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Blue Origin Lands Rocket During Launch Escape Test (gizmodo.com)
SpaceX isn't the only private company interested in reusable rockets. Blue Origin, an American privately-funded aerospace manufacturer established by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, surprised everyone, including itself, by successfully landing its New Shepard rocket in today's in-flight launch escape test. Gizmodo reports: Moments ago, Blue Origin conducted an in flight test of its launch escape system, separating a crew capsule from its New Shepard booster at an altitude of 16,000 feet. This test was critical to ensure that the rocket will be safe for human passengers, whom Blue Origin hopes to start flying into sub-orbital space as early as next year. Not only did the crew capsule make a clean separation, deploy its parachutes, and land softly in a small cloud of dust back on Earth, but the booster -- which everybody expected to go splat -- continued on its merry way into suborbital space, after which it succeeded in landing smoothly back on Earth for a fifth time. Although Blue Origin has tested its launch escape system on the launchpad before, this is the first time such a system has been tested, by anyone, in flight since the 1960s. It was almost too perfect. You can watch the test here.
They are not a competition for SpaceX since SpaceX does not do suborbital flights.
Blue Origin's actual competition is Virgin Galactic, which is also trying to get paying passengers on 15-minute suborbital flights.
The difference between a suborbital and an orbital flight is like the difference between a Schwinn bicycle and a Ford F-150 pickup truck.
Blue Origin reached space multiple times. What they didn't reach yet is an orbital trajectory for their payload.
The way the parachutes opened was really quite beautiful, too
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Funny thing that USA didn't point out this difference when Alan Shepard had his flight.
But yes, they are not a competition for SpaceX since SpaceX does not do manned flights.
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Blue Origin reached space multiple times. What they didn't reach yet is an orbital trajectory for their payload
which is the hard part.
You don't have to be in orbit to be in space. That was never part of the definition. The standard definition is passing the Karman line - which is between 90 and 100km above earth (depending on where you launch from and the air pressures - but generally by convention assumed to be 100km or above). That's being in space. The next definition is leaving the atmosphere - again the boundary is not perfectly clearly defined but generally taken as being above 150km.
Those are "in space" the difference between orbital and suborbital is how long you can *stay* in space. Suborbital comes right back - but it's a *lot* cheaper to do (you need a lot less horizontal velocity). It has it's uses too - it's a very fast way to get very long distances. ICBMs are frequently designed for suborbital trajectories for example.
But orbit is another beast altogether - that's not just going to space but staying there for an extended period, it takes a lot more fuel - which means a much heavier rocket, meaning more powerful boosters and more complicated stages. That's what SpaceX is doing. They are working on the harder of the two. B.O. is working on the easier one - both are making great strides in their games, but they are not playing the same sport. They are merely similar sports - it's like asking who was better Babe Ruth or Peter Pollock. Both are absolute legends in games that involve hitting a hard ball thrown at you away with a stick -but it's not the same game, it isn't scored the same and you can't compare them directly.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
No, they're not.
But those who don't know the difference between what Blue Origin is trying to do and what SpaceX is already capable of are idiots.
The REAL definition is when your actually in space, no one can hear you scream.
ICBMs are ALWAYS designed for suborbital trajectories. Otherwise, they wouldn't hit anything.
Even a FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) is suborbital.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
So true, because manufacturing and engineering costs in 2016 are exactly the same as they were in 1993. Material science hasn't advanced at all in the last 23 years either.
We didn't "plunder" the scientists, they willfully and happily came to the US after the fall of Nazi Germany.
You mean the MD DC-X which never went above 10300 ft? Not exactly space...
And why would it not be cost-effective? Sure, you lose some capacity because you have to take extra fuel to bring the booster back (and you have to use more fuel to send that fuel up), but if you just make the rocket big enough, it won't double the price. If you can reuse the booster once, it's paid for itself. And certainly if it's a booster the size of the proposed BFR. You don't just want to throw that away.
Blue Origin reached space multiple times. What they didn't reach yet is an orbital trajectory for their payload
which is the hard part.
I'm not so sure about that. Only two rocket systems land their boosters: SpaceX and Blue Origin. On the other hand, there is a multitude of rocket systems that can put payloads in orbit. Considering that once you have the booster slowed down to terminal velocity, it doesn't matter how fast it was originally going; the landing process is going to be the same. So maybe Blue Origin is focussing on the really hard part (the landing) and leaving the easier part (scaling up to orbital speeds) for later.
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He probably thinks that getting a rocket in to a stable orbit, delivering long term useful cargo, and then landing on a moving barge in the ocean is a LOT harder than shooting a rocket practically straight up and coming right back down to land.
I think I agree with him.
I stand corrected.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Are you somehow suggesting that looking on the internet to see if someone else has encountered and solved the same problem is somehow inferior than spending hours (or days, or months, or years, depending on the problem) trying to solve the problem yourself? Or are you suggesting that every time someone needs a wheel for something they "re-invent" it?
Depends on the problem. I'm an engineer, and I've seen colleagues turn to Google when they need perform basic unit conversions that really should be second nature. The Internet is a fabulous resource, but tends to promote laziness and loss of problem-solving skills when relied upon too much. It also seems to dilute common sense, as when information is assumed to be correct because the source appears to be authoritative, even though cursory inspection shows the information to be wrong.
No, it's not the hard part. That's just guidance and a bigger rocket. Keeping the rockets from exploding during development is the hard part. Also doing everything cheaply and efficiently is the most difficult part.
No, this is wrong. The reason rocket science is hard is because getting to orbit is hard. Going suborbital requires much less velocity, which means much less energy, which means less fuel, and you have tons more margin to work with. You can use cheaper, more reliable materials, you can afford to over-engineer structures and systems for safety. A suborbital rocket can also ignore many technical challenges entirely - there's no staging, for instance, there's no need for thermal protection for re-entry, there's far less destructive capacity involved so you have simpler pads and support infrastructure and less regulatory burden since your rocket isn't capable of destroying small towns.
For a simple comparison, a kg to space (100km) means you've only got to worry about gravitational potential energy, mgh, a total energy of 1kg * 10m/s/s * 10^5m, or 10^6J. For a kg to orbit, you have to have that gravitational potential energy, plus ~7.8 km/s. KE = 1/2mv^2, so 1/2 * 1kg * 7800m/s^2 = 3*10^7J. That means, from the very start, you need ~30 times the energy. To find a similar difference in capability, you could look at a Cessna vs an SR-71. The two are only similar in the most superficial ways.
Getting to orbit absolutely is the hard part. Blue Origin is working on it, but they started at suborbital specifically because it is easy, and their entire motto is gradatim ferociter, meaning "step by step, ferociously". Suborbital is an easier step, so they are taking a more gradual approach than SpaceX.
The thing about rocket science? Every part is the hard part.
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