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"

Comments

Impressive turn-around time, too...

[stoborrobots]

They're claiming that the commercial launch around 2010 will be able to make 52 lauches a year, meaning that they expect to be able to turn around one of these babies in a week from landing...

That will require some interesting reliability stats on the exposed surfaces...

Re:Impressive turn-around time, too...

[pookemon]

Or maybe they are having more than one of them?

Re:Impressive turn-around time, too...

[Tx]

As others have pointed out, they'll probably have more than one vehicle. I would also add that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that there's be enough demand for 52 launches a year in the long term, though they could possibly sustain it for maybe a few months to a year after launch. After that, the novelty value will have worn off, and a trip in this thing will be looking like pretty damn poor value for money.

Re:Impressive turn-around time, too...

[hey!]

I would also add that there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that there's be enough demand for 52 launches a year in the long term, though they could possibly sustain it for maybe a few months to a year after launch.

This is one of those assumptions that you put in your business plan spreadsheet, that makes the difference between success and failure but which nobody can say for sure.

Elementary economics tells us you can't possibly say something like "there won't be enough demand for 52 launches per year in the long term." What you have to say is "the market will demand less than 52 launches per year at a certain price." Price the launch low enough, and you'll be able to sell a thousand or even a million launches; the question is, can you make a profit.

Creating a popular web site and creating a aerospace company are on the surface very different things. But one thing that is in common is that there is an adoption curve. You almost never have enough people want your service at the outset to sustain it. What you need is enough people to want your service to keep the ball rolling, to bring in enough cash that venture dollars don't feel too lonely as they're waiting to be shoveled into the furnace.

The key to everything is pricing and its relationship to volume. IN a mature business, you want to charge to maximize profit, but in a startup you aren't expecting to see profit. It's more complex because your pricing has to do more things than deliver a profit. It has to deliver enough volume so that you can begin to achieve economies of scale and learn how to operate the business efficiently; it also has to show that your business plan's ales projections and cost projections are realistic. Pricing and volume has to validate your assertions about your ability to manage the technology, as well as your assertions about how the market will respond to price.

In a venture like this, you'd charge more at the outset, because you really can't deliver more. So supposing after initial test, you think you can launch four times a year for the first year, because you're shaking down your system and learning how to scale the system safely and efficiently. So, you charge so much that the number of rides you sell is exactly four, neither more nor less. You still burn lots of money and don't get much back. Next year, you can launch eight times, which is twice as often. You drop your prices, hopefully less that 50%; let's say 66%. Presuming that your marginal costs stay the same or drop, it means you lose more money.

In time, repeat this process enough, and (God willing) your marginal costs start to drop, and you start to approach the area where you are making profit on each transaction instead of losing money. However, if your model was wrong, you may end up get no closer to that point: if you don't achieve economies of scale with increased volume, or if demand does not fall with price rising.

Every business plan depends on predicting the future, and making leaps of faith about certain assumptions. Most of the time, some assumption was wrong; if it's right, and you're talking about something like this where you can't create a business overnight, then you can expect to enjoy larger than normal profits if you are right. Higher rewards nearly always entail higher risks (although the converse is not true).

Re:Impressive turn-around time, too...

[StrawberryFrog]

No, the difference is that people buy books and other stuff all the time, so when you want/need other books/stuff later you favour the shop that served you well before.

When you get thrown 99km upwards to the "edge of space" (whoo-hoo, you're not even in orbit) and float down again, you don't need to do it again. The novelty wears off and that's over. That's the point - the interest is to due the novelty; the service being essentially uselesss it will become passe when it's common. 52 flights ought to be enough to do that.

In normal units

[Sklivvz]

"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 15 meter tall and 7 meter in diameter at the base, and carry 3 or more passengers to an altitude of 99 kilometers"

Actually

[Xiph]

The only spacecraft EVER which have NOT been vtol are the shuttles, the russion ones are retired and dead and the american ones have had their share of problems lately.

While the news of how they intend to do this, i think as someone stated above me, the real question is whether you can call it a spaceshuttle when it's only designed to go to weightlessness and return.
Yes it gives a spacelike feeling, but it's not useful for putting up satelites, not possible to go to spacestations with it, from my point of view, it's just a step up from a parabolic flight, but it's not more a spacecraft, than a tow ferry is a ship.

PS. i wish i had one :)

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

But staging is what enabled orbital and metaorbital flights possible in the first place, as you could subtract the (dead)weight of used-up stages from the fuel/payload equation. There isn't much to do about it, except find either lighter construction materials or a method of speeding the propellant out of the nozzles much faster (preferably the second). Even then, multistage SO vehicles would perform better... unless... anyone could devise a method of refueling them during ascent, in which case first (or only) stage would transfer from "minus" to "plus" column.

Now, where along path to orbit could you install a "refueling station" (or refueling randevouz point)? One obvious point is jet plane flight ceiling (~ 30 km altitude), another is stratospheric baloon ceiling (~ 42km altitude). Perhaps a large, flat(-ish) lighter-then-air platform equipped with additional boosters (say, ion engines powered by solar panels... atmosphere is quite thin and transparent above troposphere) could achieve even better altitude and serve as the "launchpad". In fact, the launching would have to be quite complex maneuvre, which would include initial drop-off, starting the engines during the fall (it is a tricky part... if it fails, you have to deploy parachutes and start all over - bring new parts to stratoplatform and assemble them, transport the payload back up...) and steering away from the platform on the way up (it can obviously, present another problem...).

Anyway, whichever clever method we use to establish another stationary checkpoint on the route to orbit, it will be too low to have any practical meaning for the launch, as it strips off less then 15% of the pathway, with added complications and overall cost.

Therefore, I believe that multistage is here to stay... but perhaps there is something to be done about recovering and reusing each stage - if they were designed with such goal. Some of most criticized Space Shuttle design decisions were the answer to previous wasting of very expensive and powerful first stages of Saturn V during each launch - now the main engines survive and are brought back to the base, but in exchange the vehicle with crew onboard is ventured, placed in dangerous position during the launch. If orbiter was to sit on top of the stack, clear from foam and ice debris and salvable in case of the trouble, then the main engine would be expended in each mission. So, obvious answer to present problems would be to separate the orbiter from the main engine with tank and make that "lifter" recoverable (i.e. winged and maneuverable, capable for horizontal gliding and landing) too, and place orbiter on the top of the launch assembly.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

SSTO means bigger, heavier "log" falling from the sky on reentry, suffering greater destructive forces of friction... it ought to be more expensive to design, manufacture and maintain.

I understand that we seek to have romantic illusion of Argonauts-alike independence with "spaceship" or "spacecar" that would be more self-containd vehicle (just tank the fuel in and off you go) then repetitive vertical masonry project of huge surface-locked organisations, but that time has not come yet.

Overall, it is like trying to design a working hydrofoil in age of rowing boats - we need to find better propulsion system first, something so efficient and controllable that it can move smoothly enaugh on start and landing, thrust the troposphere in both directions gently without causing to much friction and overheating, move quickly thru radiation belts and still get out of gravity well on fuel budget. And, oh, yes, all this without sprinkling radionuclids thruout atmosphere. It clearly calls for energy transformation solutions which will leave out the thermal energy link from the chain. So far, we don't seem to have any such solution, at least not on the large scale. Our way of thinking about energy hasn't got to far from "light a (chemical, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, matter-antimatter anychilation) fire, put the pot above,..." universal recipe. Once we learn how to make all this energy sources to directly induce current in a (super)conductor, without dissipating-the-energy-we've-got-in-a-small-volume -thus-heating-a-fluid-entrapped-by-structurally-st rong-container-so-that-it-speeds-in-direction-wher e-we-left-the-only-exit-for-it, then we will be able to accelerate "fuel" (load of ballast particles carried in spaceship storage, or particles found in environment, i.e. atmosphere) to move the vessel by reactive force - that part we know a little better. But for the time beeing, we are better off with multistage launches.

Useful as a first stage for an orbital craft

[Latent Heat]

While it would be nice to have a VTOL rocket craft that can reach Earth orbit, I think there will be more uses for this thing than people let on.

The Redstone rocket was far from capable of achieving orbit -- it was pretty much straight up and back down as you say. Wiley Ley writes that the Redstone in its missile application didn't have range beyond 200 miles. But what the Hunstville people did was put a cluster of solid-fuel rocket stages on top of it, and not only could they reproduce the flight path of the much longer range Jupiter rocket for doing tests, they could get small payloads into orbit. A Redstone first stage followed by three more stages of clustered solid fuel rockets stuck on top was the Jupiter C. Not very high performance but stupid, simple, and reliable for its day. Not only did it fly a test trajectory for the up and coming Jupiter missile (the Jupiter C was not the Jupiter -- it was a Jupiter wannabe), it was capable of earth orbit years before Sputnik, but Ike wanted to go with the untested Vanguard because he did not want to use Army rockets (Jupiter) to avoid militarizing space. Of course Korolev got there first with Sputnik, the Vanguard blew up a couple of times trying to get there next, the Huntsville Germans finally got to fly their Redstone and launch Explorer 1, and a physics professor from Iowa named James Van Allen became a household word.

I see Blue Origin as the new Redstone. If it provides a cheap, reusable access to suborbital space, it can act as a first stage to orbital craft for launching small payloads into orbit. Think of it, people have been talking about "flyback liquid-fueled boosters" for a long time -- this thing is a flyback booster.

The other smart thing about Blue Origin is that the people ride in a separate capsule. It would be neat if the whole thing took off vertically and then landed vertically on rocket thrust with the crew and passengers inside. But this way, if the capsule lands separately on parachutes and landing rockets in the style of Soyuz, you don't have to worry about the people if the guidance system burps on the main spacecraft and the thing crumps on landing. The fact that Blue Origin has a capsule on top makes it just like a Redstone -- in addition to putting Shepherd and Grissom into a suborbit, it was capable of lofting an upper stage to put small instrument packages into orbit.