- Joined
- Jun 23, 2016
For over fifty years, man has been yeeting himself and his devices into the aether. After the first satellite was launched, The United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had a decade long dick measuring contest which culminated in the USA landing two straight, white, cisgender males on the moon. Since this event is generally considered the greatest ever achievement of mankind, people thought "Well, can't top that. Might as well stop trying." And so the zeal for space exploration died down...That is, until today!
Welcome to the new space race! Enthusiasm for outer space hasn't been this high in decades, and this time instead of just superpowers, It's also billionaires who are trying to one up each other to get to the final frontier.
The players:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the United States' agency responsible for their space program. As of the time of this writing, it's administered by Bill Nelson, A former astronaut and Senator. Until recently, NASA did most of the heavy lifting earlier in history that paved the way for what is currently being done in the US, so even though they may be expensive, slow, and inefficient, they at least deserve some credit for getting things off the ground. They are building a heavy lift rocket called the Space Launch System, or SLS, which will cost around $2,000,000,000 per launch, and will put people on the moon again, even though they already did that.
SpaceX is the space exploration company of Elon Musk, who wants to colonize Mars because he has run out of stuff to do on Earth. They are building a heavy lift rocket called Starship, which will be totally reusable and will (supposedly) reduce the cost per pound to orbit substantially. It will be the biggest rocket ever flown. SpaceX already has had success with a partially reusable rocket, the Falcon 9.
Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit belong to Sir Richard Branson, that guy that kinda looks like your uncle. Galactic has a rocket plane that can take people into space (debatably, since not everyone agrees how high up space starts) but can't go into orbit. Orbit launches small rockets into orbit off of an airplane.
Blue Origin is a company owned by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, the company that wants to enslave mankind. Blue Origin has rocket called New Glenn that goes straight up and down, but can't get to orbit. They are planning the build two other rockets: New Shepard and New Armstrong, both heavy lift rockets, but we haven't seen much of them. They are developing their BE-4 engines for use by themselves and for United Launch Alliance, but they are late, and ULA CEO Tory Bruno wants his engines NOW!
Of course there are others, such as Roscosmos, JAXA, ULA, and more, but if I covered every government agency and contractor, this would go on forever. This op is mainly meant to cover the eccentric billionaires who fight each other on twitter. Add more as you see fit, and discuss any space flight news, launches, history, and technology.
Welcome to the new space race! Enthusiasm for outer space hasn't been this high in decades, and this time instead of just superpowers, It's also billionaires who are trying to one up each other to get to the final frontier.
The players:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the United States' agency responsible for their space program. As of the time of this writing, it's administered by Bill Nelson, A former astronaut and Senator. Until recently, NASA did most of the heavy lifting earlier in history that paved the way for what is currently being done in the US, so even though they may be expensive, slow, and inefficient, they at least deserve some credit for getting things off the ground. They are building a heavy lift rocket called the Space Launch System, or SLS, which will cost around $2,000,000,000 per launch, and will put people on the moon again, even though they already did that.
SpaceX is the space exploration company of Elon Musk, who wants to colonize Mars because he has run out of stuff to do on Earth. They are building a heavy lift rocket called Starship, which will be totally reusable and will (supposedly) reduce the cost per pound to orbit substantially. It will be the biggest rocket ever flown. SpaceX already has had success with a partially reusable rocket, the Falcon 9.
Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit belong to Sir Richard Branson, that guy that kinda looks like your uncle. Galactic has a rocket plane that can take people into space (debatably, since not everyone agrees how high up space starts) but can't go into orbit. Orbit launches small rockets into orbit off of an airplane.
Blue Origin is a company owned by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, the company that wants to enslave mankind. Blue Origin has rocket called New Glenn that goes straight up and down, but can't get to orbit. They are planning the build two other rockets: New Shepard and New Armstrong, both heavy lift rockets, but we haven't seen much of them. They are developing their BE-4 engines for use by themselves and for United Launch Alliance, but they are late, and ULA CEO Tory Bruno wants his engines NOW!
Of course there are others, such as Roscosmos, JAXA, ULA, and more, but if I covered every government agency and contractor, this would go on forever. This op is mainly meant to cover the eccentric billionaires who fight each other on twitter. Add more as you see fit, and discuss any space flight news, launches, history, and technology.
