What I found interesting was this, though:
The FAA also is considering two proposed spaceports in Texas, including a private spaceport on 165,000 acres of desolate ranch land about 120 miles east of El Paso bought by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos had said his space tourism firm, Blue Origin, would first build basic structures, then begin flight tests in six to seven years.
Six to seven years? I thought that they wanted to do suborbital tourism, at least initially. Why would it take six to seven years, given that they’ve been working on it for a number of years already? It makes me wonder how serious Mr. Bezos is about this business, because that would put him way behind the competition (though perhaps he thinks that his design will be so superior that it won’t matter).
One of the dangers of having too much money is that you’re sometimes willing to spend it with no expectations of getting it back, so it’s treated more as a hobby. John Carmack has noted this explicitly in the past with respect to Armadillo (though he may be evolving it into a business), but is Blue Origin similar?