I don't understand the criticism. Once upon a time, flying in an airplane was on the forefront of technology and only "professionals" did it to do important stuff such as weather data collecting. Now, commercial aviation exists and everybody and his brother flies to hither and yon for the most mundane purposes.
Shouldn't we be celebrating that spaceflight is following the same trajectory? Sure, it's for the mega rich, but so was early air travel. It took a few decades to become common for the masses, but we had to start somewhere!
I bet many of us here on HN would glady pay a few thousand dollars to take this trip. In order for that to happen we need these trips to make the whole process mundane. We'll know we're there when hardly anyone is paying much attention to these launches.
throw310822 6 days ago [-]
Yeah, well, it's just tourism. The thing that annoys me most is that it's not even spaceflight, it's really hopping.
taylodl 5 days ago [-]
Even so, it's a hop neither you nor I are likely to ever get to make in our lifetime. Besides, there's no destination. Think of this as the barnstormers from the 1910s and 1920s who would go to county fairs and offer people a ride in their plane. You took off, did a loop, and landed. It was another 40 years before commercial aviation became mainstream. These space hops are an encouraging development.
theGeatZhopa 6 days ago [-]
Haters gonna hate. I think it's because of bezos' finance participated causing the backlash. If it was Kate perry and her bouncers or some other famous people than it would be different.
With me, too, this only caught my attention because of bezos wife's name.
But cool. All girls crew! Hope they had a good time.
JohnFen 6 days ago [-]
I didn't even know Bezos' fiancee was on board. Only Katy Perry. I don't have any objections to the flight (aside from the environmental impacts, anyway), but it also made me look at the whole thing as an uninteresting publicity stunt.
BMc2020 6 days ago [-]
...all-female crew that included pop singer Katy Perry; CBS Mornings host Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez, an author, TV host turned philanthropist and Bezos’s fiancée.
They were joined by activist Amanda Nguyen, ex-NASA engineer Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn on the suborbital flight...
6 days ago [-]
Rendered at 20:17:38 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Shouldn't we be celebrating that spaceflight is following the same trajectory? Sure, it's for the mega rich, but so was early air travel. It took a few decades to become common for the masses, but we had to start somewhere!
I bet many of us here on HN would glady pay a few thousand dollars to take this trip. In order for that to happen we need these trips to make the whole process mundane. We'll know we're there when hardly anyone is paying much attention to these launches.
With me, too, this only caught my attention because of bezos wife's name.
But cool. All girls crew! Hope they had a good time.
They were joined by activist Amanda Nguyen, ex-NASA engineer Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn on the suborbital flight...