Blue Origin - Booster Reuse - New Shepard

[Johan]

SpaceX

No, Bezos didn't get anywhere near orbit. Needs 100X that energy to get to orbit.

Basically Bezos did a Grasshopper flight to higher altitude than SpaceX has done. Straight up, straight down, no real space flight.

Thanks for the correction.

It's all in the definitions. The linked article is likely factually incorrect, as it talks about "outer space".

Edit: seems factually correct after all.

 

[StephenM]

But still, this will light a fire under Elon's butt. As if he ever needed such a thing for motivation in the first place...
Steady (and safe!!) as she goes Elon!

 

[hockeythug]

But still, this will light a fire under Elon's butt. As if he ever needed such a thing for motivation in the first place...
Steady (and safe!!) as she goes Elon!

If they weren't so focused on RTF I could have seen Musk try to one up them before the week was over. He seems to be taking this personal.

*maybe he will anyways*

 

[StephenM]

To all of the recipients of the internal Space-X email about why Space-X will not go public, Elon is looking like a genius (again). Despite how much easier B.O.'s effort was, imagine how much Space-X stock would be plummeting right now.

 

[Johan]

SpaceX

From Wikipedia:

"There is no firm boundary where space begins. However the Kármán line, at an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above sea level,[7][8] is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping."

330000 feet is 62.5 miles, so obviously Bezos knows the definition

 

[Doug_G]

Edit: seems factually correct after all.

Yes, it's factually correct, but misleading. That's why I said "no real space flight".

 

[doug]

Hmm.. In the video Bezos basically says what Blue Origin accomplished was just as hard as what SpaceX is attempting with the first stage of the Falcon 9. He's wrong though. The F9 first stage has to shed a ton of tangential velocity. While it's hard to quantify the level of difficulty, I'd say it's at least an order of magnitude more difficult.

That said, kudos to Blue Origin.

 

[mspohr]

Bit of a twitter war with Musk.
He points out that SpaceX Grasshopper did 6 sub-orbital flights and landings and is still around so Blue Origin is not the first to land a booster.
Then points out that SpaceX booster is about 10x as powerful as the Blue Origin and is capable of reaching real space, not just over the border to space.

A few references:

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin beats Elon Musk to land reusable rocket in Texas | Daily Mail Online

Blue Origin: Successful test launch and vertical landing of New Shepard rocket.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Twitter smack talk - Business Insider

 

[larmor]

But will BO rocket deliver pizza in the next hour? Autonomous car will be doing that shortly...

 

[mknox]

Hmm.. In the video Bezos basically says what Blue Origin accomplished was just as hard as what SpaceX is attempting with the first stage of the Falcon 9. He's wrong though. The F9 first stage has to shed a ton of tangential velocity. While it's hard to quantify the level of difficulty, I'd say it's at least an order of magnitude more difficult.

For sure SpaceX getting down from those speeds and flying back to the landing site is way harder... but they seem to have nailed that part. The final approach and landing, however, would seem to be quite similar between Blue Origin and SpaceX.

 

[HVM]

They did fly the Grasshopper up several hundred meters and then land it... So they were first to fly a rocket upright like that, hover and then land. Then Bezoz to orbit. Hopefully next SpaceX to space and back.

 

[Adm]

Wow, I don't envy the people at Spacex right now. I am sure that Elon has expressed his displeasure with current events. I bet he will have everybody stay at the office until they get it right.
I hope they have showers. .. lol

 

[Doug_G]

Wow, I don't envy the people at Spacex right now. I am sure that Elon has expressed his displeasure with current events. I bet he will have everybody stay at the office until they get it right.
I hope they have showers. .. lol

Nah, Elon is no doubt disappointed, but he's not a fool. SpaceX would have already achieved this if it weren't for the failed launch.

Also SpaceX has been landing boosters successfully for over a year. Just not from an orbital launch. Oh wait, Blue Origins hasn't done that either.

 

[mknox]

Also SpaceX has been landing boosters successfully for over a year. Just not from an orbital launch. Oh wait, Blue Origins hasn't done that either.

I always thought that turning the booster around, re-entering and returning to the launch/landing point would be the hard part, but SpaceX seems to have that down. Setting the thing down and not tipping over seems to be where they struggle. (Maybe Blue Origins just got lucky on their first try).

I often thought it would be easier to land the booster with parachutes (assuming you could do so with some degree of accuracy and without smashing it on impact) or, better yet, horizontally on a runway. NASA had done some work on flyback boosters in the '60s and '70s including this proposal for the Shuttle.

 

[HVM]

...This is not BO's first try. They lost both sub-scale test vehicle and first New Shepard...

 

[ggr]

They did fly the Grasshopper up several hundred meters and then land it... So they were first to fly a rocket upright like that, hover and then land. Then Bezoz to orbit. Hopefully next SpaceX to space and back.

Actually, they weren't first even for this. The first I knew of was McD-D DC-X. Here is a long list.

Blue Origin barely made it to "space" (100km up). There is a HUGE difference in the power required to make it to orbit:

The flight speed which is required to achieve an altitude of 100 km during a suborbital flight (950 m/s) is about 8 times smaller than the orbital velocity (7780 m/s).

Still, "Good on 'Em". The more the better.

 

[BriansTesla]

I always thought that turning the booster around, re-entering and returning to the launch/landing point would be the hard part, but SpaceX seems to have that down. Setting the thing down and not tipping over seems to be where they struggle. (Maybe Blue Origins just got lucky on their first try).

From the video posted up thread was it my imagination or did the Blue Origins rocket seem to nearly lose control several times?

 

[Johan]

I meant "first" as compared to BO. If only the last Falcon landing had been a success... Well, no reason to cry over spilt milk.

 

[HVM]

Ah, the official abbreviation of Blue Origin is Blue. And every one using "BO" is a stinky poop-hat.

"Lastly, the great folks at Blue Origin don't like the acronym BO for obvious reasons. They like "Blue" for short."
-Dr. Sowers

Congrats to Blue. Maybe we see dancing Unicorns in the flame duct soon.

 

[chickensevil]

I always thought that turning the booster around, re-entering and returning to the launch/landing point would be the hard part, but SpaceX seems to have that down. Setting the thing down and not tipping over seems to be where they struggle. (Maybe Blue Origins just got lucky on their first try).

I often thought it would be easier to land the booster with parachutes (assuming you could do so with some degree of accuracy and without smashing it on impact) or, better yet, horizontally on a runway. NASA had done some work on flyback boosters in the '60s and '70s including this proposal for the Shuttle.

The reason it keeps tipping over is because of them trying to turn around and reverse course. This is part of what burned out the grid fins so much. Plus did you see the giant landing area that the Blue rocket had? SpaceX had a much smaller room to maneuver and was fighting some hell of cross winds and upset seas. If they were allowed to return the missile to ground it would be a lot easier for many reasons. SpaceX went high enough to test what they needed to with the Grasshopper and that was that. Their real prize is the full return of the booster to ground. Hopefully the next launch, since they have proven they can come pretty dang close to target repeatedly (they have hit target like, what 4 times now?) they should at least be allowed to come back to land... We shall see.

As to your second thought, this has been mentioned quite a few times, but thought I would help clear it up for you, parachutes weight a decent amount. They would need to first slow the rocket down somehow (the thing is going like Mach 30 when it separates or some such craziness) so this requires either heat shields or engine thrust (parachutes won't work here) once they clear the upper atmosphere again and come in, then you would be ideally slow enough to finally pop a chute. The problem is that you have been holding these chutes as dead weight through almost the entire trip being worthless... Not even helping you get back into the atmosphere or remotely on target that all has to be something else... which costs even more weight. Chutes are even more counter productive than saving some fuel to land (which itself was thought to be counter productive).

To the other conversation, I think the link that Elon provided (which I have read before, but it is really great and you should read it too!)

Orbital Speed

Basically:

The reason it's hard to get to orbit isn't that space is high up.
It's hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast.
...getting to space is easy. The problem is staying there.
Gravity in low Earth orbit is almost as strong as gravity on the surface. The Space Station hasn't escaped Earth's gravity at all; it's experiencing about 90% the pull that we feel on the surface.
To avoid falling back into the atmosphere, you have to go sideways really, really fast.
The speed you need to stay in orbit is about 8 kilometers per second.[4] Only a fraction of a rocket's energy is used to lift up out of the atmosphere; the vast majority of it is used to gain orbital (sideways) speed.

What Blue did was "get to space" which is easy... What SpaceX does on every launch is "get to space going fast enough to stay there". Which is an important distinction.

Edit: To be clear I am just as happy for Blue as I am every time I see a successful SpaceX launch! This is exciting times and I wish both companies great success!