Originally published at: Watch an unmanned Blue Origin rocket fire its escape capsule | Boing Boing
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Reading about this launch I was kinda surprised that there’s any demand or usefulness for suborbital science missions. What kind of science can we still learn from such short flights these days? How was it even worth NASA’s time to put any science packages on this thing? It was only targeting an altitude just above 60 miles up.
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Another “dick measuring” exercise for billionaires. It’s our atmosphere, and the monied d-bags will do as they please with it.
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“Ejected”? Surely “ejaculated” would be more appropriate?
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Whatever it was, it was definitely premature.
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Space Tourism.
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I understand the objective of their manned flights for paying tourists and celebrities. I just don’t understand the objective of “science missions” with that kind of flight profile. If you just need some short-duration zero-g to do a quick test of some equipment there are other options like one of the “vomit comet” jets.
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Please use the term uncrewed instead of unmanned. That’s what the industry has moved to.
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Dismembered?
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Pop its top!
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You mean an accurate depiction of reality, since men no longer dominate all of public space by force of law? 
Is that a bad thing, really? Seems a positive move for humanity to be more inclusive of half the population of the planet…
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Ok, you’re right of course, and I meant no disrespect. But you have to admit that this particular rocket design invokes gender stereotypes (and specifically insecure men who are looking to project extreme masculinity) more than most.
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Although I sort of feel like the poster was lamenting the linguistic change rather than celebrating it, but I’m not sure on that. Perhaps, @Tostie will clarify for us.
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<pedantry>
That phrase really irks me. So is it different, or is it similar? One could say this about any two things. “A Buick and catsup are similar, yet different.” Hrrumpph.
</pedantry>
You might say Bezos was “unmanned” by the effort.
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There are plenty of useful atmospheric / earth science stuff that can be done at these altitudes, but I’d imagine most of them can use high altitude balloons. I’m not sure what specific payloads can’t be done in a balloon but don’t need an orbital launch. But for instance if you wanted to do molecular spectroscopy of the ionosphere this would be perfect since balloons don’t get that high and orbital rockets go through it too quickly.
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You could say that about any two things, but it would be false if they were not similar – as I think is the case of Buick and catsup – or identical. After all, different means not the same, and would you object to someone saying two things are “similar but not the same”? That seems like a perfectly valid description to me.
“Similar” ought to suffice.
