
Amazon's Jeff Bezos Debuts Spacecraft in First Flight Test - jonbaer
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/space-flight/amazons-jeff-bezos-debuts-spacecraft-in-first-flight-test
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ColinWright
I'll repeat here an earlier comment[0] I made about this. In particular, I'm
trying to gauge the precise achievement of this test flight. It seems to have
gone up about 60 miles, about 100 kms, and then parachuted the empty crew
capsule back to Earth. That's about 1/4 of the altitude needed to get to LEO.

Then we recall that the kinetic energy it needs to be in orbit is about 10
times the gravitational potential energy[1]. That means this is about 1/40 of
the energy needed to get to LEO.

Does that sound about right?

This is undoubtedly a stage any company needs to go through, but it would be
nice to have some confirmation of where they are in the progress time-line.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9467587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9467587)

[1] Very roughly, orbital velocity is around 8000 m/s, or 1/2 (8000)^2
m^2/s^2/kg, which is 32 x 10^6 m^2/s^2/kg. GPE is about 10 m/s^2 x 320 km = 32
x 10^5 m^2/s^2/kg.

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gcb0
I feel we are getting ready for a new age like when every millionaire was
investing in railroads. but the rail investment came after there were routes
for the companies to service. what are the people investing on space flight
today aiming for?

~~~
walterbell
Some claims about asteroid mining:

1997 book, _Mining the Sky_ ,
[http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_011_mining...](http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_011_miningthesky.html)

Sales pitch, [http://www.asterank.com](http://www.asterank.com)

