Blue Origin - Booster Reuse - New Shepard

[Nikxice]

I suppose today most of the general public doesn't perceive much difference between Blue Origin and SpaceX. That will likely change as SpaceX gears up for manned missions to the ISS and their satellite business continues to grow, rolling over the competition. I'm glad we have the likes of Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR. I hope they all succeed. In the meantime, years drag on. Sort of like a suborbital version of those elusive flying cars, always promised to be sometime in the near future.

 

[scaesare]

Yes, did the same thing. Watched it over and over with normal and slower speed. Then I watched the speedometer. 22 mph-->0 in literally 1 second. Agree, capsule rockets didn't fire, or at least I could find no evidence of them doing so. Nice cover on the announcers part, especially with the set-up as the capsule was getting to the end:

(paraphrase) "Don't worry about the big dust that will come up at the end... it's from the rockets, not hitting the ground too hard..."

Despite this, Excellent job Blue Origins! (notice I kept the "E" on this one...)

I agree... it appears to have not fired. The G-forces of a 22MPH impact on to hardpan are likely not what were planned, although certainly survivable...

 

[lklundin]

I suppose today most of the general public doesn't perceive much difference between Blue Origin and SpaceX. That will likely change as SpaceX gears up for manned missions to the ISS and their satellite business continues to grow, rolling over the competition. I'm glad we have the likes of Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR. I hope they all succeed. In the meantime, years drag on. Sort of like a suborbital version of those elusive flying cars, always promised to be sometime in the near future.

I think also the US tax payers should be happy at the prospect of competition for access-to-space contracts. It would after all be a pity to have one monopoly replaced by another.

 

[Genshi]

I think also the US tax payers should be happy at the prospect of competition for access-to-space contracts. It would after all be a pity to have one monopoly replaced by another.

I don't think that's what we're seeing though, at least up to this point Blue Origin has steered clear of the types of rockets necessary to seriously compete with SpaceX.

Now if Blue Origin wants to get serious about competing with SpaceX for government contracts, mass satellite deployments, etc, I agree that's great! I'm wholly in support of that and it would be amazing to see the competition heat up. But for now at least, they've been content doing just a few collaborations with the US government on R&D side.

More recently, they did agree to work with ULA to make US based Rocket Engines rather than going to the Russians but only after significant political pressure was put on ULA for their inability to competitively bid launches. That bodes well, but there's still a big problem there... they're only being contracted for development of the engines.

Honestly, as long as Blue Origin is only providing engines (in the future) to ULA for the competing contracts, I don't see the cost problems going away for ULA anytime soon. That place is so bloated and bogged down by their own bureaucracy there's probably no hope for them in the next 5-7 years. Maybe if they significantly restructure, they can get serious about pricing. But for now at least, they've sunk FAR too much into lobbying for anti-competitive practices on bids, and far too little on R&D. Hell, they didn't have much reason to, either, since as you pointed out, they were the monopoly and could charge whatever they wanted.

 

[Johan]

Blue Origin is to SpaceX what Kim Kardashian is to Beyoncé, if you understanding this.

 

[sandpiper]

Blue Origin is to SpaceX what Kim Kardashian is to Beyoncé, if you understanding this.

Bigger overhead, no obvious talent, noisy and managed to get rich by publicly !@#$ing someone?

Sorry... couldn't help it. Feel free to send this post to purgatory. No actual disrespect to BO intended!

 

[Johan]

Bigger overhead, no obvious talent, noisy and managed to get rich by publicly !@#$ing someone?

Sorry... couldn't help it. Feel free to send this post to purgatory. No actual disrespect to BO intended!

You did get my comparison perfectly.

 

[roblab]

Bigger overhead, no obvious talent, noisy and managed to get rich by publicly !@#$ing someone?

Sorry... couldn't help it. Feel free to send this post to purgatory. No actual disrespect to BO intended!

No problem. That word isn't in my vocabulary (or anyone elses?) so I'm not offended. I thought it was humorous.

 

[Genshi]

To be fair, Blue Origin is doing some very cool things in terms of relaunch capabilities, just at a much smaller scale and potentially less industry defining than SpaceX.

But let's be totally honest here, someone pouring millions of their own money in trying to do ANYTHING of this nature? It's awesome. It's super cool. And I'm glad Elon Musk isn't the only one.

 

[lklundin]

The G-forces of a 22MPH impact on to hardpan are likely not what were planned, although certainly survivable...

Ignoring air-resistance, one can reach a speed of 22 mph (9.8 m/s) by letting oneself fall from a height of s = v^2/2g = 4.9 m = 16 feet.
It is many years ago I would undertake a jump from that height onto a desert floor, since:

Still ignoring air-resistance, the experienced acceleration in units of g at the landing can be approximated quite well by the ratio of the height of the fall over the height of the distance over which the (non-flexible) object decelerates. Since that Texan desert dust can be expected to compress/displace only a little on impact, without the retro rocket the capsule itself would experience a g-force that would not be survivable for a human.

But an astronaut lying on a surface that on impact would collapse 1/2 m in a steady fashion would experience an acceleration of about 10g.
So yes, not pleasant, but survivable.

 

[scaesare]

Ignoring air-resistance, one can reach a speed of 22 mph (9.8 m/s) by letting oneself fall from a height of s = v^2/2g = 4.9 m = 16 feet.
It is many years ago I would undertake a jump from that height onto a desert floor, since:

Still ignoring air-resistance, the experienced acceleration in units of g at the landing can be approximated quite well by the ratio of the height of the fall over the height of the distance over which the (non-flexible) object decelerates. Since that Texan desert dust can be expected to compress/displace only a little on impact, without the retro rocket the capsule itself would experience a g-force that would not be survivable for a human.

But an astronaut lying on a surface that on impact would collapse 1/2 m in a steady fashion would experience an acceleration of about 10g.
So yes, not pleasant, but survivable.

My assumption is that astronauts in the capsule would be in a reclining cradled position in seats with some degree of shock absorption.

Certainly avoiding death is of paramount importance, but clearly losing the capsule due to retro rocket failure isn't ideal...

 

[Grendal]

Keep in mind that this was a test of a parachute failure and the capsule only used two out of the usual three parachutes. I expect the landing would be softer than 22 MPH with three rather than two parachutes. If the retros fire properly then that would also soften the blow from landing. The goal, according to the announcers was a 1 MPH impact speed. I'm sure that anything less than 5 MPH would be an ideal landing speed for people willing to spend lots of money to reach above the Karman line.

 

[ggnykk]

Nice video from Blue Origin.

 

[palmer_md]

Keep in mind that this was a test of a parachute failure and the capsule only used two out of the usual three parachutes. I expect the landing would be softer than 22 MPH with three rather than two parachutes. If the retros fire properly then that would also soften the blow from landing. The goal, according to the announcers was a 1 MPH impact speed. I'm sure that anything less than 5 MPH would be an ideal landing speed for people willing to spend lots of money to reach above the Karman line.

22mph vs 5mph might explain why the rocket did not fire until after it hit. If they set the ignition to fire at a specific altitude then the extra speed means it did not have enough time to light and get to full power in time before touchdown. At the faster speed they would need to light it at a higher altitude. Just speculation, but this could have been a simple programming error in the logic for when to ignite the rocket.

 

[ggies07]

Nice video from Blue Origin.

So now that I've seen this in action, this looks for like an extreme ride at the fall fair. BO = fun and SpaceX = saving humanity.

 

[Electroman]

Getting something straight up, and then bringing it straight back down.. for a private company sure it is a great learning experience that they can build upon, but they haven't really broken much ground here.

 

[Grendal]

On the whole BO versus SpaceX thing. BO is coming at this from a completely different angle. Elon bootstraps his creations by starting small then building on what is learned to build bigger and better. F1 was a tiny rocket that took a small payload to orbit. SpaceX built on that and turned it into the F9. The F9 has subsequently gone through a series of improvements until it is about as good as it can be. The Merlin 1D FT is the most powerful engine for its size in existence. It is an open loop system though which makes it inefficient. Elon has talked about this. The Russian RD-180 and BO BE-3 are closed loop engines which are very efficient. Bezos is already crazy rich so his angle is to create what he wants and then make it work.

So the point I'm making badly is that both companies next engine (BE-4/Raptor) will be a Methane/LOX closed loop system. BO might have a slight lead on this in that they have already been working on a closed loop system. Then again, SpaceX probably has 20 times more people working on their engine over BO.

Back to the capsule landing. I went back and watched their capsule abort test and the landing looked identical to this recent landing. So, until I learn otherwise, I still say the retro boosters did not fire.

 

[Grendal]

A little off topic for the thread but is BO news:

Blue Origin breaks ground on Florida factory - SpaceNews.com

 

[anticitizen13.7]

A little off topic for the thread but is BO news:

Blue Origin breaks ground on Florida factory - SpaceNews.com

I'm glad to see Blue Origin making progress, as having several independent launch companies in the U.S. will provide redundancy and foster improvement through competition.

Honestly, I have been somewhat worried that the Russians would attempt to sabotage SpaceX in order to damage U.S. launch capability and keep Roscosmos in business. However, if the U.S. space industry has SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, and ULA all providing launch capability, it becomes extremely difficult to simultaneously sabotage them all.

 

[Electroman]

How could the Russians sabotage SpaceX? If someone can do that, that would be ULA and their cronies in Congress