I’m an emotional old woman. Some things just get to me. I can’t help it. Even when he was in high school, my son knew to keep quiet and pass the tissues. Today I had to find them for myself as I watched a video of yesterday’s New Glenn rocket launch. I would swear it rose off the pad more slowly than any rocket before it, so slowly I was consciously willing it to rise, to not fall over, to not explode. And it rose … as my vision blurred and the cheers from mission control followed it into the heavens.
I’d already calculated that the 321-foot-tall rocket was about the height of the tallest building in Oklahoma City when I was growing up. I even worked there one summer. Now the 33-story First National Bank building was flying. Unbelievable.
Later, I did the same thing again as the situation was reversed and the rocket’s 190-foot-tall booster settled slowly, precisely, on a barge in the Atlantic, exactly according to plan.
This video is lengthy, explaining the entire Mars-bound project, but the launch and booster recovery are shown in the first 90 seconds.
Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin company have every reason to celebrate. They’ve successfully launched two Mars-bound orbiters named Escapade.
Amazing
Certainly is.
Hi stranger! Good to see you again.
Ever since I was a boy I’ve always liked science and engineering, and that includes space travel. That said, I find the notion of terraforming and living on Mars absurd. One of my favorite movies is Ridley Scott’s “The Martian”. It is realistic about how dangerous to life that planet is and how everything important to life has to be obtained from Earth. Space is impossibly vast. As Carl Sagan said, this “blue dot” is the only home we have ever had and very likely will ever have. Robot exploration of space is fine but putting people on Mars is a waste of resources.
While I agree with you, I think man’s curiosity and drive to explore will never be extinguished. I identify in my own way, with the irrepressible urge to go just a little further, just to see what’s on the other side of that next hill…
I could wish for this success to belong to someone other than Bezos.
That being said, it’s terrifically exciting !
I don’t like his support of Trump but I am totally addicted to and dependent on Amazon and have been for many years, so it’s kind of hard to speak ill of him.