New Glenn Liftoff

What is it about rocket launches that are so fun to watch?!?

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches massive New Glenn rocket | AP News

Display of anti-gravity power  with future potential to discover new technologies and services? Another reason I watched it is that my son worked on many of the systems involved in  this particular rocket launch ..as a Blue Origin engineer. He's pretty pleased with the performance.

I just wish we'd get away from this colonize the moon/Mars crap. It currently costs roughly $1 million to put a kilogram of payload into orbit; it must be many times that for a moon mission, and orders of magnitude more for Mars.

And for what? To maybe set up a colony of twenty scientists to go scrabbling around a dead planet/moon? We lack the technology to make this viable. Plus, there are no resources on those dead worlds that are worth the expense, trouble, and risk.

So our space programs should focus on putting stuff into earth orbit, with smaller, lighter, and cheaper rockets. A permanent manned space station, maybe at one of the LaGrange Points. Plenty of communication satellites to handle all those TikTok videos.

But a BIg Brawny Bezos's Balls Booster rocket? That's going in the wrong direction.

Well, you're stuck in old government payload prices.  Private launch costs are going down massively.  SpaceX Falcon Heavy is heading from $2000 down to $200 in projected future plans,

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-earth-orbit

That's cool!

Space travel has never provided much (if any whatsoever) ROI..since the beginning. There are parts of me that really dislikes that. The long term mission/s intended here might change that ( in somebody else's lifetime besides mine).

That graph appears to denote only costs of using an existing launch craft, not the cost of building it and its launch facility and other supporting infrastructure.

Nevertheless, I'm sure that economies of scale are bringing and will bring the costs down. It just doesn't seem remotely worth it to try to colonize utterly dead worlds. How about putting the same effort and resources into making this world more habitable?

I guess my primary objection is opportunity cost. Our resources and time are finite. I mean, a big boomy rocket is totally cool, but how many sick people could be cared for, how many villages provided clean water, how many hungry children fed...and I'm fully aware that further space exploration may provide unforeseen benefits that may help with all those problems.

If mankind acted like a single family, we wouldn't light up one rocket until all the kids were fed. How liberal of me, I know.

Our space program and the satellites currently orbiting the earth developed and created improvement in many areas such as GPS, satellite/cable tv, internet, weather forecasting, medical robotics to name a few.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/15-ways-the-international-space-station-benefits-humanity-back-on-earth/

I was at a baseball tourney years ago and got to see a shuttle launch from the beach.  It was amazing and the whole structure was bigger than one would think.

The next year at another tourney I snagged a ticket to see the launch at the Kennedy Space Center.  I was only 1 mile away and would have been able to see the entire launch from blast off.  Sadly the launch was cancelled due to weather down range.

Since on my many trips to Orlando for work I have had my flights diverted as due to various launches