jeffbezos
Latest
Here's the view from Blue Origin's rocket as it lands
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin proved that its New Shepard rocket is indeed reusable by launching and landing it successfully a second time in January. While you've likely seen a footage or two of the suborbital trip, this one offers something more unique: it was taken by the camera mounted on the rocket itself. The Vine video below the fold shows the last six seconds of the vertical landing (sped up a bit) from the New Shepard's point of view. You can clearly see one of its legs unfold and its engines fire up as it was about to touch down.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sent its rocket to space... again
As Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos continue their battle to develop re-usable rocket technology first, the Amazon man's company has news to announce tonight. Its video shows its New Shepard rocket -- that previously flew to suborbital altitude of 100km -- doing it all over again. According to Blue Origin, instead of just being the first rocket to cross the Karman Line and then land vertically back on the Earth, it's now the first one to have done it twice. There are still arguments that what Blue Origin is doing is easier than SpaceX's attempts (not actually going into low-Earth orbit and it's moving slower), but it's still an amazing achievement.
Recommended Reading: How Taylor Swift took on Apple
Taylor Swift Is the New Prince: The Artist Who Tamed the Corporate Giant Teo Bugbee, The Daily Beast It's true: Taylor Swift went toe to toe with Apple in 2015 and came out on top. If you'll recall, the singer penned a blog post to the folks in Cupertino after news broke that the company didn't plan to compensate artists during Apple Music's trial period. After promising to withhold her music from the app, Tim Cook & Co. reversed the decision and Swift's hits were available on the service from day one. However, the debate over artist compensation rages on.
ICYMI: Pollution sea vacuum, SpaceX's success and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-999936{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-999936, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-999936{width:570px;display:block;}try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-999936").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: SpaceX successfully landed its reusable rocket, from a height of 125 miles-- then Elon Musk and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos traded Twitter jabs for our entertainment. Scientists from Cambridge University found that oil droplets change into artificial shapes like octagons when frozen in soapy water, then return to their normal shape when heated. And a nearly $4,000 gadget for sailors aims to clean up the dirty marinas where debris and oil spills often mar the seafaring beauty.
Jeff Bezos' fourth tweet promises to #sendDonaldtospace
I've sent out plenty of Twitter replies to haters, but you'll have that after 38,000~ posts. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is relatively new to the service, and as such he has used one quarter of his tweets in responding to a Donald Trump tweetstorm. Trump claimed Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post is a scam, meant as a deduction to keep taxes down at his "no-profit" retail shop. Since Bezos, not Amazon, owns the Post and Amazon is (at least for the moment) profitable, this seems to be just another Trump statement that has little to no relationship with truth or facts of any kind. This evening Bezos fired back by bringing his third company Blue Origin into the fray, promising to reserve Donald Trump a seat. There's no word on if that seat comes with a return trip.
Gates, Zuckerberg and Bezos invest in huge clean energy fund
After announcing the Mission Innovation program to convince nations to double their clean energy investment budgets, Bill Gates has launched another massive initiative at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Paris. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is backed by a who's who of tech leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma and Richard Branson. The idea is to develop new green technology that will increase the world's energy output -- especially in poor countries -- without contributing to global warming. Such tech, however, poses a risk that regular investors might shy away from. "We need the basic research, but we need to pair that with people who are willing to fund high-risk, breakthrough energy companies," said Gates.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Tesla Model S recall, and more!
When a problem comes along, you must fix it. This week Tesla noticed a defective seatbelt in one of its Model S sedans, so the automaker immediately issued a recall for all 90,000 vehicles on the road out of "an abundance of caution." In other transportation news, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin beat out Elon Musk's SpaceX in the race to develop a rocket that can return intact from space. Porsche announced plans to offer a hybrid version of one of the most-loved sports cars of all time. We also spotted several outlandish infrastructural hazards: a three-day traffic jam snared drivers in Kenya and a highway suddenly lifted towards the sky and splintered into pieces in California.
Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk's SpaceX in the reusable rocket race
Blue Origin, the private space firm owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has just dropped a huge gauntlet in the race to develop a reusable rocket. It just launched its New Shepard space vehicle (video, below), consisting of a BE-3 rocket and crew capsule, to the edge of space at a suborbital altitude of 100.5 kilometers (62 miles). The capsule then separated and touched down beneath a parachute, but more importantly, the BE-3 rocket also started its own descent. After the rockets fired at nearly 5,000 feet, it made a a controlled vertical landing at a gentle 4.4 mph.
Blue Origin subjected rocket engine to over 100 rounds of testing
Blue Origin joined forces with Boeing's/Lockheed Martin's United Launch Alliance to build its BE-4 rocket engine last year. Now, the American-made component has completed over 100 staged-combustion cycles, which "included a representative BE-4 preburner and regeneratively cooled thrust chamber using multiple full-scale injector elements." Since we're not all rocket scientists, it just means the Jeff Bezos-backed space corp put its parts through rigorous testing before it starts full-engine tests.
Jeff Bezos' space firm commits to building and launching in Florida
Blue Origins, Jeff Bezos' private space travel company (and competitor to Elon Musk's SpaceX), is setting up shop in Florida. Bezos announced this morning that the company is building a manufacturing facility for its reusable orbital vehicles, and that it'll be launching from the nearby Spaceport Launch 36 complex, Geekwire reports. Blue Origin will be investing $200 million in Florida, according to Florida Governor Rick Scott, and creating 330 jobs. The news comes a week after Boeing and Lockheed's United Launch Associates agreed to expand production of Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket motor. While there's still plenty of work ahead, Bezos now appears to be one step closer to making his dream of inexpensive space travel a reality. Most intriguingly, he says the company will be launching from the new site "later this decade."
Boeing and Jeff Bezos move closer to putting US rockets in orbit
United Launch Associates (ULA), the rocket enterprise from Boeing and Lockheed, has ramped up its commitment to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket engines. The two companies agreed to expand production capability of Origin's BE-4 rocket motor, "an important step toward building (them) at the production rate needed for the Vulcan launch vehicle," said Bezos. Last year, the two companies formed a pact to develop an engine that that can replace the Russian-built RD-180 engines originally planned for Vulcan -- ULA's successor to the Atlas V. Due to a US congressional ban on Russian products, ULA can no longer purchase RD-180s.
NYT report says it's tough (often brutal) working for Amazon
Amazon is a huge, very successful company that can make headlines with products and services years away from reality. It's also good at selling you stuff you want really cheaply and delivering it to you super quick. According to a New York Times report, however, the incredible efficiency and continuing expansion comes at the cost of its workers, held to "unreasonably high" standards and demands. The NYT talked to over 100 current and former Amazon workers, across senior management, as well as workers in retail, engineering, HR and marketing. Some nightmare tales outline about how employees caring for relatives or battling cancer soon faced harsh feedback from colleagues and superiors. "What kind of company do we want to be?" said one former human resources exec to her bosses, after she was told to put a woman who had recently returned from serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance review.
Jeff Bezos' first proper test rocket has successfully launched
Elon Musk may be the most famous tech billionaire with an interest in spaceflight, but he's certainly not the only one. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also has a company, Blue Origin, which is doing similar research into reusable craft to get us to-and-from the heavens. The normally secretive outfit has just revealed that its first test vehicle, New Shepard, made arguably its most important, partially successful test flight yesterday. In the experiment, the priapic craft took an (empty) crew capsule to a height of 307,000 feet before releasing it to float gently back to earth.
Jeff Bezos' spaceship is set to lift off later this year
With the recent completion of its BE-3 engine, the New Shepard space capsule from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin LLC is almost ready for liftoff, the company's president told reporters on Tuesday. "The engine is ready for flight...and ready for other commercial users," Blue Origins president Rob Meyerson said. The New Shepard is designed to carry three passengers and cargo on suborbital spaceflights. This could include deliveries to the International Space Station or using just the motor itself to launch satellites into orbit.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk workers want to be treated like humans
Amazon's Mechanical Turk service is all about using humans to perform computer-like tasks, such as identifying objects and transcribing videos. However, those workers are tired of being treated like automatons -- they've launched an email campaign urging Amazon chief Jeff Bezos to market Mechanical Turk staff as the humans they are. Ideally, they'd be treated as "skilled, flexible" people with real identities, not just as tools for time-conscious customers. They're hoping for a public response from Bezos, and also want to shake off stereotypes of Turkers as unskilled or working solely for "beer money."
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has struck a deal with Boeing and Lockheed to build space rockets
Wondering why NASA gave Boeing the lion's share of its space taxi funding? Jeff Bezos could have something to do with it. Shortly after NASA awarded Boeing $4.2 billion in funding, the Wall Street Journal claimed the company padded its bid with a partnership with Bezos' Blue Origin. Turns out, the WSJ was right: today Blue Origin and the United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin) entered an agreement to fund and build the Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine. Basically, Boeing is going to build NASA's space taxi capsules and Bezos' rocket company is going to launch them out of our atmosphere.
Boeing is expected to build most of NASA's space taxis (update: official)
NASA may have been even-handed when it started doling out money to contractors for its space taxi program, but there are hints that it's about to play favorites. The Wall Street Journal hears from anonymous officials that Boeing is now the odds-on favorite to get the majority of NASA's astronaut transportation business. SpaceX, once thought to be the frontrunner, would be relegated to a "second source" alongside Sierra Nevada. Reportedly, the agency sees Boeing's CST-100 capsule as the easy choice -- it carries relatively few risks, and is more likely to be ready for business in three years than SpaceX's Dragon V2. Update: Sure enough, NASA announced its contracts today. Boeing will get the lion's share of the business with $4.2 billion in funding, but SpaceX isn't exactly a bit player here -- it's getting $2.6 billion. Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser won't be part of the picture, however.
Amazon appeals directly to authors in ongoing e-book dispute
Despite sounding like a rogue militant organization from G.I. Joe, Hachette is actually a book publishing group. Tame as that may sound, Hachette is currently engaged in a high-stakes game of Chicken with a juggernaut in the book sales world: Amazon. It's all part of a long-running dispute between book publishers and "the everything store"; even the book titled after Amazon's moniker was involved in the dispute. It goes like this: Amazon wants to price its e-books one way, and publishers want things another way. While the negotiations occur, Amazon pushes back by slowing delivery of physical books by publishers involved in negotiations or, sometimes, carrying limited stocks intentionally so the books are unable to be ordered. Another tactic Amazon's now employing in the dispute? Appealing directly to authors. With cash.
Watch Jeff Bezos unveil Amazon's new Fire phone (video)
Amazon didn't provide a live stream for its festivities earlier today, but if you'd like to relive the unveiling of its first smartphone, now you can. The nearly 1 and a half hour Fire phone event video has been posted to YouTube and we've included it after the break. Don't have that time to watch Jeff Bezos explain why you'll slip this universal buying tool into your pocket? Check out all the info and our first hands-on impressions first.
Amazon's likely announcing its new phone on June 18th (update: yep, it's a phone)
What has six cameras, a large screen and tracks your head? Amazon's new phone, probably. The company's first handset has been long rumored and occasionally leaked, but now the company seems ready to make it official: Jeff Bezos is hosting a hitherto unannounced "launch event" later this month. The company's page for the event is little more than a invitation request form, but an attached teaser video meshes well with the purported phone's rumored head-tracking capabilities. "It moved with me!" exclaims an unnamed tester, staring at an object just out of frame. Sounds neat.
