Jeff Bezos's "Blue Origin" Space Company Reveals Spacecraft Design

You notice that there's nothing about bringing down the monstrous costs of transport to and from the ISS-just that these guys want a piece of the pie before it's all served up. The making space travel affordable thing has nothing to do with the reality, and the reality is that they are building THIS craft, specifically designed to go to and from the ISS with astronauts; to cash in on that big public pork. NOT to get you or I to space.

why so negative? If anything the more competition the better.

You see the more people you got working on making spaceships the more advanced techonlogy gets or is in need of making it easyer to go to space and etc. Which is good I think.

Its a rich mans world, sad but true, just get use to it. For now.

I agree with Quasi since I don't see it as harsh but the actual truth.

Anyone with money want to make more money and this is exactly what this is, they want to cash in before the ride is over.

The retirement of the shuttle only paved the way for groups like "Blue Origin" to step in to fill the money gap. If they do it wisely and monitor their expense, unlike NASA.

@prime2011. Why is it "sad but true" that it's a rich man's world? It's tough to argue that these "rich men" put in more time, effort and personal/financial risk to acheive what they've acheived than I've even thought about doing. The great thing about THIS country is that if you want to be rich, then you have the opportunity go after that dream...if you are willing to...no guarantees in life but at least you have the opportunity to try. I'm not trying to get into a politcal debate here but these rich men are contributing to science and society a whole lot more than they are taking away from it. See the article above. There are jobs and advances in science all over this article. Heck, even Popsci is selling advertising because of some rich man trying to get his share of the space pie. Why would you want that to change?

If several companies find a feasible way to transport personel to the ISS that would be great, and the most effective method could be chosen. The ones who loose out won't make money. So the (rich) people that risk money in a loosing venture will loose money.
What would the world be like without rich and powerful people, who in the past supported composers and playwrights, painters and sculptors, who built palaces, bridges, ships and railways. and furthered the sciences? They could have given their money away, and we would probably still be in the dark ages.

The point that people are failing to understand about what prime2011 and quasi44 are making is that these companies are developing technology on the private market that will ultimately support a public effort. An effort available to the lucky few. An effort which is denied the majority.

If you want to be a pilot, you need time and a little bit of money. The average person could be a pilot if they wanted too. If you wanted to fly a jet you'd need a little more money outside of what's required to fly aircraft with car engines. If you want to fly supersonic, you have to join the military, and you must meet layer upon layer of subjective standard before you can fly the most technologically astute aerial vehicles on the planet. Only a privileged few have that freedom.

Space flight is a freedom for the privileged few and there is no in between. You must be the highest qualified of a set group, because the organization (NASA) is not big enough to support manned spaceflight operations for all applicants that qualify. The structure by how they select 'flyers' is built to support the scale of their operations (because it doesn't take an engineer, scientist, or mathematician to fly a spacecraft, work a control interface i.e. computer, or turn a wrench, which is the summary of what astronauts do when they're in space; there are prepubescent children that can do all of these things from the education they receive from television and video games).

The frustration comes from the fact that a practice that is more than 50 years old now (and based on history should be common practice by the majority of the civilized world) is still only available to the privileged few and will be for a long time to come.

40 years after Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis their were routine commercial flights flying across that ocean on a day to day basis. It's been 42 years since men touched the moon, and we haven't been back since 1973. We don't have a seamlessly consistent structure for producing space vehicles for public operation (i.e. NASA), and we don't have dozens to hundreds of companies specializing in spacecraft manufacture for private and commercial use.

News like this is good for the 100+ year long run, but for the hear and the now, tomorrow looks a whole hell of a lot like yesterday. Children will find more excitement with these type of stories. Adults will think, "That's good, but how does this apply to me?"