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Blue Origin Will Be VTOL
Spy Handler writes "The Blue Origin spacecraft, being built by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' new venture, will have VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) capability, according to the company's FAA permit applications. It will be a cone-shaped vehicle about 50 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter at the base, and carry 3 or more passengers to an altitude of 325,000 feet"
An airliner has a turnaroud time of about an hour.
EasyJet, a UK-based LCC airline, has a turnaround time of 30-minutes on its fleet of Airbus A319 and Boeing 737 aircraft. Their entire business model revolves around very low turnaround time, so that they can use the same aircraft as many times a day as is possible.
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
You mean Virgin Galactic. It's rumoured to be around $200k per flight.
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Soyuz for example gets launched vertically and lands vertically (on a parachute). That's not what is usually meant by VTOL but certainly meets the definition. What about that craft? Launch will almost certainly be vertical, landing on a landing strip is much harder than a splashdown or such. So will it be a cool "all-terrain space plane" or just a vanilla space rocket?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Shouldn't / Doesn't the definition of an airplane include the vehicle achieving flight primarily through the exploitation of aerodynamic forces, instead of primarily through the expulsion of reaction mass? The Blue Origin vehicle (if the picture on the cover of the FAA Draft is any guide) has no wings, it looks like the DC-X.
If a vehicle has wings or a lifting body, and flies by using the lift generated by those wings or the lifting body, then it is an plane. If the vehicle travels exclusively through the atmosphere using aerodynamic lift, then I'd say it is an airplane (driven by gravity, propellers, jets, or rockets). If part of the operational envelope includes operation beyond the 62 mile (100km) altitude normally defined as the limit of space but it still has aerodynamic lift generating elements used for takeoff, cruise (think of the "skipping" designs), or landing, then it is a spaceplane. The shuttle is a spaceplane. Spaceship1 is a spaceplane.
What then is the Blue Origin vehicle? It doesn't have any (as far as I can tell) any lift generating surfaces, so it cannot be a plane of any sort. Is it a manned rocket? According to pedants in the thread, rocket applies only to the means of propulsion, so I'll play along and say no. Is it a missile? How about a manned (what it carries), sub-orbital (altitude envelope), ballistic (flight profile), missile (type of vehicle)?