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Blue Origin Building DC-X Lookalike
rrohbeck writes "The New York Times is running an article on what Blue Origin (Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' space company) is up to after his Texas land grab. A couple of Flash videos show a short successful test hop of the 'Goddard' test vehicle. From the article: 'The Goddard has a science-fiction sleekness. Videos show the craft taking off and landing again with a loud whooshing sound. In one view, one of the nine rocket nozzles jitters as it maintains the ship's attitude. Goddard resembles the DC-X, another vertical-takeoff-and-landing craft under development in the 1990s by McDonnell Douglas for the Defense Department and NASA until the government pulled the plug.' And in case you're an aerospace engineer, they're hiring."
Videos show the craft taking off and landing again with a loud whooshing sound.
I suppose that's better than taking off and landing again with a crashing sound.
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Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." :D
Wow, slashdot is kinda slow on the uptake. I read about this a few days ago.
I think we've found his egg!
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DC-X was a very successful program. It had many successful flights until the Air Force turned it over to NASA and NASA crashed it on the first flight. Then they cancelled it.
I AM a rocket scientist!
Well, actually, seriously, I'd hate to get a job at one of these places and then end up finding it tedious and hating it, the way I end up hating everything once I get into Type-A workaholic mode.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
That looks like fun. Too bad I'm on the wrong coast and don't want to move. 9 years with NASA designing and building flight hardware, 6 in industry, MS in structures plus courses in Space Veh Prop, Guidance and Nav, and have owned my own 4 person SE firm for 4 years. GD&T and Pro/E is probably a hair on the rusty side, but it's like riding a bike. Built my own small-scale solid fuel rocket engines.
I wonder what they pay?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I, for one, will just wait for Willy Wonka to finish the Phase III testing of his fizzy lifting drinks
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The Blue Origin's vehicle isn't anything like DC-X, except that they are both VTVL. The Goddard/New Shepard vehicles are axisymetric, base-first reentry and use hydrogen peroxide/kerosene. DC-X (and follow-ons) were biconic, used a side-first reentry with body flaps and were LOX/LH2 powered. Very different machines, both these test vehicles and any further versions. DC-X was based on the classified AMARV test article, the Goddard is more like the old "mega capsule" heavy lift concepts from the 60's and 70's, such as Boeing's LEO.
All the best to Bezos and Blue Origin! The flight video is excellent!
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
It looks impressive, but you can't get to orbit that way.
Single stage to orbit craft have to be somewhere above 97% fuel, with the best chemical fuels possible. People have tried to build SSTO craft, Rotary Rocket being a good example, but when your weight budget is that tight, it's next to impossible, and even if it works, the payloads are dinky.
Two stages work. The Shuttle is two stages; the solid boosters and the external tank are dropped off. To get to orbit on chemical fuels and have any useful payload, you have to dump some mass during lift. Even with two stages, the weight reduction efforts result in fragile spacecraft.
Now if we had nuclear rockets, we could get somewhere.
Powered ascent and descent results in a craft that is 4 times more massive than one that would reach the same altitude but land using a ballistic reentry and a parachute. You would not see Burt Rutan embrace an inefficient design like that.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's here! My freakin' FLYING CAR, it's here!!
Like a development of the DC-8?
If I didn't know better, I'd think they were planning on launching a "new and improved" scientology.
Correction: In case you're a highly experience aerospace engineer.
I already checked. They don't seem to be doing a Google style "young talent" hiring search or accepting those with marginally-related experience. If you look through the jobs page, they're generally asking for 10 years experience with some very specific skills (like direct experience with RS-68's or RL-10's). Your chances probably aren't very good if you're looking to break into aerospace, even with an advanced degree. *sigh*
With good reason, I'd wager. I would attribute a large part of SpaceX's rapid pace of development of the Merlin engines to having recruited the same kind of talent directly off of Lockheed and Boeing. They didn't have to figure out many of the details of how to build a working rocket because they people they hired had already built them.
This is probably critical for Blue Origin. Space.com's reported that their current test vehicle is powered by catalytically decomposed hydrogen peroxide. If they're going to achieve the payload and altitude they want, suborbital though it may be, I doubt they're going to get there without a bipropellant; fuel + oxidizer. Just switching to H2O2 + kerosene would double the theoretical specific impulse, or energy they can get per mass of fuel. On the downside, burning a bi-propellant increases the complexity of the engine significantly and complicates throttling, and if they're planning on using turbopumps instead of a pressure-fed system (a scheme their jobs page supports), it gets even more complicated.
Building DC-9 Lookalikes, but with rocket engines in order to transport Thetans to Teegeeack in clusters (packaged by the thousands together), and thereafter drop them in two volcanic areas, one of which is Las Palmas, and the other Hawaii.
(The preceding joke is based upon the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, which make up a core belief in Scientology (OT III, Incident 2))
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
The biggest advantange of this type of craft is the fact that you need little to no ground support for launch or landing, and has a quick turn-around time with little to no maintaince between flights. This is most usefull in scenarios where there is no possibility of ground support other than the crew - namely a moon/mars lander.
Bezos has a decent business plan here. Focus development on recreational sub-orbital flights, which VTL crafts are capable of, and which there is a market for, and in doing so put yourself in a very good position to get a contract from NASA for the new lander that is still up for bid.
Vertical Take off and landing. Notice the lack of heat, that is simple escaping gas, notice the lake of "smoke" or product of a oxygen reaction, the liquid and frost?...Some compressed gas propellent in the form of pressurized liquid was used to propel this "pod". Probably a test of the computer controls required to do a vertical landing.
The pod will probably be deployed atop a conventional rocket to shoot tourists into low earth orbit, take some snaps, puke in zero G then fall to earth, chute deploys then the last 5000 feet or so the landing "spray" take over with non-explosive propellent...for a safe, soft touch down.
Makes perfect sense, it is safer than splatting craft on the ground like the Russians do, and craft recovery is much cheaper with a soft touch landing than a splash down. Aircraft carriers are expensive.
I could be way off base...but don't expect any "secret amazing" drive technology out of commercial space vehicles. It is really about making space tourism, safe, repeatable and profitable.
-=Space Pod=- coming to a Six Flags near you.....
The Goddard has a science-fiction sleekness
Damn right! The only thing missing from that pick are Tatooine's 2 suns and Luke kicking a rock right next to it.
"10... 9... 8... 7,6..5... 4...... 3, 2... 1"
That's totally fake. If you look close enough you can see the wire from the crane it's suspended from. The sound is just static to make it sound like it's actually doing something.
Sure did look like steam coming out of those engines, I thought that hydrogen peroxide just didn't have enough energy for a practical launch vehicle??
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Phoenix stood in the center of the enormous room. It looked like a giant ice cream cone, sixty feet high, standing on its big end. At the slightly rounded base it was half as big across as it was high. It stood alone, with no scaffolding around it.
The book is available online from the Baen Free Library at: http://www.baen.com/library/
Look if these guys can do this under say $1billion, then why is nasa wasting 10s of billions or why is the navy/govt wasting 100s of billions in iraq!!!
Seams like even 5% of the military spending could yield close to star trek technology, ie. 100 space ships with crews of 1000s, and 5 space stations.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Jackass. If you purposely misread a simple sentence I can't help you much.
Keep in mind that a Soyuz descends under parachute and uses the rocket firing briefly before impact to reduce landing shock. They have nothing to do with the rest of the descent. They stand in place of a landing bag.
Yes, simple skids add a small fraction of the size and mass of the outsized tanks of the Blue Origin. No solution is free. But to most engineers the lighter simpler safer system is preferable. Not suprising Bezos embraced the sexy and discredited alternative
Nice description of the problem, for an English major. Integrate dv = -u dm/m - g dt for the powered descent scenareo and you will see the point. Open any dynamics book to find a discussion of the problem. Also LH2 is utterly wasteful for flight in the atmosphere. High thrust not high Isp is the solution to air drag.
an ill wind that blows no good