...What's Bezos' excuse for not taking Blue Origin public sooner rather than later?
So you feel Bezos' billions means capital isn't a constraint for him, and that control is a necessity at this juncture.When would these assumptions change, to enable him to go public? Will it be once Blue is clearly profitable?
And at least Bezos is just focused on one vision - the space vision - whereas Musk is trying spearhead multiple transformative efforts. I sometimes feel Musk should just do the Keiretsu thing and set up a holding company as a central hub to underpin his agenda, and then he can use it to shift cash amongst his various transformative enterprises (SpaceX, Tesla, Boring Company, etc) as needed.
ITS seems like a big leap of faith - the kind of huge leap Bezos hasn't yet made, and likely wouldn't make by departing from "Gradatim Ferociter".
Quote from: sanman on 04/21/2017 01:40 pm ITS seems like a big leap of faith - the kind of huge leap Bezos hasn't yet made, and likely wouldn't make by departing from "Gradatim Ferociter".Is ITS really more of a leap from FH than NG is from NS? People seem to underestimate the size of NG.
Quote from: Lars-J on 04/21/2017 05:26 pmQuote from: sanman on 04/21/2017 01:40 pm ITS seems like a big leap of faith - the kind of huge leap Bezos hasn't yet made, and likely wouldn't make by departing from "Gradatim Ferociter".Is ITS really more of a leap from FH than NG is from NS? People seem to underestimate the size of NG.ITS is:1. Bigger than any rocket that ever existed. Seriously, ITS is in the bloody Sea Dragon range. You'd have to to attach three Saturn V together to get more payload to LEO.2. Made primarily of composite materials, which was never done before.3. Reuses the second stage, which is also a brand new thing.New Glenn, on the other hand, is just a scale-up of Falcon 9 with some incremental improvements.So, NG is certainly more realistic, at this point, than ITS.
So the step is relatively smaller for SpaceX, unquestionably.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 04/22/2017 12:32 amSo the step is relatively smaller for SpaceX, unquestionably.SpaceX doesn't exist in a vacuum. For the industry, and thus for SpaceX, ITS is a far bigger step than Falcon.
Quote from: Steve G on 04/13/2017 01:18 pmITS is wonderful from a human species perspective, but EM's plans to start colonizing Mars in the next decade has no business case. Worse, all he's presented so far is the transport system. He, or another entity, still have to come up with the Mars habitat and sustainable facilities.Musk has said that ITS will be the hab for the first missions. However, I agree with your general point that we're not seeing surface infrastructure, and that has a long lead time.Cheers, Martin
ITS is wonderful from a human species perspective, but EM's plans to start colonizing Mars in the next decade has no business case. Worse, all he's presented so far is the transport system. He, or another entity, still have to come up with the Mars habitat and sustainable facilities.
Even though I'm not a big fan of Bezos I consider Blue's approach lower risk and feel it has a much greater chance of success.As for facilities and a rocket in between New Shepard and New Glenn they already have that with Vulcan and ULA.By the time New Glenn flies the BE-4 and BE-3 will already have a flight history.
It helps that Bezos has the money to go with his approach, whereas Musk, always the perennial extreme risk taker, did not. Considering how little money Musk had at one time, SpaceX's achievements since his and SpaceX's near bankruptcy in 2008 are pretty astounding. It has dozens of launches under its belt, has proven out first stage reuse on an orbital rocket, currently has the world record holder for most efficient LV to LEO, and it even delivers more of its mass to GTO than the Atlas V! It's also worth remembering that the Falcon Heavy will top that record while also being the most potent rocket since the Energia (by payload). While the New Glenn is a big rocket, that's also something of a hindrance in terms of reuse. It's not even as efficient a lifter as the Saturn V or a Delta IV, and it's coming decades after both. Given reuse is all about getting the costs down, I'm surprised to see Blue Origin isn't as aggressively mass optimizing its rocket as it could. There's no good reason why a New Glenn shouldn't top 4% or even 4.5% of mass reaching orbit. In comparison, were SpaceX to build a similar RLV with 8 Raptor engines (7/1 config), you can pretty much guarantee it'd be setting new efficiency records.