The terms are using here in context to launch vehicles, aka rockets. They were designed to not just reach space but also go into orbit. There are essentially two hurdles to getting into space, 1st the energy getting the required space altitude, then 2nd getting the (significant) additional energy to achieve orbit. Then there were practical uses to rockets that could achieve the 1st but not the 2nd, in the industry they are mostly referred to as sub-orbital rockets to distinguish from the original type, which nobody really calls the latter "orbital rockets" in the industry, just rockets. The correlation of "sub-orbital" is to orbital velocity, not to space altitude - the velocity is too low to make orbit (an ellipse around the earth).
Realize it's just semantics, but perhaps Blue gets more credit than they deserve by describing these flights as sub-orbital. How about a substitute prefix for New Shepard that might be a better fit, such as a non-orbital? It's a made up word, but it precludes any thought that New Shepard could ever be anything other than a sub-orbital rocket. Thinking back to my Estes rocket flying days, Jeff does have me beat with speed and altitude. Although the principles were basically the same. The solid rockets would launch straight up, with an excellent chance of reusability. Except on a bad day when the apogee ejection charge would torch those damn plastic chutes.
FWIW, from what I've seen with NG, its pretty impressive and generally a solid piece of engineering. Its DEFINITELY not going to be on a SpaceX timeline, but it will do what they say, generally when they say. (I don't think there's a public manifest yet?) All evidence I've seen says BO will be the clear #2 rocket company, in both directions.
I'm not disagreeing with that. I just find it odd that even people with immense knowledge of rockets seem to assume that BO will have no problem translating what they've learned with New Shepard to New Glenn. I'm sure some things will translate (maybe I'm wrong about this) but most of what they've learned is useless. I'm expecting to see a number of landing failures of the booster before we see a successful landing on a ship just like we saw with SpaceX. A New Glenn booster landing failure is going to be a fairly substantial explosion and damage compared to a F9 booster crash. How many times will a NG booster be reflown? It seems to me that BO has a vast amount of lessons to learn that SpaceX has learned from 100 successful launches under their belt. As long as Bezos maintains his desire to make it happen there is little doubt that BO will get there and be a major long term player in the orbital rocket business. I like that Bezos long term goal for space is different from Elons. I'd like to see BO get into the space industry business once they've mastered getting to orbit and recovering boosters.
I agree. As I said in a different post, I think Bezos is literally wasting his money trying to replicate what SpaceX is doing, only slower and more expensively. He should be spending money on stuff SpaceX is not doing.
I haven't found that to be a widespread perspective--happy to asses specific examples if you have any. Everyone I know in the space industry assumes Blue is going to have typical growing pains, such as failed landing attempts on otherwise successful launches. Most of what they've learned on NS is actually quite useful. Technical concepts, procedures/processes, operator experience--all of that will port over to NG. The vertical landing sequence, for instance, is pretty well vetted; the bulk of the exercise for NG return is to work on the gliding and flipping phase of flight. Nobody will argue that Blue's approach is as regimented/planned/far sighted as SpaceX, of course, and as such there's certainly going to be more waste than SpaceX, but much of what they've been doing on NS has definitely been applicable in some way or another to NG. How does that assessment make sense? By that logic no other carmaker should be trying to do what Tesla is doing.
There's a big difference between the big car makers and Blue Origin. The car makers have real businesses with huge revenues and sometimes profits. And they do know how to build and sell lots of cars. While Blue Origin aspires to be like SpaceX where they have commercial launch customers, and then compete for govt contracts, the reality is that after all this time, all they have is a single subcontract to develop an engine that SpaceX has essentially already developed. In other words, the way they are different from car companies is that Blue Origin has no worthwhile existing business to protect. So in my other post I asked the question what is Blue Origin's end goal? I think it has to do with colonizing orbital space and then the moon. Whatever it is, they are big, huge goals. To achieve those goals, they need to be smart with their money. BO is in the same bind that all other launch providers are in. Unless you develop reusable rocket technology, you're obsolete. Developing it takes a large R&D budget. And when you're done spending that money, to replicate Falcon 9 technology, SpaceX will undercut you again in price with Starship (fully reusable). I just don't see a good path to eventual profitability for BO given their snail's pace of innovation. If they were competing against ULA, sure, but they aren't. It's a bit like the early 1800's if you had wanted to settle the West in America. The first thing you would have needed is a railway. But unless your goal was to actually own a railway, it wouldn't have made sense to build a new one IF the goal was settlement. You would have instead leveraged the existing railway and started acquiring land and building stuff. I realize that BO started off before SpaceX and back then, they had to build rockets. I think history has proved they just aren't very good at it (and speed of development and the associated $$ wasted on salaries and overahead is a very big part of why).
And the startups have a potentially fleeting businesses with zero revenues. And yet they still try. Why is that? What existing business does Rivian and Bollinger have to protect? You're basically arguing that no company should ever try to get off the ground if some other company already has a stronghold on a product. Again, that makes no sense. I'd encourage you to look more objectively Blue Origin--in other words, not from the perspective of a SpaceX soldier looking for an enemy to defeat. It might be too difficult an out of the box concept for some, but Blue Origin is essentially a big ass, mature startup with infinite runway and zero deadlines, really no strong demand to turn a profit, and primarily funded by a billionaire honestly passionate about creating a rocket company. The world is going to need more than one rocket company. That is Blue's goal.
@bxr140 You're talking past me and not understanding what I'm saying. I won't bother repeating myself. It isn't as if either one of us has a crystal ball. I'm just giving my thoughts.