Blue Origin Launches and Lands the Same New Shepard That Few In November (blueorigin.com)

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Blue Origin Launches and Lands the Same New Shepard That Few In November (blueorigin.com)

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 23, 2016 @04:18AM from the home-again-home-again dept.

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.

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Ummmm.... by click2005 · 2016-01-23 04:20 · Score: 4, Informative

'Few in November'? lol

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1. Re:Ummmm.... by Opportunist · 2016-01-23 06:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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holy crap by p0p0 · 2016-01-23 04:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
1. Re:holy crap by elrous0 · 2016-01-23 04:49 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  In his defense, he's very drunk.
  
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2. Re:holy crap by msauve · 2016-01-23 04:56 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Elisa could pass the Turing test if the competition was timothy.
  
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3. Re:holy crap by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 05:46 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Hay, take it easily! The spiel chuck said it wash OK! PROUST EEL!
4. Re:holy crap by hawk · 2016-01-23 08:33 · Score: 3
  
  >Spelling isn't that hard. It reflects really poorly on this site when the editors can't spell.
  You must be new around here . . .
  hawk
No comparison by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 04:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
1. Re:No comparison by itsdapead · 2016-01-23 05:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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2. Re:No comparison by Immerman · 2016-01-23 08:38 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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3. Re:No comparison by TWX · 2016-01-23 08:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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4. Re:No comparison by Bruce+Perens · 2016-01-23 12:42 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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5. Re:No comparison by Gavagai80 · 2016-01-23 14:03 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It's hard to overstate the difference between 100km freefall tourism (without the tourists yet but let's presume they'll be easy to add) and putting payloads into orbit. The delta-v to orbit is about six times more.
  
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Altitude only first by AJWM · 2016-01-23 04:56 · Score: 4, Informative

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.)

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Space Race! by WindBourne · 2016-01-23 05:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:Space Race! by WindBourne · 2016-01-23 05:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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?
  
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Cut the blog spam by arielCo · 2016-01-23 05:09 · Score: 3, Informative

Actual source at Blue Origin's site.

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Re:Vertical Landing Rocket Economics 101 by CSG_SurferDude · 2016-01-23 08:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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