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I would not take the BO animation too seriously. It's a concept, not a detailed description of what they plan to accomplish.
It's that a fully automatic unmanned ship, it's there any such thing in that size in use yet? Also booster needs to be build like battleship to withstand re-entry without atmospheric retropropulsion. More margins -less efficiency. Also more fuel on board. The learning-landings going to be expensive compared to failed landings on repurposed barges.
I'd bet the animators are using the New Shepard landings as an example and I really think that it is bad one for New Glenn. As others have mentioned, unless BO doesn't really care about fuel margins then that booster and rocket will need to follow a lot of the same principles and strategies that the Falcon 9 has proven to work. The other option is to carry much smaller payloads with the accompanying higher launch cost and focus on reusability instead. The reusability would help with cost but SpaceX also has reusability and their costs are decreasing while, even with reusability, BO would end up around ULA in pricing.
You might remember the failed landing of SES-9 where SpaceX tried a little harder to have a softer, more hovering, style of landing. The booster ran out of fuel a few feet above the ASDS and was lost. That attempt came right after the two very hard, but successful, landings which caused damage to the returning boosters. It made sense that with a few extra boosters sitting around to experiment for less damage on difficult heavy GTO launches.
I'm really curious to see what BO will actually do and how they will do it. I truly expect to see them follow in SpaceX's footsteps and proven winning reusability strategy.
I can imagine that it would only need to be unmanned during the actual landing. After that a crew can board and bring the ship into port. Considering the size of the New Glenn, a failed hard landing might actually sink a ship. SpaceX managed to keep their ASDS's intact even after a couple really hard F9 booster landings. SpaceX was pretty open about their failures. I'm going to guess that BO will not be anywhere near as open with their failures. As I mentioned to ecarfan, I expect that BO will have to follow in SpaceX's footsteps. It's tough to beat streamlined efficiency and cost for a winning strategy.
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The New Sheppard is a single stage rocket. Achieving 100Km apogee and then soft landing is far from insignificant. Its a LH2/LOX stage, which will ultimately be used as the last stage of their rocket stack.
Since then BO has produced their first liquid natural gas engine which is being tested. Its not as efficient as raptor is going to be, but for a first stage engine the most important attribute is thrust/weight.
The sportier the acceleration off the pad the more efficient a rocket's first stage is, in fact the metric is time to MaxQ (around supersonic speeds).
I'll be very happy with SpaceX+BO displaces ULA and other old space companies with launch stacks that are fully reusable. As much as I'm a fan of SpaceX, if SpaceX gets too successful the lack of a competitor can remove much of the competition driven competition factors that are required for a healthy market. Plus BO is interested in the Virgin Galactic market, while SpaceX doesn't seem to be interested in that (cheap sub orbital tourism rides). It seems BO might achieve commercial offering for that market sooner.
Meanwhile SpaceX is working on the most advanced methane engine possible. Quite a bit better than BO BE4 engine it avoids the need for a LH2 3rd stage. By going full flow and higher chamber pressure they gain efficiency in the 1st and 2nd stages. BO's launch system intends to throw away 2nd and 3rd stages, SX wants to always recover the first stage and rarely ever spend its 2nd stage on purpose (mostly when the 2nd stage is the space ship and its going to very far away places like the outer planets).
In fact I would dare say BO makes for actual competition in the new space arena. Before BO it was SpaceX vs companies that aren't really innovating. SpaceX vs BO brings back real and fair competition.
Of course as a big Elon fan, I still think SpaceX will win the race, but with BO, its a single team race !
Since then BO has produced their first liquid natural gas engine which is being tested. Its not as efficient as raptor is going to be, but for a first stage engine the most important attribute is thrust/weight.
The sportier the acceleration off the pad the more efficient a rocket's first stage is, in fact the metric is time to MaxQ (around supersonic speeds).
I'll be very happy with SpaceX+BO displaces ULA and other old space companies with launch stacks that are fully reusable. As much as I'm a fan of SpaceX, if SpaceX gets too successful the lack of a competitor can remove much of the competition driven competition factors that are required for a healthy market. Plus BO is interested in the Virgin Galactic market, while SpaceX doesn't seem to be interested in that (cheap sub orbital tourism rides). It seems BO might achieve commercial offering for that market sooner.
BO is quite serious in building an engine for the Vulcan rocket and to replace the Russian RD180 engine (SpaceX got some money from the DoD to make Raptor as the other alternative). They don't need to tell the public anything. Their audience is the DoD and ULA as a customer. The New Glenn rocket will be far more capable than Falcon 9, less payload to LEO than FH, but possibly similar payload to GTO/TLI/TMI than FH due to its better ISP and optional 3rd stage using very high ISP LH2 stage.
Meanwhile SpaceX is working on the most advanced methane engine possible. Quite a bit better than BO BE4 engine it avoids the need for a LH2 3rd stage. By going full flow and higher chamber pressure they gain efficiency in the 1st and 2nd stages. BO's launch system intends to throw away 2nd and 3rd stages, SX wants to always recover the first stage and rarely ever spend its 2nd stage on purpose (mostly when the 2nd stage is the space ship and its going to very far away places like the outer planets).
In fact I would dare say BO makes for actual competition in the new space arena. Before BO it was SpaceX vs companies that aren't really innovating. SpaceX vs BO brings back real and fair competition.
Of course as a big Elon fan, I still think SpaceX will win the race, but with BO, its a single team race !
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Ibrido
Member
SpaceX is landing on floating pad to save fuel. It will need more fuel (more weight) to get rocket back to land.
The issue on landing on Land vs Sea is that FAA requires orbital rocket launches to be done over the sea. So BO can launch the current rocket over land and get space tourist up but they won't be able to do orbital launches.
Therefore, an orbital launch is going to shoot a rocket over the sea and the stage 1 will have to come back down, straight down is into the sea, getting back to land requires using fuel. No one actually cares about the fuel to get the ship back to shore, that is ...well just a few bucks in the grand scheme. The real issue is that the United States in its infinite wisdom makes them shoot from the sea. Somehow Russia and China don't have this issue and I confess I am not sure on India but I think they are near the ocean (near equator too I guess).
Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the apparent movement of the BO stage recovery ship through the water. If you look at the stern of the ship it clearly shows a prominent wake with a central turbulent area indicating the main props are operating. It's more than just station keeping (as SpaceX does) the ship is moving forward through the water. I find it odd that the animators would deliberately choose to show the ship moving forward during the stage landing. But as I said, I would not take the details shown in the BO video too seriously: what it shows is years away from becoming reality.
Again, I applaud what BO is doing: by following SpaceX's lead, BO is showing that the future of space exploration is reusable rockets. I expect that within a decade, any launch provider that still throws away expensive hardware will be out of the commercial launch business. They may continue to launch military payloads for their national government, but that's about it.
Okay, thanks, my mistake. I thought you were referring to the recently released BO video of the New Glenn which only showed 2 stages.
Nikxice
Active Member
I agree. A zero wind component would seemingly allow for a more stable recovery. An open water recovery offers less surface friction for wind, allowing for predictable, steady, speed and direction. After compensating for any ocean current, a large ship could easily match the surface winds. Drifting towards the landing zone, New Shepard might burn slightly less fuel during final maneuvers, possibly reducing the time needed to hover in the landing zone. Also, upon touchdown the rocket would likely experience decreased side loads, lessening the possibility of a topple over.
This is actually wrong, main reason why Falcon 1 and 9 flight's first parachute recovery efforts failed was high aerodynamic forces. -> rip stages apart. Falcon 9 also have PICA-X heat shield and needs re-entry burn. Ship moves for stability not for wind correction.
“Those aerodynamic surfaces allow us to operate with very high availability in very high wind conditions,” he said. “We don’t want to constrain the availability of launch based on the availability of the landing of the reusable booster. We put a lot of effort into letting the vehicle fly back with aerodynamic surface control instead of with propulsion.”
http://spacenews.com/eutelsat-first-customer-for-blue-origins-new-glenn/
Time will show how well those big fins work in high-hypersonic speeds.
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Parachute causes large aerodynamic forces. It designed for that.
SpaceX needs re-entry burn for Mars landing. Also current version of Falcon needs it to protect engines. I believe they soon have new version which does not need it (because of one Elons comment). Aerodynamic forces + engine force accelerating fuel + 2. stage + cargo while going up is also very high. Re-entry forces are not too high.
Moving ship is more stable only if it has active control surfaces stabilizing it. SpaceX uses propellers for stabilization, so they don't need speed. If their landing ship really moves, it will certainly move down wind.
"We put a lot of effort into letting the vehicle fly back with aerodynamic surface control instead of with propulsion.”
Seems to me that Blue Origin also tries to avoid re-entry burn.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president, admitted: "We have recovered pieces of the first stages. The first stages weren't even getting as far as deploying their parachutes – they were breaking up during atmospheric re-entry."
Next Big Future: Why Spacex Abandoned Parachuting into Water for Reusable Rockets
The Landing Pad Ship needs to be moving, like any ship without power it heaves and sways...
Seth Miller on Twitter
Next Big Future: Why Spacex Abandoned Parachuting into Water for Reusable Rockets
The Landing Pad Ship needs to be moving, like any ship without power it heaves and sways...
Seth Miller on Twitter
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