Blue Origin END GAME!! Top GENIUS Engineers Escape Jeff Bezos to Join up SpaceX & Elon Musk

YouTube ^ | August 24, 2021 | Great SpaceX

[SunkenCiv]

As we all know on July 20, Blue Origin successfully made a flight to the edge of orbit, making Jeff Bezos one of the first two billionaires to go to space. This seems to be the resounding success of Blue Origin so far. However, after the billionaire space founder came back to Earth, the company's internal affairs became chaotic, many key engineers and leaders decided to leave the company.

At least 17 key leaders and senior engineers have left Blue Origin this summer, with many moving on in the weeks after Bezos’ spaceflight.

Two of the engineers, Nitin Arora and Lauren Lyons, this week announced jobs at other space companies: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, respectively. Others quietly updated their LinkedIn pages over the past few weeks.

The people who leave the company are really familiar people in the rocket industry. Those departures include New Shepard senior vice president Steve Bennett, chief of mission assurance Jeff Ashby (who retired), national security sales director Scott Jacobs, New Glenn senior director Bob Ess, New Glenn first stage senior director Tod Byquist, New Glenn senior finance manager Bill Scammell, senior manager of production testing Christopher Payne, New Shepard technical project manager Nate Chapman, senior propulsion design engineer Dave Sanderson, senior HLS human factors engineer Rachel Forman, BE-4 controller lead integration and testing engineer Jack Nelson, New Shepard lead avionics software engineer Huong Vo, BE-7 avionics hardware engineer Aaron Wang, propulsion engineer Rex Gu, and rocket engine development engineer Gerry Hudak.

So why did Blue Origin lose its top talents?

Those who announced they were leaving Blue Origin did not specify why. However, cited in employee reviews on job site Glassdoor and Indeed, many workers were frustrated with executive management and a slow, bureaucratic structure.

There were employees at the company who only gave 1 star reviews. One employee said “I really was happy to work here but I'm totally disappointed in the culture, horrible management and lack of direction. So many people are leaving. I understand why.”

[SunkenCiv]

Blue Origin END GAME!! Top GENIUS Engineers Escape Jeff Bezos to Join up SpaceX & Elon Musk | August 24, 2021 | Great SpaceX

[Fai Mao]

I guess we have a winner in this game.

[rdcbn1]

Blue origin was never a particularly serious effort.

Musk's SpaceX is the real deal

[Fractal Trader]

Maybe they were shamed by the CGI “flight”

[BobL]

“Musk’s SpaceX is the real deal”

Musk is a jerk...but I agree, he clearly is the best in the business!

[LizzieD]

I think they were embarrassed when they actually witnessed their giant flying penis on TV....

[SunkenCiv]

As Elon Musk once joked, "Jeff who?"

Musk developed a computer game in his teens and got a bit of a payday, started other computer-era businesses, eventually built PayPal, sold it for a big pile of doubloons, wound up involved in Tesla (he isn't the founder), founded SpaceX and has succeeded wildly. He has some kind of engineering and science background, but really is just a polymathic autodidact.

By contrast, Jeff Bezos became a billionaire running an online garage sale, while losing others' money for a decade or so until Amazon reached profitability. Clearly he's much more risk-averse than Elon Musk, and not really any more qualified to build a space services company than anyone else who grew up reading (or selling) sci fi and comic books.

Blue Origin's thoroughly tested New Shepard should have been an operational system at least a year ago, probably longer than that. The company has yet to orbit anything. The New Glenn is purported to have much larger payload capacity, but has never seen the light of day AFAIK, and as noted in the video, completions of its engines were heavily dependent on NASA contracts. I suspect the two engines they manage to complete by the end of this year will wind up heading for ULA, with which Blue Origin has an engine contract.

Meme alert: fish or cut bait.

SpaceX sent its first cargo dragon spacecraft to dock with the ISS in May of 2012, and in May of 2020 the next version of the craft sent a human crew to orbit and the ISS. The Falcon 9 booster has been throwing cargo to orbit and beyond (the Falcon Heavy variant sent a Tesla Roadster into solar orbit on February 2018), with 89 successful propulsive landings (out of 100 attempts, all these figures are per Wikipedia), and 28 recovered boosters have been reflown at least once.

[moovova]

Maybe the Blue Origin scientists got tired of having to forgo break times and urinate in bottles.

[Red Badger]

Elon is a visionary.

Bezos is a nerd with money.....................

[SunkenCiv]

First flight of New Shepard was April 29, 2015; only 1 (partial) failure (same date), 1 pad abort (before that), 15 successful suborbital flights (the lowest altitude achieved was about 58 miles), one manned/wommaned flight, and the wiki-wacky page sez, a flight tomorrow delivering payloads to space.

[SunkenCiv]

Jeff Bezos Is Building a 10,000-Year Clock Inside a Mountain
Seems like he could just buy a watch on Amazon?
BY CAROLINE DELBERT
APR 27, 2020
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a31156395/jeff-bezos-clock-long-now-mountain/

[SunkenCiv]

Space projects used to be dominated by government bodies until we saw ambitious companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin diving into this mighty field. These two are the most prominent names in the private space community, owned by two of the most powerful businessmen of all time — Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. In the space segment, while the two companies might look quite similar in their attempts to explore space, the ideology and the approach of these companies vary quite significantly. But one thing cannot be denied that they both are developing large, reusable vehicles capable of carrying people and satellites across space. We have often heard about SpaceX’s missions and launches over the past few years while Blue Origin does not come out to be so ambitious and gained traction. In the last two years alone SpaceX has performed 21 launches, representing about 20% of roughly 100 worldwide launches. Therefore, no wonder why Lead engineer for Blue Origin's lunar lander program jumps to SpaceX.

BUT WHO LEAVES BLUE TO ENLIST AT SPACEX?

Blue Origin’s lead engineer for its lunar lander project announced he has left to join SpaceX, which netted a coveted contract from NASA this spring to bring astronauts back to the moon. Nitin Arora, the mission architecture and integration lead for Blue Origin’s Human Landing System announced on LinkedIn Aug. 16 that he’d taken a position at the Elon Musk-led company. “It was one hell of a ride working on the lunar program,” Arora said. “Really honored that I got a chance to work with and lead incredibly smart, passionate people over the last three years. Special thanks to everyone who I worked with daily. I will miss you all. Next stop, SpaceX!”

Arora spent more than two years at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. He joined Blue Origin in 2018 from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to work on the company’s “Blue Moon” lunar lander. Most recently, he was a part of the team building the space venture’s human landing system, but now, there are some reasons that made him leave Blue to work for SpaceX. In our opinion, the move comes after Blue Origin’s unsuccessful appeal and the pending lawsuit over NASA’s decision to award Elon Musk’s SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to return astronauts to the moon in April.

WHY the TOP Blue engineer leaves the company to ENLIST SpaceX | August 23, 2021 | Tesla Fans

[SunkenCiv]

Musk's history suggests that he doesn't play well with others -- but appears to belong at the top of wherever he's operating. I'm old fashioned -- the boss is the boss. Also, betting against Musk's ultimate success has proved to be a mistake, over and over.

[Organic Panic]

I had a job offer at Blue Origin. No thanks. If you want to live in the crappiest parts of Texas it would be a great job.

[HamiltonJay]

I’d tend to agree. Bezo’s effort appears to be a vanity project to his ego, while Elon’s effort actually seems to be reaching for the stars

[6ppc]

Bezos appears to be “All Hat No Cattle”. Musk is delivering results.

[SunkenCiv]

---

Starbase Launchpad Tour with Elon Musk [PART 1] | August 3, 2021 | Everyday Astronaut

---

Starbase Launchpad Tour with Elon Musk [PART 2] | August 7, 2021 | Everyday Astronaut

---

Starbase Launchpad Tour with Elon Musk [PART 3] | August 11, 2021 | Everyday Astronaut

---

Elon Musk hilariously OWNS Court members on SpaceX issue.

When Elon Musk HUMILIATED Senators In Court on SpaceX Issue | August 4, 2021 | Intellectual Capital

---

[Fai Mao]

Not playing well with others and not being a good boss are different things. It appears that engineers leaving Blue Origin (Bezos) for SpaceX (Musk) means Musk is winning the competition. That’s all I meant.

[alexander_busek]

As we all know on July 20, Blue Origin successfully made a flight to the edge of orbit space [...]

They traveled to the Kármán line, at which they came to a dead stop before falling back to Earth. Blue Origin was nowhere near achieving orbit.

Regards,

[hoagy62]

“CGI flight”?

What in the blue blazes are you talking about? That Bezos’ New Shepherd flight was faked?

I am by NO means a Bezos supporter, but that was NOT faked.