User Manuals
about 4 years ago
– Sat, Feb 01, 2020 at 03:15:41 AM
Hello Rocketeers,
It is obvious that every space vehicle, being a very sophisticated machine, has its user manual. You should read this, before the flight, shouldn’t you? Here is an example of Saturn V rocket’s Flight Manual you can find on the NASA History pages:
Similarly, if you want to take part in the modern space race, you should know the rules of the game. So, here they are, in the beta version. Enjoy!
If you prefer watching than reading, here ia a great rules video from Ben Harsh:
If you have any rules questions do not hesitate to ask in the comments below this update. But please keep in mind that this is a beta version, and the rules will be updated (and shown to you for the final proofreading) before we print them.
Knowing the rules, you can play the game! Try it with your friends at the Tabletopia Game Room:
But let’s return to the modern space race… There are more businessmen on Earth than astronauts, but it doesn’t mean that doing business is easier than operating the space vehicle. So, let’s meet the second Rocketman, a well known entrepreneur Jeffrey Bezos!
BLUE ORIGIN: MOVING HUMANS AND INDUSTRY TO SPACE
Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the adopted son of an oil industry engineer, always dreamed about mankind’s future expansion in space. The awestruck 5-year old Jeffrey had watched the 1969 Moon lunar landing, this unforgettable event triggered the passion of a lifetime. By the time he was in High School, Bezos was already convinced that “the Earth was finite” and “space the only way to go”. In the mid-80s, Bezos was one of physicist Gerard O’Neill’s students at Princeton University. O’Neill had proposed some futuristic concepts for human settlement in space. After graduating in 1986, Bezos started a brilliant career in a Wall Street firm before moving to Seattle on the West Coast where in July 1994 he launched the revolutionary concept of an online bookstore: Amazon was born, it would make Bezos the richest man on Planet Earth!
As the years went by, as Amazon grew in leaps and bounds, the E-commerce juggernaut became more and more remarkably diversified, one of the keys for Bezos’ growing success and fortune. Aside from Amazon, in 2000 Bezos founded Blue Origin, a spaceflight company, a vehicle to fulfill his lifelong dream with the motto Gradatim Ferociter (step by step, ferociously). Blue Origin’s existence only became public in 2003, when Bezos started buying land in Texas and interested parties followed up on the purchases. Since then, Bezos has sold c. $1 billion of Amazon stock annually to invest in Blue Origin.
The Company’s goal is to provide cheaper travel means to enable private human access to space, to eventually move millions of people beyond Earth’s orbit, and transform launches of reusable rockets into routine trips. The goal is the establishment of a utopia of giant space colonies as envisaged by O’Neill in the 1970s, and eventually have one trillion people working in space. For now, Blue Origin’s New Shepard VTVL vehicle is in development since 2006 to conduct suborbital tourism missions in the near future. Customers can expect to pay $250,000 for a ticket on these suborbital flights. As of January 2020, the company hasn’t sent any humans with the rocket and booking is not yet open.
Although ambitions are stratospheric, so far Blue Origin’s achievements can hardly compare with SpaceX. Blue Origin has only done test launches to non-orbital space. The Company currently has no rockets capable of reaching orbit. The New Glenn orbital heavy-lift launch vehicle is expected to launch no sooner than 2021. In May 2019, the Amazon CEO announced that his space company also plans to land astronauts on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program in collaboration with four other U.S. aerospace or research firms. Blue Origin will provide the Blue Moon lander that is expected to ultimately carry a crew to the Moon’s south pole by 2024. For Bezos, lunar resource exploitation and eventual settlement on Earth’s satellite are a matter of human survival. “We must go back to the moon, and this time to stay,” declared Bezos in May 2018. A lunar settlement could save Earth by moving heavy industries into space within the next century. Will the colonization of space be written by and for captains of industry like Bezos?
The “king of the World” made it clear that he would rather venture out into space together with the cooperation of the U.S. and the European governments but, if necessary, he would be willing to achieve the capitalist conquest and colonization of space with his own.
Written by Dr. Eric G. L. PINZELLI
Multi-part pledge shipping costs
This is the most common question in the comments section, so here is an update about it.
You can combine different pledge levels in a single pledge. You can take any amount of items in your pledge. The estimated shipping cost of such a bundle will be the standard fee for a single pledge + 8 GBP for every additional pledge (up to four pledges - the fifth will start a new bulk box, working on the same scheme). So when you multiply the items in your pledge you get a significant discount on the shipping costs.
That’s all for today. Thank you for your support and please keep the engines burning!
Michal & PHALANX Team