01-13-25 YMS Blue Origin - the company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is expected to make its first launch into space this week. Will competition between Bezos and Elon Musk’s SpaceX take capitalism to the “last frontier?” National Correspondent RORY O’NEILL will be watching the launch from Florida and will have the latest.

Blue Origin - the company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is expected to make its first launch into space this week. Will competition between Bezos and Elon Musk’s SpaceX take capitalism to the “last frontier?” National Correspondent RORY O’NEILL will be watching the launch from Florida and will have the latest.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on your morning show with Michael dil Choano.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
You're just waking up. The death toll has now risen
to twenty four The visuals from the Los Angeles area
continue to be apocalyptic looking. Containment is not very good.
For six days later, we're looking at fourteen percent containment
in the Palisades area fire and twenty seven percent containment

(00:27):
in the Eaton fire. Roy O'Neil is going to be
joining us throughout the morning. We'll talk about Blue Origin
here in a second. But first things first, down these fires,
very little containment six days in Rory. Then the death
toll continues to rise.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Well right, and you know, some of these other fires
are popping up, like the Hurst fire, there was a
subhulvent of fire that are also quickly being pounced upon
and they are getting controlled and contained. I think the
Hurst fire is around ninety percent contained at this point,
but you're right, the two big ones, the Palisades fires,
about twenty five thousand acres and it's only about thirteen

(01:03):
fourteen percent contained. But a lot of progress was made
over the weekend, and there are fears that that could
all get wiped away today and tomorrow as those Santa Ana.
Winds return with GUSS forty to fifty sixty miles per hour,
still well below where they were a week ago this time,
but really going to slow down their efforts. It's a

(01:24):
question as to whether or not they can still operate
the helicopters and the planes, just how bad the wind
get winds.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, is
expected to make its first launch into space this week.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Tell us about this capetation time and busses. They tried
to do it this morning, but it was a no go.
Technical problems for this brand new rocket three hundred and
twenty feet tall. It's the big Falcon rocket that muskaflies
is about three hundred and seventy feet tall, depending on
its configuration. The old Saturn five that took us to

(01:59):
the Moon was a three hundred and sixty feet tall,
so this one is up there. But look, these technical
problems on a first ever flight are all to be expected.
Blue Origin has been successful in launching you know, William
Shatner and celebrities on a much smaller New Shepherd rocket
in Texas, but this baby's sitting on a launch pad
still in Florida.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
The role of this, the role of the competition with
Elon Musk, the cooperation with NASAW. You followed the space
program from its origins. Give everybody a sense of the
encouragement of this and why it's so vital.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah, NASA, we NASA is funding a lot of this
at the first SpaceX and now Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos,
because we want to develop a commercial space industry. NASA
wants to focus on doing the hard stuff going to
the Moon and to Mars. That's why they sort of
went away from Space Shuttle saying it's one hundred and

(02:55):
fifty miles up, it's not really a big deal. Wow,
let's focus on and let's turn this over to the
private sector, which is what they're trying to do with
a lot of seed money to get these companies going.
And they want to use SpaceX and Blue Origin to
get us back to the moon. So they are contracted
on a lot of the future NASA missions to go
to the Moon and on tomorrow. So it's a lot

(03:16):
of this work is being farmed out to companies like this.
Competition is a good thing as a space race again, Yeah,
do we have sixty seconds or no thirty seconds? Thirty seconds. Okay,
so is this partly to handoff. We'll keep doing the
hard science to get us there, but by doing it simultaneously,
you're there to bring others there, perhaps for living or visiting.

(03:39):
Is that why they're doing it in conjunction. Yeah, and
then they can find the problem. The private companies can
find profitable ways to do things. You know, we help
to develop and pay for the development, say of SpaceX
and it's reusable rocket. Well now they're launching all those
Starlink satellites thanks on a rocket that we helped defund
the development of. So it of that compared it to aviation. Initially,

(04:02):
when the US Postal Service started sending airmail, that was
a huge boon to aviation in the US. Sort of
similar to that in this century.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
From a National correspondent, Rory O'nei'll be back again next hour.
Thanks Roan.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
It's a little miss a lot, miss a lot, and
we'll miss you. It's your morning show with Michael del Churno.