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Blue Origin Launches and Lands the Same New Shepard That Few In November (blueorigin.com)
MarkWhittington writes: The commercial space race between Blue Origin and SpaceX got more interesting on Friday. In November, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard booster on a suborbital flight, and then successfully landed it afterward. On Friday, Blue Origin relaunched the same New Shepard spacecraft to a height of 101.7 kilometers, and then landed it a second time. Blue Origin has therefore accomplished a first by flying a vertical takeoff and landing rocket into space twice in a row. The company has taken another step toward its goal of taking the rich and adventurous on suborbital jaunts for fun and profit.
'Few in November'? lol
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Timothy. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Spelling isn't that hard. It reflects really poorly on this site when the editors can't spell. This happened on the article just before this too.
I just can't ignore the errors anymore. This is just stupidly bad.
Blu Origins lunches and landz teh sam new chepard that phew in novemberer.
FTFY
"Blue Origin had therefore accomplished a space first by flying a vertical takeoff and landing rocket into space twice in a row."
How can anyone compare Blue Origin and SpaceX in the same paragraph while still mentioning that Blue Origin flights are sub-orbital? There's really little basis for comparison at that point between Blue Origin and SpaceX and more comparison between Blue Origin and Scaled Composites. Of course Scaled Composites *already* flew multiple sub-orbital flights with SpaceShipOne - who cares that it wasn't a vertical take-off and landing - it's *still* more comparable.
It just gets better...
"The company has taken another step toward its goal of taking the well off and adventurous on suborbital jaunts for fun and profit."
Huh? I keep trying to interpret that.
I think all companies should "take the well off" and "adventurous on suborbital jaunts'
Grue Orange Haunches and Hands the lame few leopard that true in lavender?
The "first" here is that New Shepard made it to the altitude arbitrarily defined as "space". The first launch and landing of a VTOL rocket that had previously flown was back in September of 1993 with DC-X's second flight (first was 8/18/93). Sure, it only went up a few hundred feet ... then stopped dead, hovered, translated sideways another couple of hundred feet, then landed. (I was present for that one. Frickin' awesome!) It flew yet again less than three weeks later.
On June 7 and 8 of 1996, it flew twice within 26 hours. That second flight reached an altitude of 10,300 feet (its record). Nowhere near space, but the DC-X program was more about the control software and reusability than going for altitude (it was a one-third scale prototype of the proposed Delta Clipper). And they were doing it with what is now over twenty year old technology. (Actually older, the thrusters were modified RL-10s from the 60s, much of the flight control avionics was off-the-shelf units that McDonnell-Douglas used in its jet aircraft.)
So, kudos to Blue Origin for reaching the edge of space with a previously-used rocket (something nobody else has done with the arguable exception of Shuttle, which was really never the same twice). But let's put the "first" emphasis where it belongs. (And it is significant -- it doesn't really matter how many times you can re-use a rocket if it won't get you to space in the first place.)
-- Alastair
Dice got some class in the editor department.
Hopefully, this leads to a bit of a space race.
However, to be fair, SpaceX is a LONG LONG ways ahead of everybody. They already have an orbital craft. They are able to land their first stage. They will likely re-use it in production sometime next year.
FH will launch in April.
Dragon v2 for human launches, will be end of year.
Raptor is supposed to be finished and fully tested around early 2017.
And that is on-top of MCT being developed.
OTOH, ULA, Airbus, O-ATK, Russia, etc will feel the heat shortly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actual source at Blue Origin's site.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
America has become so cheap it has to reuse its rockets!! DAM OBAMA !!
I'm assuming that any rocket which lands vertically must carry twice the fuel to achieve a given altitude: one dose to accelerate to the altitude and a second dose to decelerate back to zero. This is in contrast to a space plane design like the Space Shuttle which dissipated the deceleration energy as heat and radiation. So, a vertically landing rocket would have to be much larger than its space-plane equivalent to carry the same payload to the same altitude.
Presumably, this would counteract some of the economics of rocket reuse - though perhaps it might still be cheaper overall due to the reuse of the (twice as large?) engine. Therefore, it isn't the panacea that it would at first appear. In fact, I suspect that the reason it wasn't done in the past was primarily that the economics wasn't actually all that compelling compared to one-time-use rockets, though it is also undoubtedly technically difficult.
Have I got all that right, or am I missing something?
That's because BO had the luxury of being able to hover as desired, pick the landing spot and descend. The first landing had it skating all over the place.
The Falcon 9's single merlin engine produces too much thrust to hover, so it has to burn to hit 0m/s at 0ft. This is due to it needing the engines to lift an actual payload into orbit, as opposed to simply going up and down.
BO also had the luxury of choosing their launch time and location without commercial constraints. The F9 launch had a 30 second window, so to delay because of the fog (which Musk alluded to causing the ice buildup) wasn't an option.
I said this before with the SpaceX story not long ago (and got some pretty nasty responses by fanboys), but the question remains whether IN THE SHORT RUN and *only comparing the current whole-1ste-booster stage return versus partial systems* like Adeline ( http://www.space.com/29620-air... ) or that of the ULA don't make more *economic* sense.
Do note the domain where I'm talking about (capital letters/ asterix). I'm NOT comparing a "rocket that is like an airplane" (costwise) with a one-time usable rocket.
Now, I'm looking pretty favourable at newcomers like SpaceX and Blue Origins, and I think it's great what those companies do, and their CEO's are visionaries imho. But still, that doesn't mean one should be blind to other things. One can say it's because the others are 'getting behind' and try to dish a potential threat, but I think it's more than that. I might be they have a point, especially for rockets that have to get into an orbit. It's exponentially difficult to get the second and third stage to be 'recoverable' as well, and, certainly with the current system of using the engines (and thus fuel), it doesn't seem viable in an economic sense, compared to Adeline-esque systems.
NOT because of the cost of the fuel, as so many think I'm arguing (but which is a relative minor cost), but because it reduces the maximum payload. It's all there in the link, so please read *before* giving ignorant replies, thank you.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Blue origin landed a suborbital rocket twice!
Slashdot thinks Flew and Few are one and the same.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Fix the fucking glaring typo, you barrel of twats. And while you're at it, fix the mobile bug where I get told I have 5 moderator points which expire 5 days ago. And why am I never logged in automatically like on other sites? To look at it, you'd think this was someone's first site circa 1995.
Blue Origin is planning to go orbital at some point but is currently on the Von-Braun's V-2, Virgin Galactic, model of (mostly) straight-up and then straight-down. They are mastering the launch, land, re-use model with the aim of short-term revenue from "space tourism". Meanwhile, they are also working on the ability to do a larger rocket capable of the huge horizontal velocity required for orbit. Eventually, they will master all the required tech and be flying payloads to orbit on a re-usable orbital launch vehicle. Nobody is paying Blue to do this, so they are moving in the logical way beginning with small steps and gradually stretching their legs in the direction their business model takes them.
SpaceX also initially did suborbital flights and re-use experiments with a modified Falcon 1st stage called the "grasshopper" and while they HAVE re-landed an launch vehicle first stage from an orbital launch (a much harder task) they have done it with a lot of money from federal government contracts and have not yet re-flown one. SpaceX will certainly master the tech and will be flying payloads to orbit on a re-usable orbital launch vehicle. Remember: SpaceX had government contacts, and therefore a HUGE incentive, to keep moving on the orbital flights fitting-in re-use experiments along the way.
Blue is right to be proud of what they have done. Musks's grasshopper never flew more than several thousand feet and never with a payload. Blue launched a payload (a capsule designed to hold passengers) into space (though NOT into LEO) on both flights. Neither company is duplicating the other's work and the "firsts" from both should be celebrated. In the end, it looks like we will get to highly-competent and capable competitors in the marketplace and they are going to end-up fueling the eventual congressional inquiries into why the traditional defense contractors never tried to innovate to lower their launch prices (congress will pretend, like Rick in the Casino to be "shocked" that their "cost plus" DoD launch contracts meant decades of incentives to NOT innovate).
There was another first, which you missed and which DC-X never attempted:
Jeff Bezos's team [1] deployed a payload [2] into space. You are right about #2 just being about altitude, since his current launcher cannot push anything to orbital velocity, but you missed #1. That altitude is very significant, just ask any model rocket builder about the difference between his Estes-powered cardboard tube and something that goes up 100km. There are all sorts of static and dynamic structural and control issues that arise when you need to scale-up enough to haul the fuel and oxidizers required to reach those altitudes. The payload, however, is even bigger and something you missed. Bezos launched and re-launched the spacecraft too. As it is, right now, Bezos COULD sell brief suborbital flights providing a couple minutes of weightlessness for automated manufacturing experiments etc in one of his capsules, and right now he might well be ahead of Virgin Galactic in letting tourists repeat the Al Shepard suborbital flight.
well done, Blue Origin.
that few in November cared about?
I wonder what the service and Q&A was like on Blue Origin after the first flight? How many components needed repair or replacement? That is why Space X is taking care with it's first reflight after successful return landing. I'm sure they learned much from their first success.
-Eric
I wonder what the service and Q&A was like on Blue Origin after the first flight? How many components needed repair or replacement? That is why Space X is taking care with it's first reflight after successful return landing. I'm sure they learned much from their first success.
According to the Blue Origin site, "Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today’s re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one."
November 2015: "Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts—a used rocket,” said Jeff Bezos.
December 2015: Elon to Jeff: "Mine is bigger than yours"
January 2016: Jeff to Elon: "I can get mine up again, can you?"