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Sub-orbital launches and recoveries do not impress me in the same way that the recent SpaceX first stage recovery does. There are orders of magnitude differences between what Blue Origin has demonstrated and what SpaceX has actually accomplished.
What Blue Origin is demonstrating seems only applicable to the space tourism industry, and is not useful for launching payloads into orbit.
Bezos is not going to get to Mars in the foreseeable future. Elon likely is. Bezos may get rich tourists to the edge of space for a few minutes, and if I had the money I would love to make that trip, but I don't have that kind of bank account. I am confident that in my lifetime I will watch a SpaceX rocket lift off and head to Mars. My wife and I will be traveling to Florida to watch that launch!
What bugs me about the most recent press release is that they used weasel words about it being a production rocket, so that they couldn't be upstaged by SS1 which did the same thing years before.
But... It's not production, is it? How can you call a one off rocket a production vehicle? And are they actually going to use this rocket (or other ones made like this) to do real launches? They even said they are working on development of their orbital rocket right now... So I'm not sure what is so "first" about this that couldn't be applied to SS1. Not to mention didn't one of the launches of SS1 include paying customers?
At 1:07 in that video (wide shot of booster stage landing), I'm guessing that's not sped up at all. It amazes my how fast these booster stages are coming in, and they wait for the "last second" to do the retro burn. That's just what happens with such a high thrust-to-weight ratio for the boosted stage when it's low on fuel. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX seem to have the same kind of ballistic approach to a booster landing.
There's no other approach than the ballistic one. It's a rocket, that's how they work both going up and down.
I agree it's impressive. I think most people can't appreciate the precision required: burn a tad too little or a tad too late and the thing smashes in to ground. Burn just a little too much or too early, the rocket lifts up before touching down, does a small bounce in the air and after that comes crashing down. Basically everything has to be perfect so velocity is exactly 0 at height 0.
From about a year ago: "Launch and land and re-launch" I could watch this music video 100 times!That Launch. Land. Repeat. slogan they keep repeating -- I like that, and I think it sticks an easy mnemonic into people's heads that rebounds favorably on everybody that is doing Launch. Land. Repeat. The slogan makes it clear what is different in this next wave of spaceflight.
What is the end goal of BO? Are they going to use that rocket to do anything w/satellites, resupply etc? Looks too tiny to do anything serious.
Watch Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin perform a risky rocket test during the company's first live webcast Sunday
Apparently a live broadcast test!