Timing
Can I nominate Blue for the "most unfortunate timing of a press release of 2021" award?
Blue Origin is planning to launch its first crew into space on July 20 – and a seat on this inaugural spaceflight is up for auction. There will be three stages to this process. Anyone can enter a sealed bid from May 5: all you have to do is fill out a form containing personal and contact information, and say how much you’re …
Surely if you're rich enough to consider spending this sort of money, you have people to run up and down stairs for you?
Also - how high is a flight of stairs? Our last flat (in an old building with very high ceilings) was on the third flour, after eighty-seven steps; this house has a mere fifteen between the ground and first floor, and only twelve down to the cellar.
"You wouldn't catch me dead in that thing ... not even if THEY were paying ME!"
Indeed, and while SpaceX is now successfully delivering and returning astronauts to and from the International Space Station, the best that Bezos and Blue Origin can manage is a suborbital flight which is something that can already be done by high altitude balloons.
> it hasn’t revealed how much it’s charging for a return ticket onboard its capsule
A return ticket? Does that mean there is an option for a one-way ticket. They'll take you to space and then leave you there. Either to travel onwards or to make your own way back (by parachute, perhaps)
But think how cool the stories would be - about how you'd been saved by the escape tower, and were now a steely-eyed missile man.
Like that guy who paid to be in the 2 seater Minardi F1 car. With Nigel Mansell driving round Donnington I think. He was supposed to impressively pass Alonso in the actual F1 car on the final corner, for pretty pictures on the main strait. But Alonso had other ideas and punted him off - so the guy got to spin at 150mph down a strait. Who else does he know that can top that story?
If the rocket was actually from Blue Origin, or part of comingled inventory and actually supplied by a group of teens with too much time on their hands and a stash of fireworks that "fell off a truck". And who published those glowing reviews from back when they sold dog shampoo?