Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is this actually a real venture or just a pipe dream to conveniently write tax dollars off against?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Any idea on how much tickets are going to cost?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The Scaled/VG approach will use a safer fuel, I believe.
Then, the flight continues on, unmanned. Everybody's happy.
I think something like "Nobody onboard would care." is more appropriate, but that's just me.
[...]would operate autonomously under control of on-board computers,
:)...
Didn't know anyone had systems relable enough for civilian passengers (i.e. not NASA, military, etc.) to do this yet (or maybe it's all in the disclaimer you have to sign beforehand
with no ground control during nominal flight conditions[...]
So they will have ground control during less than nominal flight conditions?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
What about evasive evasive maneuvers? Ground clearance? and all the other details involved in space flight?
Approximately 1/3 of astronauts get space adaption syndrome. Basically, when you're in microgravity, the fluid in your inner ear doesn't settle, and so doesn't give your body a proper sense of balance. This does cause nausea and disorentation (lasting for up to a few days) in some people. Since these sub-orbital hops only give a few minutes of weightlessnesss, this will hopefully not be an issue.
Are they implying that this thing will be unguided? Just pointed at the sky and shot off without post launch guidance, like a bullet? That's what it sounds like to me, and would explain why ground control guidance is not seen as a problem: there's no way to guide it. It would be considerably cheaper to develop, but I'm not sure it would be too popular.
Another thing I'd like to know is, where does it land? If it's a water landing, that makes passenger safety and training more complex (they have to learn how to stay afloat if something goes balls up). If it's a land based touchdown, who's land is it going to land on? They'll have to buy a pretty big slab of dirt if they're going to guarantee it always lands on their property.
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, The Baroque Cycle, etc.) has taken a part-time job as a consultant for Blue Origins.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
There are a few standard hospital diagnosis codes for spacecraft accidents:
spacecraft accident ground crew
spacecraft accident occupant
spacecraft accident person (non-crew)
falling in a spacecraft (I guess that means floating into something)
and the generic spacecraft accident
Being almost too young to remember Challenger we'd kid around about these at work until Columbia.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
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.
Commercial manned space travel still seems like quite a lofty goal - lofty enough, and expensive enough, that trying to ensure competition in the marketplace at this very early stage seems counterproductive. One would think that everyone could benefit from open cooperation between Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, at least until they both get a revenue stream going (read: customers actually in space).
Unless, that is, Bezos and/or Branson think the first-mover advantage will really translate into significant profits. I suspect, however, that those profits are in the pretty distant future, and the best way to bring the profits closer would be to cooperate.
You know, from what I hear, jet airliners basically fly themselves. It's not a major problem for a pilot to land or take off in one of these things, and once you get it up, it's basically cruise control. Of course, as they say, when you need an experienced airline pilot, there is no substitute.
What happens when something goes wrong? If this thing isn't built to have some human control when things are out of the ordinary, no one in his right mind would go up in one of these things.
(Just my two cents.)
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Both companies (virgin and blue origin) are run by people who have more money than they know what to do with... trying to create a new market is risky and expensive. To rich people it's gambling and that's exciting. To Aerospace engineers (like me) it's exciting to see people taking the initiative to try a new market, and do something that has been traditionally relegated to government contractors - the building of space hardware. Before the X-prize you (for the most part... there were some exceptions) had the little guys who built rocket engines in their backyard, and then you had Boeing/LockMart/Pratt&Whitney. Now you have middle ground, people who made their millions and can now risk to venture into captializing on space. Even if there is no response, there's bragging rights. An there will be a response, there have been numerous published and not so public studies stating that the market for suborbital tourism exists, even in the $100,000 range.
IAAAE (I Am An Aerospace Engineer)
-philski-
I can appreciate the gee-whiz factor involved in this - who *wouldn't* want to take a ride in a spaceship?
What I'm asking is this: besides being a *very* expensive roller coaster, what practical applications does this have right now? It would be great if there were somewhere for us to *go* other than up and then down.
The good news is that if/when we can live on another planet we'll know how to get there.
Fuel isn't the cost driver for this kind of venture. VTOL is a great way to save on operational costs, since you can pick your exact landing spot instead of landing wherever the wind takes you. The technical challenges of vertical landing aren't insurmountable, as they've been overcome by at least three groups I can think of (Armadillo, JSA, and USAF).
The real problem with vertical landing isn't cost, it's weight. You have to carry all the fuel you plan to use in you landing throughout every stage of the flight. For a sub-orbital shot that's no big deal, but building a VTOL orbital rocket that has any sort of reasonable payload is quite a technical challenge. This is the best discussion of the topic I'm familiar with.
All the quenching problems were with our mixed-monoprop scheme that used low concentration (50%) peroxide mixed with a small amount of methanol.
If you can get high concentration peroxide (85%+), there are no catalyst quenching problems. We started out with 90% peroxide, and we would still be using it (and would have saved a year of work...) if we had a willing supplier. The original supplier we used went out of business, and the remaining domestic supplier didn't want to do business with us, even for >$100,000 orders.
We did a number of peroxide / kerosene biprop tests back in August / September 2002 before we ran out of high concentration peroxide.
We are pretty happy with liquid oxygen now, but if Bezos is sure that supply won't be an issue, peroxide/kerosene is certainly not a bad choice. The sole drawback I would note is that it will put a lower limit on his operating expenses, and a LOX based system could potentially undercut him, although that would only be an issue when ticket prices are getting down towards $10k.
John Carmack