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Amazon founder unveils rocket plant, launch pad in Florida — Parallax Forums

Amazon founder unveils rocket plant, launch pad in Florida

Ron CzapalaRon Czapala Posts: 2,418
in General Discussion
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-founder-bezos-unveils-rocket-144929128.html

Excerpt:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 15 (Reuters ) - Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday unveiled plans to build a rocket manufacturing plant and launch site in Florida, a business that will compete against fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Bezos' space startup, Blue Origin, intends to invest more than $200 million to build a rocket manufacturing facility adjacent to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, state officials said. The rockets will fly from a refurbished launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the NASA spaceport.

Comments

  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    Wow! That ought to make Amazon Prime deliveries REALLY special!!!
  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers Posts: 2,185
    Oddly enough, there's a pad there that's being used by a fellow good guy, the one behind the Falcon flights... (No not the bird by that name, nor the oldest freighter in space....)

    I'm still wondering how hard it would be to bring a Parallax system run Cubesat to travel aboard either of them.
  • markmark Posts: 252
    I vaguely remember someone on this forum mentioning a prop being used in a cube sat. Unfortunately, specifics were scarce.

    I've been thinking on and off about how to implement code in a rad tolerant manner on the prop just for the fun of it. I have a feeling the prop2 would be more conducive to it, though.
  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers Posts: 2,185
    I agree.

    Maker Media, the parent company behind Make Magazine, and Maker Shed, list four books, printed by their former counterparts at O'Reilly. The author behind them, chose two systems for his design, the ard**** product and an also ran to the Basic Stamp design. He's not thrilled with writing code in BASIC for that also ran, however he's more interested in writing sketches for that thing.

    I find it illogical that the author didn't even bother to examine the Parallax collection of items, including excellent sensors.

    For what he wants to do, up there, the Prop, and either version would win the game hands and others down.
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    Launch costs around $120k for a cube sat. (does not include price of cube sat). The sat could easily set a person back another $30-50k.


    Certainly out of the price range for the average person.
  • markmark Posts: 252
    Universities occasionally get to hitch rides for free, I believe. Of course, that doesn't help those of us tinkering away in our basements. Although back in the 60s and 70s, it was HAMs that got to develop and launch some of the very first comm sats built right in their homes.
  • SeairthSeairth Posts: 2,474
    rod1963 wrote: »
    Launch costs around $120k for a cube sat. (does not include price of cube sat). The sat could easily set a person back another $30-50k.

    Based on this article, it only costs about $40k! What a deal! Though, not so good a deal after all if the rocket blows up. :(

  • PropGuy2PropGuy2 Posts: 360
    Way to go Amazon founder Jeff Bezos !!! We here on the East central coast of Florida appreciate your choice to bring your company to the Cape Canaveral area, and your continued efforts to lead the way in the rocket and space industry. It will definitely advance our space technology and bring quality jobs to the area.
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    It's nice that you can afford to build a cube sat and have it launched. Most people don't have almost a $100k to dump on a hobby project.
  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers Posts: 2,185
    rod1963 wrote: »
    It's nice that you can afford to build a cube sat and have it launched. Most people don't have almost a $100k to dump on a hobby project.

    Indeed.
    Back during the Space Shuttle days I was seriously considering designing and building a get away special package, itself running around an old friend, the R6502 processor and a few support parts, perhaps an entire single board computer running on one, and then an appropriate experiment. But a school beat me to it, and using a very capable one wrapped around the Z80 and programmed it using the TRS80 family of kludges to do the job. I think it worked.

    Now? I'd rather build an appropriate cheap sat using either a shielded BS2 or a Prop1 stuffed into a FPGA that is itself rad hard configured, using the VHDL core for it. However what to have the system do is the hard part.
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