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).
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Blue Origin - New Shepard
- Thread starter doug
- Start date
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).
Nikxice
Active Member
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.
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.
Blue Origin's 15th New Shepard test flight serves as an astronaut rehearsal
The launch window for New Shepard's 15th test flight opens on April 14th, 9AM Eastern time. That particular test, aptly codenamed NS-15, will serve as a verification step for the vehicle and its operations prior to flying astronauts to suborbital space.
www.engadget.com
Nikxice
Active Member
One small step for BO's Groundhog Day, "no, the spacecraft won't actually have humans onboard when it lifts off, but company personnel will stand in as astronauts and enter the capsule before and after the flight."
Blue Origin's 15th New Shepard test flight serves as an astronaut rehearsal
The launch window for New Shepard's 15th test flight opens on April 14th, 9AM Eastern time. That particular test, aptly codenamed NS-15, will serve as a verification step for the vehicle and its operations prior to flying astronauts to suborbital space.
Where have all the Cowboys gone? Toss in a banana and Ham would have begged to get on with it. Too bad Alan Shepard wasn't still around to take his name off this ride and Bezos out to the woodshed.
Nikxice
Active Member
Fast forwarded thru yesterday's New Shepard launch. Admit, can't resist poking fun at Jeff and his BO crew slow-walking into Space. Test number 15 had no surprises, although Panicquin Skywalker is probably getting old. Maybe Pinocchio could be given a seat on the next flight. He might have a better shot at someday turning into a real live astronaut!
Yesterday's coverage was, as usual, enthusiastically cornball. There was an odd reference to New Shepard's "speedometer" displayed in a corner of the video. A camera mounted on the launch tower described the fiery angle as looking reminiscent of the iconic "Saturn V". Oh boy.
Yesterday's coverage was, as usual, enthusiastically cornball. There was an odd reference to New Shepard's "speedometer" displayed in a corner of the video. A camera mounted on the launch tower described the fiery angle as looking reminiscent of the iconic "Saturn V". Oh boy.
They really do seem to lack a sense of urgency, probably because they lack a sense of urgency. It's not like their founder is going to run out of money any time soon, so slow and careful probably works for them. Might as well be extra careful if you can afford it since this will carry people who aren't professional astronauts. The New Sheppard rocket is a bit goofy and phallic looking, but it does appear to be a rather clean design for what it's intended to do. It also provides a reasonable/less tragic legacy for the Delta Clipper, so that no longer feels like a dead end.
Personally, I like New Shepard and appreciate it for what it is. As I've mentioned numerous times, I'd choose it in a heartbeat over VG. I agree that the launch buildup and presentation is like fingernails on a blackboard compared to SpaceX. There is just too much scripted marketing speech tone to the presentation for my tastes. I don't get that with SpaceX launches. They feel genuine, with real excitement when something exciting happens.
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Can someone tell what is exciting and a big deal about launching a rocket straight up 100 miles and getting it back straight down, with or without humans? Lets cut the technicality of sub-orbital crap out.
To call those passengers "astronauts" is an insult to Yuri Gagarin, Shepard, Armstrong and the ones that went to ISS
To call those passengers "astronauts" is an insult to Yuri Gagarin, Shepard, Armstrong and the ones that went to ISS
I agree. But it's worse than that. The point of New Shepard from an engineering perspective was to learn about rocketry and apply it to their orbital rocket. But as any actual rocket scientist will tell you, there is very little non trivial information you can glean from a rocket that goes up and down that is applicable to a rocket travelling 18,000 miles an hour. For the last many years, New Shepherd has been a distraction from New Glenn.
When Elon got what he wanted out of the Falcon 1 (a NASA contract), he shut it down since it would have been a distraction. He almost shut down Falcon Heavy for the same reason when Starship was being conceived. The only reason it survived is because Shotwell realized they needed it for financial reasons.
As any rocket scientist will tell you, and as we've been over in this forum a few times now, there's quite a bit of valuable information developed/gained on NS that directly (technical, procedural, etc.) and indirectly (operator experience, logistical, etc.) applies to NG.
Its certainly fair to question the inefficiency (both timeline and budget) with which BO is executing on that tech transfer, and its fair to question the inevitably asymptotic returns from future NS flights, but no honest assessment would suggest there is little non trivial information to be realized from NS-->NG, either in the past, in the present, or in the future.
Regarding humans, its all about perspective. Why aren't roller coasters 20 minutes long? Why do people get to the top of the mountain and then turn right around? Why does someone stop racing once they've crossed the finish line? From a tourism perspective, there's plenty of value in simply going above the Karman. Given the massive additional risk of orbital re-entry, up and down tourism makes A LOT of sense.
Nah. Its fine to have a debate on how we define "astronaut" (personally I wouldn't consider a tourist as an 'astronaut'--I'd define it as someone who formally trained to perform mission critical activity), but its important our analysis/perspective is applied consistently. For instance, Al Shepard only went sub-orbital on Gemini. Does that mean he wasn't an "astronaut" until he went up on Apollo?
