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posted by martyb on Monday May 28 2018, @05:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-takes-a-[moon]-village dept.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin are looking to partner with NASA and ESA to help create settlements on the Moon. However, he implied that he would fund development of such a project himself if governments don't:

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says his Blue Origin space venture will work with NASA as well as the European Space Agency to create a settlement on the moon. And even if Blue Origin can't strike public-private partnerships, Bezos will do what needs to be done to make it so, he said here at the International Space Development Conference on Friday night.

[...] To facilitate a return to the moon, Blue Origin has a lunar lander on the drawing boards that's designed to be capable of delivery 5 tons of payload to the lunar surface. That's hefty enough to be used for transporting people — and with enough support, it could start flying by the mid-2020s. Blue Origin has proposed building its Blue Moon lander under the terms of a public-private partnership with NASA. "By the way, we'll do that, even if NASA doesn't do it," Bezos said. "We'll do it eventually. We could do it a lot faster if there were a partnership."

[...] It's important to point out that moon settlement isn't just a NASA thing. Bezos told me he loves the European Space Agency's approach, known as the Moon Village. "The Moon Village concept has a nice property in that everybody basically just says, look, everybody builds their own lunar outpost, but let's do it close to each other. That way, if you need a cup of sugar, you can go over to the European Union lunar outpost and say, 'I got my powdered eggs, what have you got?' ... Obviously I'm being silly with the eggs, but there will be real things, like, 'Do you have some oxygen?' "

So how far is Blue Origin willing to go? Bezos has already committed the company to build rockets and landers. How about rovers, habitats and all the other hardware that a moon base will need? "We'll do anything we need to do," Bezos said. "I hope we don't need to do any of that. I want other people to do it. But if need be, we'll do it."

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross published an editorial in The New York Times (archive) emphasizing a return to the Moon and President Trump's recent Space Policy Directive 2 (here's the first one).

Just don't call it a colony.

Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.

Rebuttal: Dear Jeff Bezos: Forget About The Stupid Moon

Previously: Jeff Bezos' Vision for Space: One Trillion Population in the Solar System
ESA Expert Envisions "Moon Village" by 2030-2050

Related: How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
Bigelow Aerospace Forms New Company to Manage Space Stations, Announces Gigantic Inflatable Module
Blue Origin to Compete to Launch U.S. Military Payloads
2020s to Become the Decade of Lunar Re-Exploration
Blue Origin Conducts its First Successful Suborbital Test Flight and Landing of 2018
Lunar Regolith Simulants Damage Cells
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Serious About Returning to the Moon


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @07:38PM (18 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @07:38PM (#685282)

    Pretty much and this is why the people need to demand that all political campaigns to use only public funds. No donations from anybody at all, just whatever the state and local government is willing to give you for the race. Also, restricting campaigns to just a few months would be greatly appreciated. It's just so tiresome dealing with the bullshit for years at a time. It's only 2018 and we're already hearing about the 2020 elections. And the press is already declaring certain people to be front runners. It's disgusting.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 28 2018, @07:55PM (17 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday May 28 2018, @07:55PM (#685285) Journal

    The billionaire Trump was able to get by without spending nearly as much as Clinton by manipulating the media (similar story during the primary [politifact.com]). It turns out you don't need all those TV ads when news networks will give you all the free air time you want.

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday May 28 2018, @08:16PM (4 children)

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 28 2018, @08:16PM (#685291) Journal

      It turns out you don't need all those TV ads when news networks will give you all the free air time you want.

      Well, it turns out that this, too, is uneven and inequitable.

      Many of the people desirable as public elected servants are not dumpster-fire assclowns who generate their own press by their undesirable antics (the two things being antithetical and all).

      I think the idea is to mostly fairly and equitably present the candidates in a fair and impartial system.

      Your observation does raise a way to "get around" such requirements. If, in addition to the usual-fair-and-impartial coverage, Candidate B also happens to say that everyone from a certain country is a rapist, for example, or that if he or she is elected, torture will not only resume but will get worse, or other such vaudville attention-getters, does the press not have some responsibility, or at least the first amendment freedom, to report on that, even if it unbalances the fair-and-impartial system?

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:45PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:45PM (#685300)

        We had something like that for a bunch of decades.
        It was the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, established in the 1930s.

        ...then along came Ronald Reagan, who stopped enforcing it.
        No USAian president since then has been enforcing it either.
        Yay, Neoliberalism!

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:52PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:52PM (#685305)

          Pretty much.

          But it's even worse than that, we've also allowed the total number of news outlets to shrink in the decades since. When I was a kid, we had 2 major daily papers as well as a number of smaller publications that were on differing schedules. We also had like 4 or so different TV stations covering the news. Now, we've got more TV news, but much of that is owned by the same people, and we only have one daily newspaper. The moment the other one went other, the surviving paper took a hard turn to the right as it no longer had to worry about losing customers to the left leaning paper they had been competing with.

          Not to mention that Fox "News" managed to get itself declared as entertainment rather than news and can air whatever likes they want as long as they don't cross the line into defamation. But, even that doesn't seem to stop them most of the time as they're making so much money that paying off lawsuits isn't an issue.

          The only bright side in all of this is that the internet has brought a number of outlets into existence that couldn't have existed previously. The big downside is that few of them have the resources to have their own people covering things like city hall where there might be no news for days or weeks until something major happens. Traditional news outlets would have somebody covering it on the off chance that something happened. As well as investigative journalists looking into suspicious things in case there's hidden corruption and the like. That's largely a thing of the past as the lack of competition has reduced the amount of money that news organizations are willing to spend looking into people in power.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:46PM (#685348)

          Why didn't Clinton start enforcing it again?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:19AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:19AM (#685364)

            You missed an important word in my comment.
            Here it is again: Neoliberalism [soylentnews.org]

            Bill Clinton's 5 Major Achievements Were Longstanding GOP Objectives [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [truth-out.org]

            The Dumbocrat ethos has been increasingly corporate-friendly + worker-hostile/consumer-hostile since the Donkeys got their asses kicked in 1972.
            We haven't had a president that was actually Progressive since LBJ.
            ...and Nixon was more Progressive than anyone who has followed him--even if he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to e.g. sign the act which created EPA.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:39PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:39PM (#685298)

      You left out "self-proclaimed".
      Trump biographer David Cay Johnston (a former NYT tax reporter) has reckoned that Trump has $700M max.
      Now, with Trump's daily violations of The Emoluments Clause(s), that may have changed.

      when news[1] networks will give [an orange clown] all the free air time [he] want[s]

      A sad commentary on USA's media in the 21st Century.
      Even more sad is that to get actual political analysis you have to turn to comedians.
      (A shout out here in particular to Jimmy Dore, who got his initial media exposure via Pacifica Radio KPFK in Los Angeles.)

      [1] Using the term in the broadest possible context.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:54PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:54PM (#685307)

        I'd be surprised if he had even $700m. People with that kind of money are unlikely bother with scams like Trump University, the money in that is just not good enough for somebody that's already worth 8 figures. For people who don't have much money, it can be worthwhile, up until getting caught, but somebody that's on the verge of becoming a billionaire is unlikely to be willing to take that risk.

        • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday May 28 2018, @11:05PM (1 child)

          by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 28 2018, @11:05PM (#685337) Journal

          I'd be surprised if he had even $700m

          Even if it was only $350m, I think it would not break the observation that rich people sitting around smoking $100-bill wrapped cigars are not likely to come up with anything that benefits the vast majority of citizens.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:38AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:38AM (#685369)

            My point is that he is a perennial liar (as well as a self-agrandizing fraud).
            He even lies when it doesn't matter at all.
            His brain is just defective.

            Why anyone would bother to report what he *says* is beyond me.
            He proves at least 4 times a day that his word can't be trusted.
            Putting his stupid name in the headlines just strokes his gigantic, undeserved ego.
            Better to wait and see what he actually does|what can be proved via tax returns.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @11:57PM (#685354)

        Even more sad is that to get actual political analysis you have to turn to comedians

        +∞ Insightful

        I'll get my dose of common-sense wherever I can. So comedians it is for the present.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:46PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @08:46PM (#685302)

      Yes, but had Clinton not had the Democratic primaries rigged in her favor and had she not made some massive strategic mistakes, she probably would have won anyways. Besides, I doubt the press is going to make the same mistake any time soon with covering a crackpot.

      A lot of the issues came from the media depending upon ad buys from the candidates. It's why you saw that empty podium on TV for so long, normally that's time that they would have spent on the Sander's campaign that they were purposefully ignoring.

      Having more ads only works when you're not running a massive deficit in popularity. Most people hated Hilary and Trump, the ads themselves as well as the press coverage weren't really doing him any favors. Against virtually any other candidate the free publicity he was getting would have just dug him into a deeper and deeper hole. Sort of like now how he can't get anything done in part because of all the distractions.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 28 2018, @10:14PM (2 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday May 28 2018, @10:14PM (#685325) Journal

        Besides, I doubt the press is going to make the same mistake any time soon with covering a crackpot.

        It's tempting to believe this, but given that they are in a clickbait competition, they might end up doing it anyway. And of course, online media outlets that are more than willing to cover the fringe are on an ascent.

        Also, Trump was more than a mere crackpot, he was a showman.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:17AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:17AM (#685398)

          > ...more than a mere crackpot, he was a showman.

          I'd stop short of "showman", but I'm willing to go as far as snake oil salesman. Willing to say whatever it takes to sell the product.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @04:26AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @04:26AM (#685441)

            Steve Earle - Snake Oil
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqk5of8LgLE [youtube.com]

            It was an anti-Reagan song.
            Listen to the lyrics. Nothing has changed in more than 30 years.

            Also, being a showman was the major part of selling snake oil.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday May 28 2018, @08:53PM (2 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Monday May 28 2018, @08:53PM (#685306) Journal

      when news networks will give you all the free air time you want.

      Didn't work for Hillary, did it?

      The News Media in the US was running Hillary for President. She was their candidate from beginning to end. [washingtonexaminer.com]

      Yes, they (eventually) covered Clinton's scandals, (more dismissively than anything else). But she got the bulk and majority of the fawning press.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @09:14PM (#685313)

        1 of a number of media outlets purchased by a Reactionary to spew his Reactionary opinions.
        Not a reliable source of information.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday May 28 2018, @10:26PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday May 28 2018, @10:26PM (#685329) Journal

        President Trump did plenty to deserve his "negative" coverage. (Is reporting that Trump said something incredibly offensive "negative", or merely obligatory?) Apparently, negative coverage was not a bad thing for Trump, so the MSM did him a favor. Stuff like attacking the Khans or "grab 'em by the pussy" may have stung a bit later, but early on in the primaries, the negative coverage and Trump doubling down was simply beneficial and helped him stand out in a crowded Republican primary. On this fine Memorial Day, let's pause to consider: Who would have thought pre-2016 that a candidate could survive a "[McCain is] a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured" remark? I'll admit that I didn't at the time, and it was a good lesson for things to come.

        Hillary got dogged by multiple email-related scandals for months, and the email leaks were conflated into one long, overarching scandal for voters. Benghazi was nothing compared to emails, emails, email server, a steady drip of WikiLeaks (just more emails). Although Comey may have been the deciding factor in the election, it was ultimately a situation of Clinton's own making.

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