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Jeff Bezos Unveils the Design of Blue Origin's Future Orbital Rocket -- New Glenn (theverge.com)
Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin said he would unveil details about his company's orbital rocket sometime "later this year." He is now delivering on the promise. Bezos has released some preliminary details about the "New Glenn" rocket which employs seven of the company's new generation BE-4 rocket engines. The rocket, named after the first American to reach orbit, is bigger than Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy rocket. Bezos said he intends to launch the New Glenn in less than a decade from now. The Verge reports: The New Glenn will incorporate reusability, according to an email update from Bezos. The first stage of the rocket will be able to land post-launch, similar to how Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle lands after a flight. However, the New Shepard is only capable of going to sub-orbital space, so it's not traveling as fast or as high as a rocket going to orbit. Landing an orbital rocket post-launch will put Blue Origin in a whole new ball game. And it looks like there will be a lot of rocket to land. The New Glenn will be 23 feet in diameter and range between 270 and 313 feet high. That height depends on if there is one upper stage or two on top of the rocket. With just one upper stage, the rocket will be able to send satellites and people into lower Earth orbit (LEO). But with two upper stages, the New Glenn is capable of taking payloads beyond LEO. The main portion of the rocket will be powered by seven BE-4s, an engine that Blue Origin is currently developing. It's the same engine that the company hopes to sell to the United Launch Alliance to power the future Vulcan rocket. Combined, the BE-4s should provide 3.85 million pounds of thrust, according to Bezos. That's more thrust than the 2 million pounds the Delta IV Heavy is capable of, and slightly less than the 5 million pounds SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can pull off.Bezos said: Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step. It won't be the last of course. Up next on our drawing board: New Armstrong. But that's a story for the future.
This is a more realistic goal: a reusable orbital rocket to be launched around 10 years from now.
Neither.
I think those billionaires should go balls to the walls competing and boosting their egos and blowing billions. This will create the new technology, the new industry and eventually we little people will benefit.
Precedent: railroad, auto, aircraft, computing industries. Some made bigger fortunes and others went bust. But in the end, society ended up better. So, we should egg them on.
The rocket, named after the first American to reach orbit, is bigger than Elon Musk's Falcon Heavy rocket ... Combined, the BE-4s should provide 3.85 million pounds of thrust, according to Bezos. That's ... slightly less than the 5 million pounds SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can pull off.
Wait, so the rocket will be bigger, with less thrust? That doesn't sound like an improvement to me. Or do they just mean taller (there are diagrams in the article), but it will somehow manage to have lower mass and so get a better thrust to weight ratio?
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
Let the games begin! I for one welcome a worthy competitor to Musk. The more billionaires we have focusing their attention and resources on real-world problems (rather than squeezing a few more basis points out of their high-frequency trading algorithms) the better off we'll all be. Even Bill Gates -- however buggy his software and however ill-gotten his gains -- appears to be using his economic power for "good" these days.
Meanwhile, what has Jamie Dimon done for you lately? (cough!)2008
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Except that SpaceX actually is flying stuff today, and this is a render and doesn't exist in the physical world.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
While I like John Glenn as much as anybody... well, actually, no. I clearly don't like John Glenn as much as Jeff Bezos, because I would never name a space rocket "New Glenn". It sounds like somebody's 50-something never-married uncle trying to rebrand himself before he goes clubbing.
Rushed into service 10 years from now?
Rockets blow up, cars crash, trains derail and we learn a little bit more every time it happens. Even the ULA's long stretch of mishap free launches is going to have a new risk when they are forced to do what Blue Origin and SpaceX have been proactively doing, develop new engines.
Commercial space launches are the present and the future in the US.
You are right. Why rush things? We have been launching things into LEO with chemical rockets for about 60 years now. We still have a lot to learn about it. It might take another 60 to make it reliable enough to launch people reliably. Who knows at this point?
Blue Origin has flown the New Shepard. Four times.
Yes, it's not-quite-there ware so far. But he has a plan that makes as least as much sense as SpaceX.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Verge math: A number that is 77% of the larger number is described as "slightly less".
I saw SpaceX's last flight. What a blast!
Listen carefully, and you can hear faint, Austrian-tinged laughter.
Two A-Types, boasting about how their 'missle' is bigger. Not that the US and USSR didn't do it first.
New Shepard is named after the first American to reach space on a suborbital flight, and has reached space on suborbital flights.
New Glenn is named after the first American to reach orbit, and is intended to achieve orbital flights.
Sounds logical.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
FTA: "Then, the plan is to fly to the New Glenn "before the end of this decade," according to Bezos." "this decade" implies by 2020, or within the next 4 years, NOT "in a decade"
This rocket seems a bit more complicated than the Falcon 9/Heavy, quite a bit larger, and not any more reusable.
More complicated how? The engine design is somewhat more complicated (staged combustion vs gas-generator) but a single rocket core is less complicated than the three-core Falcon Heavy arrangement. Perhaps you mean the optional third stage? I still think that's less complicated than the Falcon arrangement. It's potentially a lot more efficient, too.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Rushed into service 10 years from now?
The subheading says "He says it will fly before the end of the decade". That's four years from now, not ten.
Rockets blow up, cars crash, trains derail and we learn a little bit more every time it happens. Even the ULA's long stretch of mishap free launches is going to have a new risk when they are forced to do what Blue Origin and SpaceX have been proactively doing, develop new engines. Commercial space launches are the present and the future in the US.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Suborbital has almost nothing to do with orbital -- it's off by orders of magnitude and involves completely different factors. Blue Origin has yet to fly a rocket that can be developed for orbital flight.
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" real-world problems " Uhhh, amusement park rides for the bored class aren't exactly a real-world problem. Building the upcoming leisure society with drastically reduced work requirements and free basic healthcare and living conditions for all are a real problem that needs addressing NOW.
Metal tubes full of kerosene are really nothing interesting or important.
Why are you tech geeks such loathsome misanthropic sociopaths?
We do not know how many of what meet your definition of "real world problems" are solvable by easy and affordable access to space because we do not yet have easy and affordable access to space.
Perhaps fifty years ago you would be complaining that integrated circuits will never solve real world problems.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Yeah, look at all those other rocketry companies that had to close the doors after losing a launch vehicle on the pad!
Oh wait, that would be none of them. It turns out that space is hard.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
And if you like those, wait until you see New Marvin. Guess where that is going!
Somewhere small and uncomfortable, I'll bet.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
So the rocket should rather be named "New Shepard"?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Uh, none, because all of the solutions proposed are incredibly energy-intensive and highly polluting. We have huge pollution problems, upcoming due to automation are massive unemployment, antibiotic resistant bacteria, income/wealth/health/freedom disparity. These are real problems, they can all be addressed without massive pollution of the planet on an absurd scale. Instead of worshiping at the altar of scientifism, inform yourself of the real, imminent challenges that we as a species are bringing to ourselves and will violently confront in the near future.
Only I can judge you.
massive pollution of the planet on an absurd scale
The automobile causes this. Cities cause this. Cows cause this. Spaceflight, due to its infrequency, has a relatively insignificant impact on pollution, unless you count all the knowledge we have gained from earth observing satellites. A massive increase in launch frequency would still not make much difference versus these other pollution sources.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Yes, you are right. Except for cows, I believe that pastured cows are not the source of pollution that industrial cows are as they are in balance with the pastures they are raised on. You are right in a larger sense regarding the impact on pollution a planet-wide scale, however on a local scale the impacts are decidedly tangible:
http://web.uvic.ca/~gsteeves/e...
https://www.quora.com/Whats-th...
I am all for getting rid of most cars and replacing them with bicycles and a massively increased clean public transportation infrastructure. Also, I persist in my main statement that our major problems are (those I listed, there are others of course) here on earth and there is no conceivable scenario in which expending resources on space-flight are going to solve them.
Only I can judge you.
Actually SpaceX does not have anything flying today. They need to find out why the lost yet another Falcon and payload.
I would not dismiss the New Glenn so fast. The fact hat Space X got anything into orbit shows that it is possible.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Yeah, look at all those other rocketry companies that had to close the doors after losing a launch vehicle on the pad!"
You mean all those companies that where developing systems for the government with government money?
As opposed to one of the only other private companies to try and build a launcher.. like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Of course it's possible. But claiming one companies obsolescence merely because another billionaire "unveiled a design" especially in a field like rocketry is absolutely ridiculous.
That's like people saying that ULA is washed up when Musk "unveiled the design" for the Falcon 9. ULA seems to be doing just fine, and so is SpaceX.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.