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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.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
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.
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.