space – Page 3 – Moe Lane

Bezos plans to build Orbital Reef in, guess where, orbit.

This is smart of Jeff Bezos. He should stop chasing Elon Musk when it comes to building rockets and concentrate instead on building orbital business parks:

Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, has unveiled plans for a space station called Orbital Reef.
The space station would be built to give anyone “the opportunity to establish their own address on orbit” by providing services such as planning, payload development, training, transportation, data analysis and security.

The KIRK! IN! SPACE! livestream.

For your amusement.

Tweet of the Previous Weekend, This Is Getting Excitingly Dull, Fast edition.

Oh, look. It was just another successful private space mission. This one happened to be manned, fully automated, and involved multiple orbits. Oh, yes, and there were the usual reusable booster and all the rest of the things SpaceX does, sure, sure.

How… prosaic.

Splashdown! Welcome back to planet Earth, @Inspiration4x! pic.twitter.com/94yLjMBqWt
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2021

Civilian orbital space mission going fine.

…Damn, but I love living in the future sometimes.

The crew of the first all-private orbital space mission has spent Thursday, the first full day of the mission, circling the Earth every 90 minutes at over 17,000 mph.
SpaceX reported the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule with four civilians inside was traveling 363 miles high over Asia as of mid-morning, quickly moving over the massive continent. The altitude is a full hundred miles higher than the International Space Station.

Jeff Bezos has Lunar Fever.

And he’s ready to spend billions of dollars right here on Earth* to break it:

FAA denies Wally Funk her Commercial Astronaut wings?

This seems fairly needlessly petty:

Federal aviation regulators have made a rare change to the requirements for its Commercial Astronaut Wings Program, meaning Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos may not officially be recognized for his spaceflight this week.
The Federal Aviation Administration changed rules for the program on the same day Bezos, his brother and two others made their historic first commercial spaceflight on Tuesday.

Blue Origin launches, lands successfully.

Looks like it all went without a hitch.

BREAKING: Blue Origin launches its first passenger spaceflight, carrying Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen. https://t.co/PdkmOVSO3g pic.twitter.com/LTNmhxA9Li
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) July 20, 2021

Points to Bezos for being on the first one, too. I’m not ashamed to admit that in his place I might have been more thoughtful about acquiring that particular honor. Although I’d like to think I would have gone for it, too.

Billionaire Branson’s Blastoff Beats Bezos.

There are worse things for billionaires to compete over.

Richard Branson reached space on a test flight for Virgin Galactic before gliding back to earth and touching down safely Sunday, the latest salvo in the burgeoning space tourism business led by high-profile billionaires.
The Virgin Group founder launched Sunday with three company employees, flying 53 miles above the earth in a final test mission before kicking off commercial space flights next year. Branson – who earned his pilot’s license – tested the astronaut cabin experience.

Tweet of the Day, So Do I, Tycho…

…so do I.

https://twitter.com/cwgabriel/status/1404455779835338759

USAF officially interested in SpaceX’s upcoming line of suborbital strategic transport shuttles.

Excuse me: ‘Starships.’

“The Department of the Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to develop the largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AF cargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity,” the document states.