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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.
Well, in a nutshell -
:)
The amount of GPE gained during an ascent requires X amount of fuel.
Descent requires no fuel to move downwards, however K.E. will be accumulated equal to the sum of the GPE and disippated thermal energy.
Therefore the amount of fuel required to stop a descent is less than that required to ascend.
To be honest, the best solution would probably be a combination of the two - drogue chute, main chute (both lightweight and easily re-deployable in future missions), which ensure a low velocity, and also proper alignment for the retro-rockets, which could be used for final touchdown (much like several mars missions).
And yes, I am a rocket scientist.
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?
Well, yeah - the most fuel-inefficient mode would be to attempt to decelerate immediately after reaching your maximum upwards velocity - it's far more efficient to let gravity do the work for you... Apogee is only defined by the point at which your vertical velocity relative to the surface is zero, so apogee is effectively whenever you choose it. Attempting to slow at any point before apogee is, however, just silly.
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