Anyone following the billionaire space pissing contest?

euan

Remember to turn off your tap between rinsing your toothbrush...

skullfunkerry

Cols said:

This is the fella who was looking for a big government bailout for his airline, yeah?

Yep, and sued the NHS for millions when he wasn't awarded a contract. And owns his own island...

VimFuego

skullfunkerry said:

Cols said:

This is the fella who was looking for a big government bailout for his airline, yeah?

Yep, and sued the NHS for millions when he wasn't awarded a contract. And owns his own island...

now that's my kind of billionaire bond villain. 

Philtre

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall

Nitefly

I watched the livestream, thought it was great, but it's not delivering payload to ISS type stuff - what's it for?

dindude

Much more interested in this than the football tbh. 

Grumpyrocker

Nitefly said:

I watched the livestream, thought it was great, but it's not delivering payload to ISS type stuff - what's it for?

Tourism. Giving rich people the chance to say they've been to (the edge of) space. 

jdgm

With his shades on RB looks alarmingly like Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie.

I wonder if by chance they are related?

Pabcrane

VimFuego said:

The privitisation of space is a very interesting subject, and one that has been covered many times in sci fi. In general, and through a series of connected events, it always leads to some sort of distopian future, where governments are powerless and individuals are held in some sort of futuristic feudal bondage, living at the whim of their corporate overlords.

So I'm all in favour of it.

That sounds dead interesting. Would you please recommend me one or two of these good sci-fi books?

Axe_meister

And Elon has outdone both of them, ok he has not personally gone up.

jonnyburgo

I hope they find some big boobed Amazonian space women up there. 

jonnyburgo

Industrialisation of Space is the goal. Imagine a massive Amazon warehouse floating about or a Virgin megastore

ICBM

jonnyburgo said:

Industrialisation of Space is the goal. Imagine a massive Amazon warehouse floating about or a Virgin megastore

SpaceX is *way* ahead on that score.

Virgin is just high-altitude tourism that's debatable as to whether it's really space. Bezos not a lot more as far as I understand.

Not to take away from the technical achievement of what they're doing as private companies in an industry that really demands national-level budgets, but for me 'space' means orbit, not an arbitrary height.

Caffeine_Vampire

'To seek out and fuck up new life and new civilisations...'

Maybe we should concentrate on getting things right on earth first?

Philly_Q

jdgm said:

With his shades on RB looks alarmingly like Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie.

I wonder if by chance they are related?

He also resembles Vic Rattlehead.

 

Hurling_Fruitmig

skullfunkerry said:

Cols said:

This is the fella who was looking for a big government bailout for his airline, yeah?

Yep, and sued the NHS for millions when he wasn't awarded a contract. And owns his own island...

My other half was responsible for punting them off another NHS contract. They didn’t (couldn’t) sue because it was a sound decision when they tried some contactual jiggery pokery that didn't go their way.

It was my understanding that his parents bought him the island long before he became a self made billionaire face of shoddy knitwear.

Emp_Fab

stickyfiddle said:

That's roughly equivalent to the average Brit buying a secondhand 2012 Veloster in green... 

gordiji

I wonder about the physical damage to the atmosphere that's done having these craft blasting around in the thinning layers higher up. It's one thing sending arguably useful things like satellites into space , but even here what is the cost to the poor atmosphere ?

Jonathangus

stickyfiddle

Emp_Fab said:

stickyfiddle said:

That's roughly equivalent to the average Brit buying a secondhand 2012 Veloster in green... 

Sorry. It just felt like an appropriate roughly-6k benchmark we could all relate to