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.

Comments

holy crap

[p0p0]

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.

No comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No comparison

[itsdapead]

That depends on what you consider to be the hard bit.

I think you'll find that the "hard bit" is putting a payload into orbit and, for extra points, not needing twice as much fuel as a disposable rocket (which is why SpaceX are trying to land on a barge in the middle of the sea rather than flying all the way back to the launchpad).

Otherwise you're just complaining that this was a feat performed with a blue rocket rather than a green one.

Actually more like comparing a silver, red and blue rocket with an orange one.

Re:No comparison

[Immerman]

They're not, technically. And SpaceX has already done *lots* of rocket landing with the Grasshopper test vehicle.

The hard part is scaling the technology up enough to be useful - there's lots of non-linearities in the real world that confound such endeavors. Just a couple:

Getting up to speed while carrying a second stage requires a LOT more fuel, meaning the difference between launch weight and landing weight are MUCH greater. To the point where the Falcon uses only one of its nine engines when landing, throttles it down as far as it can go, and still is producing too much thrust to be able to hover. And being able to hover makes a *huge* difference in ease of landing - just stop a few feet above ground and then ease yourself down, rather than having to time things perfectly so that you hit zero vertical speed just as you touch down. Stop a foot too high and you can't get down short of cutting the engines and falling, stop a foot too low and you get serious impact damage.

Wind shear - thanks to the much taller profile, torques from ambient breezes are going to be much greater on the bigger rocket, increasing with roughly the square of height.

Re:No comparison

[TWX]

And this is why Blue Origin's accomplishment, while interesting, is not as noteworthy as it initially sounds. If I understand right, they've sent a payload-less rocket up to the arbitrary border of space (ie, 100km) twice and landed it. As it was payload-less it didn't do any actual work.

If the rocket doesn't do any actual work then it's not a lot different than my shooting-off model rockets. It's interesting, it's fun, but it's not accomplishing a goal other than shooting-off rockets.

SpaceX has launched a payload for a customer and landed the rocket. Hopefully in their next few launches they'll land more rockets and be able to turn around and fly them again with more payloads. That would actually be a noteworthy accomplishment.

Re:No comparison

[Bruce Perens]

If it only carries its payload up and down without reaching orbit, it's sounding rocket. and It should be compared with Strypi in that case rather than Falcon 9.

Space Race!

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Space Race!

[WindBourne]

LOL.
They already comply with NASA and DOD standards and still their prices remain a fraction of ULA, Airbus, etc.
And as to extracting money from the feds, ULA is nearly 100% dependent on the feds, while less than 1/3 of SpaceX are from govs.
And when it comes to getting 'subsidies' from the feds, they take in a FRACTION of what ULA, Boeing, L-Mart, Airbus, BAE, etc take in. Hell, in all of these other companies, they require the feds to pay costs+, which is ALWAYS outrageous profits, while with SpaceX, the feds have paid only a fraction of the price. SpaceX continues to pour their profits into R&D.

Finally, if they are so far behind that they are only 50's tech, then what companies are ahead of them and how much lower costs are they?

Re:Ummmm....

[Opportunist]

Slashdot has turned from a labor of love (when we had good, topical stories that even had some background research now and then) to a cash cow and ad mouthpiece (when it was turned over to dice and we started playing the "spot the astroturf ad article du jour" game) to the current "we don't even give half a shit anymore" situation.

Seriously. Be honest. Does anyone read the stories anymore before they get frontpaged? I get that suspicious feeling that if I could get a few /. trolls together we could easily get a Lorem Ipsum on the frontpage.

Re:Vertical Landing Rocket Economics 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, you got it almost completely wrong - you don't need to scale the engine at all (you rather lose some payload to orbit) - and the fuel you need to lift the rocket (full, heavy) is magnitudes higher than you need to land it back again - SpaceX uses 9 engines on the Falcon 9, and has "engine-out" capability, where one (or even two, if the right ones fail) engine can get inoperative and the rocket will compensate with a slightly longer burn to still achieve orbit. For doing so, you have to take the fuel for that "slightly longer burn" with you anyway - even if you don't need it. This very fuel will then be used for a landing burn if everything goes smoothly - the rocket either turns around (now nearly empty, and only ~20 tons) and burns toward the LZ, or follows a more or less parabolic arch to a waiting ocean barge (for high-performance launches) to land, where only the last 100m/s or so have to be killed via propulsive landing, the rest is bled of in the atmosphere (terminal velocity etc.) - we are talking about a ton or two of fuel here, which is nearly nothing compared to the rest of the rocket.

The same goes for propulsive Landing on Dragon btw. - you have a Launch Abort System onboard which needs fuel, that you have to carry anyway - if the launch goes smoothly, you take that fuel back with you - and use it for propulsive landing (with parachute backup if something happens - you need that one for the launch escape scenario anyway).

Hope that clarifies it a bit...

Re:Vertical Landing Rocket Economics 101

[CSG_SurferDude]

It's not twice the fuel. It takes most of the fuel to get to speed. At that point the booster is SIGNIFICANTLY lighter, so it takes (again with that word) SIGNIFICANTLY LESS fuel to slow down, and then to land.