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Jeff Bezos's Space Company Reveals Some Secrets
An anonymous reader writes "Jeff Bezos's commercial spaceflight company, Blue Origin, has kept its plans secret to better compete with rivals such as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. But in order to build its launch facility in West Texas, it has revealed some details of its future operations: Blue Origin's Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) will carry three or more passengers on suborbital, ballistic trajectories to altitudes in excess of 325,000 feet above sea level. It will launch vertically and land vertically, and will use hydrogen peroxide and kerosene as propellants. It will operate autonomously under control of on-board computers, with no ground control. Blue Origin plans a maximum rate of 52 launches per year."
I'm assuming they mean they're going to use 'chutes to land - landing on reverse thrusters or what have you in earth's gravity well could be fairly fuel expensive, and doesn't make much sense.
As a public service, here are some facts about Culberson County, Texas.
* The county seat is Van Horn.
* As you can see by the satellite photo, the rugged Guadalupe Mountains meet the barren, flat Llano Estacado.
* Culberson County includes the highest point in Texas, part of Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
* Road geeks will appreciate the significance of this fact: Van Horn is the western terminus of U.S. Highway 90.
* Due to the lack of water, tourism and mining are the only sources of income. For details on how the county's 3,407 souls bide their time while waiting for the new spaceport to be built, see the Handbook of Texas Online.
And in the tongue-in-cheek words of singer-songwriter Brian Burns:
Welcome to Texas,
Don't anybody get me wrong;
We're glad y'all came to see us,
Just don't forget to go back home.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Estimate the fraction of the launch mass of the ship which must be dedicated to fuel to achieve the mission's desired trajectory.
Estimate the terminal velocity of the rocket as it approaches the surface after the mission.
What fraction of the ship's mass must be used as fuel to come to rest from terminal velocity it lands purely under rocket power? How does the fraction depend on the time to choose a landing site?
Is this is this a large or small amount compared to the initial fuel fraction?
Now, how much mass would needed if a parachute or paraglider was used to come to rest instead?
Is the difference in mass fractions significant? Which system is easier to maintain? Which is more reliable?
These are the sorts of questions you have to consider when you are thinking about spacecraft design. It's worthwhile to work this through... none of the steps are particularly complicated, and as you go along and think it through you'll see that there are interesting reasons to go either way.
Not really on topic, or of any use whatsoever, but NASAs group life indurance policy (as of 10 years ago) actually did include loss of life due to space craft disaster.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Peroxide is simple (albeit ridiculously low ISP by itself) in theory. However, trying to burn catalytically in practice without a liquid catalyst (and even with a liquid catalyst...) is much easier said than done. There are big problems with quenching - the expansion of the gasses from peroxide decomposing on the catalyst tends to drive off other peroxide. Also, the catalyst packs tend to get ruined by the chemicals that stabilize your peroxide (and unless you can get 100% pure peroxide, you need stabilizers). Armadillo has had no end to problems like this; their engines have had big sputtering and performance problems.
"This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has got to go." -- Oscar Wilde on his deathbed