 people "minted" a "Ticket to Space" NFT on the Ethereum blockchain for free (plus a small transaction or "gas" fee), and...one of those NFT holders plus several alternates will be chosen at random for one of the seats to space. MoonDAO's members will also vote on a specific person from a list of predetermined nominees to gift the second ticket to. The two astronauts could fly as soon as the next Blue Origin launch in the coming weeks, but no target date has been announced....
"Our mission is to decentralize access to space research and exploration," co-founder Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz told me during an interview on stage at the DAODenver conference in February. In addition to sending people on a short trip to space, MoonDAO is also using funds from its treasury — it's raised millions worth of cryptocurrency through a crowdfunding platform called Juicebox — for community projects that include designing a small rocket and satellite. In other words, the ultimate vision is to build an organization something like SpaceX, but that's run as a community cooperative rather than in the traditional top-down corporate structure.
"We definitely need more capital to get to the level of competing directly with Virgin Galactic or SpaceX," Moncada-Larrotiz said via Discord direct message on May 26. "It's for sure a long term project and I think it'll be a matter of building the right type of organization where builders are free to just focus on making awesome things in a collaborative environment."
Unfortunately, MoonDAO's drawing Saturday experienced technical glitches, and after a two-hour livestream — no winner was chosen.
They promised a winner would be chosen by Sunday.
And they're not the only crypto community buying rides into space. CNET reports on MoonDAO: Over 8,000 people "minted" a "Ticket to Space" NFT on the Ethereum blockchain for free (plus a small transaction or "gas" fee), and...one of those NFT holders plus several alternates will be chosen at random for one of the seats to space. MoonDAO's members will also vote on a specific person from a list of predetermined nominees to gift the second ticket to. The two astronauts could fly as soon as the next Blue Origin launch in the coming weeks, but no target date has been announced....
"Our mission is to decentralize access to space research and exploration," co-founder Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz told me during an interview on stage at the DAODenver conference in February. In addition to sending people on a short trip to space, MoonDAO is also using funds from its treasury — it's raised millions worth of cryptocurrency through a crowdfunding platform called Juicebox — for community projects that include designing a small rocket and satellite. In other words, the ultimate vision is to build an organization something like SpaceX, but that's run as a community cooperative rather than in the traditional top-down corporate structure.
"We definitely need more capital to get to the level of competing directly with Virgin Galactic or SpaceX," Moncada-Larrotiz said via Discord direct message on May 26. "It's for sure a long term project and I think it'll be a matter of building the right type of organization where builders are free to just focus on making awesome things in a collaborative environment."
Unfortunately, MoonDAO's drawing Saturday experienced technical glitches, and after a two-hour livestream — no winner was chosen.
They promised a winner would be chosen by Sunday.
crypto-gimmick (Score:5, Insightful)
Using space to prop up your shitty crypto--currency?
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pg slot auto (Score:1)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to be absurdly in denial to still be attempting to get milk out of the NFT cow.
But I suppose if your Ponzi scheme hasn't paid off yet, you don't have a lot of better options available to you - so you gotta keep looking for any remaining suckers.
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so you gotta keep looking for any remaining suckers.
Fortunately, a sucker is born every minute.
Unfortunately, they have to ripen for a few decades before they have much disposable income.
Outside of the meme and celeb tourist rides... (Score:2)
... is Blue Origin going to finally ship those BE4 engines to ULA for a Vulcan test anytime this year? And what the heck happened to BO's own orbital rocket New Glenn? Is it going to fly in 2023, even? And will BO actually be able to build a technically-acceptable lunar lander alternative after it twisted NASA arm into reopening competition for it?
One trip up in the tiny New Sheppard recreational rocket and Bezos thinks BO is a real spaceflight company even though it fails to deliver on the serious stuff
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They still haven't got into space yet. Just like Virgin they are really some sort of scam. If they wanted to send a rocket to space they would have by now. Its not like they don't know where it is.
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Virgin Galactic was created to turn the X prize winner into a commercial tourist experience. It's done *exactly* what it promised to do.
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I'm sure your geek sensibilities are offended by a tourist flight company not achieving some arbitrary altitude.
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That's like saying you've never played tennis because you've always played in gym shorts and a t-shirt.
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You know, Virgin Galactic has been to space according to von Karman himself, right? Your insistence on ridiculing an organization because of an arbitrary rule of an aero-sports organization is pretty weird.
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The FAI defines the Kármán line as space beginning 100 kilometres (54 nautical miles; 62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth's mean sea level. While experts disagree on exactly where the atmosphere ends and space begins, most regulatory agencies (including the United Nations) accept the FAI Kármán line definition or something close to it.
They've never made it above 90 kilometres.
The Kármán line is named after Theodore von Kármán (1881–1963), a Hungarian American engineer and physicist who was active in aeronautics and astronautics.
He died 40 years before Virgin Galactic was founded. Your insistence on telling weird lies is weird.
I ridicule Virgin Galactic because they have spent 20 years not making it into space. They should not be taken seriously.
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Here's his paper on the subject:
https://web.stanford.edu/~jurz... [stanford.edu]
The inflection point around ~84 km is where the "satellite regime" begins. That's the "to fly higher than this point you'd have to go fast enough to be in orbit" thing comes from.
The actual term "Karman line" was coined by another author later on, who pointed out this was pretty silly, and suggested ~ 90 km, based on the existence of oxygen free radicals. Your insistence on "the Karman line" seems to be something the FAI invented because 100 k
Mooney McMoonface (Score:1)
I read it as "MoonDOA" as in "dead on arrival". They may want to rethink the name.
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Naa, the idiots they target are not smart enough to make that connection.
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So? One transposition removed. Not hard to see. Well, not hard to see for some people...
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SHTI
Idiocracy (Score:3)
A significant part of society obviously is already there...
Crypto-space (Score:2)
The word "crypto" means "hidden" or "secret".
Thus, "crypto space program" would mean that you go to space and don't tell anyone.
Please do that! (the last part, at least)