Blue Origin - Booster Reuse - New Shepard

[Grendal]

Nicely done. They hit 347,500 feet. Only about 2500 feet short of their 350K goal. They got 17.5K feet above the Karman line. As a passenger, you'd get about five or six minutes of freefall sensation. That would diminish once you hit the thicker atmosphere.

Their capsule seats six and the price (while not known yet) will probably be between $250K and $150K.

2nd reuse of this particular booster. Note that the engine being used here, the BE-3, will be the second stage engine for the New Glenn.

Not to disparage Virgin Galactic too much, but there is no question I'd rather do a suborbital flight with New Shepard over Virgin Galactic's system.

 

[Electroman]

Going straight up and coming done: I don't see the point except for a few minutes of thrill ride

 

[seattlite2004]

Going straight up and coming done: I don't see the point except for a few minutes of thrill ride

Most rockets (boosters) go up...and dont come down in one piece or at all.

In short...I think the point of this is...payload sep, payload return, and booster return...no anomalies...at least to the general public.

 

[Brando]

Good interview
Why won't he pay his employees a livable wage??

 

[Grendal]

Everyday Astronaut did a livestream of the New Shepard launch. There are a couple choice pieces of information on New Glenn in the lengthy delayed launch presentation. 2:20 into the stream is where they talk about New Glenn and their manufacturing facility in Florida.

 

[ecarfan]

Thanks for the link. I don’t like to bash BO and I wish them success, but watching that launch and land was...underwhelming.

If I had to choose between taking VG or BO for a sub-orbital tourist ride, I would take VG. But I’m going to wait for the BFR sub-orbital flights! They won’t happen as soon, but I believe they will happen and at a ticket price I can afford.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I got a tour of VG in Mojave a month ago. I gotta say I wasn’t too impressed. Apart from the fact that the CEO is the most daredevil CEO in history, the system looks just too complicated for safety in my opinion. Technically, it was Scaled Composites, but this program has the dubious distinction of being the only privately funded space operation to have had two separate fatal accidents.

 

[bxr140]

I hope BO does well, but I just can’t get too excited about a rocket going straight up and falling back down after SpaceX.

In the context of advancing spaceflight, most in the industry are far more excited about what BO is doing than the next ‘normal’ F9 flight.

Going straight up and coming done: I don't see the point except for a few minutes of thrill ride

Thanks for the link. I don’t like to bash BO and I wish them success, but watching that launch and land was...underwhelming.

That’s too bad. Not too long ago Falcon 9’s near-useless heavy lift capacity was the source of similar dismissals and marginalizing compliments. But...spacex’s approach to development soon converted at least most of the poor wishers. While BO is certainly progressing with a more measured approach than spacex, they’re really just farther back on the timeline.

There’s nothing wrong with up and down; scaling up from sub-Orbital to Orbital is the easy part once the hardware—and the company itself—has proven their sturdy roots.

 

[ecarfan]

There’s nothing wrong with up and down; scaling up from sub-Orbital to Orbital is the easy part once the hardware—and the company itself—has proven their sturdy roots.

As you know, SpaceX put a payload in orbit on their fourth flight. No wasted time on sub-orbital flights; they weren’t necessary. They were in the 1950’s, but that was a long time ago.

I recognize that New Shepard was designed for sub-orbital space tourism, not for orbital missions with a non-human payload, and that the Falcon 1 was designed as an orbital-class vehicle from the beginning. At this point, SpaceX appears to be a decade ahead of BO and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Even though BO chose a harder initial path than SpaceX (New Shepard has to be human rated) I’ve been disappointed at how slowly BO appears to be progressing since the company was created. I want them to succeed, and given their easy access to vast amounts of capital (Bezos’s Amazon stock) I am sure they will, eventually. In contrast, SpaceX is poised to put humans in orbit within months and is set to dominate the commercial launch market just 16 years after it was founded by a guy who had zero experience in the aerospace business. BO was founded 18 years ago by a guy who had zero experience in the aerospace business...

 

[Cosmacelf]

As you know, SpaceX put a payload in orbit on their fourth flight. No wasted time on sub-orbital flights; they weren’t necessary. They were in the 1950’s, but that was a long time ago.

I recognize that New Shepard was designed for sub-orbital space tourism, not for orbital missions with a non-human payload, and that the Falcon 1 was designed as an orbital-class vehicle from the beginning. At this point, SpaceX appears to be a decade ahead of BO and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Even though BO chose a harder initial path than SpaceX (New Shepard has to be human rated) I’ve been disappointed at how slowly BO appears to be progressing since the company was created. I want them to succeed, and given their easy access to vast amounts of capital (Bezos’s Amazon stock) I am sure they will, eventually. In contrast, SpaceX is poised to put humans in orbit within months and is set to dominate the commercial launch market just 16 years after it was founded by a guy who had zero experience in the aerospace business. BO was founded 18 years ago by a guy who had zero experience in the aerospace business...

I don’t think BO will be all that successful for the simple reason that it doesn’t have to. Bezos can and will continue to pour lots of money into it. Bezos net worth, today, is $133B.

Meanwhile SpaceX has progressed far past the point where Elon and other individual investors can bail it out. Elon’s public company net worth (ie. His Tesla stock) is only worth $10B. That’s a lot of money, but Elon doesn’t sell stock, he just borrows against it, and his latest filing shows he’s already pledged about 40% of his Tesla stock. The point is that SpaceX MUST fly on it own. It has no choice but to make money to keep its thousands of very expensive employees employed.

The pressures of having to perform are enormous.

 

[jimmyjohn]

Sketchy.

 

[Doug_G]

If I had to choose between taking VG or BO for a sub-orbital tourist ride, I would take VG.

Not the slightest bit interested in Virgin Galactic. It's a dead-end, with no hope of ever scaling to orbital missions.

As for Blue Origin, I'm currently more interested in their engine development than their rockets. We'll see what happens when we get to New Glenn.

 

[HVM]

There is Virgin Orbit, you know?

 

[Doug_G]

Competition for the Electron. Not relevant to human spaceflight.

 

[Electroman]

I watch the Shepard launch and land. Some questions / comments:

- When the stage separated, how did they go further and further apart? given that there is no powered 2nd stage and both the stages are actually free falling, i would have expected they both would pretty much be close to each other - a few feet away - after separation until they hit the atmosphere again.

- Does the capsule have windows, that are open to the elements? the picture seemed that way.. take a look at this snapshot t - 0:27

- When the main chute opened it reduced the speed from 150 to 50 mph in 3 seconds. Equivalent of 0 to 100 in 3 seconds. wow..

- I didn't see the retro rockets firing at all. It seemed like the capsule hit the ground at 17 mph, and the commentator was saying, 'beautiful soft landing'.

- The telemetry was all over the place, especially on the way back. Altitude and speed was jumping up and down.

- Whats with the stupid feet and miles?

 

[Nikxice]

- Does the capsule have windows, that are open to the elements? the picture seemed that way.. take a look at this snapshot t - 0:27

Grendal's video post #208 provide a good view of the solid windows.

- I didn't see the retro rockets firing at all. It seemed like the capsule hit the ground at 17 mph, and the commentator was saying, 'beautiful soft landing'.

The retro's fire so fast and close to the surface that they're difficult to detect from an overhead camera. I've watched many of the Soyuz landings. Although they use a similar retro system I can't remember seeing much rocket flame, just a good deal of blowing dirt milliseconds from touchdown.

 

[Grendal]

I watch the Shepard launch and land. Some questions / comments:

- When the stage separated, how did they go further and further apart? given that there is no powered 2nd stage and both the stages are actually free falling, i would have expected they both would pretty much be close to each other - a few feet away - after separation until they hit the atmosphere again.

- Does the capsule have windows, that are open to the elements? the picture seemed that way.. take a look at this snapshot t - 0:27

- When the main chute opened it reduced the speed from 150 to 50 mph in 3 seconds. Equivalent of 0 to 100 in 3 seconds. wow..

- I didn't see the retro rockets firing at all. It seemed like the capsule hit the ground at 17 mph, and the commentator was saying, 'beautiful soft landing'.

- The telemetry was all over the place, especially on the way back. Altitude and speed was jumping up and down.

- Whats with the stupid feet and miles?

- I think the visuals make it look that way but the separation is probably more than what the shot from the ground implied.

- Nikxice is correct. The Mannequin Skywalker video follows the previous launch from beginning to end from the interior.

- In that same video you can see that the "passenger" is seated in a perfectly reclined position to take the stress of launch and parachute deployment.

- And again in that same video you can see the retro rockets fire and the landing being very gentle.

- Not sure why the telemetry was all over the place. It seemed pretty smooth on the way up but jittery on the way down at times.

- Pure guess but I'll bet Bezos wanted it that way. It's his money so he gets what he feels comfortable with. I can't imagine the aerospace engineers would be happy with feet, miles, and MPH.

 

[Electroman]

Very likely JB wanted in feet. You see feet is a bigger number than its equivalent in meters-

 

[Brando]

Balloon trips would be much better than Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, right?

A company that wants to balloon travelers into the stratosphere is launching a KFC chicken 'space sandwich'

Spaceport Tucson Takes Flight with World View 'Stratollite' Balloon Launch

 

[HVM]

It's not space flight, and no free fall (unless you jump or the big gondola parachute fails).