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Blue Origin Pushed Its Rocket 'To Its Limits' With High-Altitude Emergency Abort Test (theverge.com)
Blue Origin pulled off another successful test launch today, landing both the New Shepard rocket -- a reusable vehicle designed to take tourists to the edge of space and back -- and capsule after flight. From a report: The company ignited the capsule's emergency motor after it had separated from the rocket, pushing the spacecraft up to a top altitude of around 74 miles -- a new record for Blue Origin. The firing also caused the capsule to sustain up to 10 Gs during the test, but Blue Origin host Ariane Cornell said "that is well within what humans can take, especially for such a short spurt of time."
[...] The rocket which went up today is the third New Shepard vehicle that the company has ever flown. The first one flew to a super high altitude in April 2015, but the booster was unable to land back on Earth after flight. The second iteration of the vehicle was much more successful, however. Blue Origin launched and landed the rocket and booster a total of five times before retiring the system. This third New Shepard has already done two launches and landings, and it sports some upgrades over its predecessors. For instance, this one actually has windows in the crew capsule; the second vehicle had its windows painted on. Blue Origin is building even more vehicles to carry passengers, though there isn't a firm date for when the first crewed flights will occur. The company's president Rob Meyerson has estimated that the first test passengers could fly as soon as this year, while commercial flights could start in 2019. Blue Origin also plans to start selling tickets next year, too.
[...] The rocket which went up today is the third New Shepard vehicle that the company has ever flown. The first one flew to a super high altitude in April 2015, but the booster was unable to land back on Earth after flight. The second iteration of the vehicle was much more successful, however. Blue Origin launched and landed the rocket and booster a total of five times before retiring the system. This third New Shepard has already done two launches and landings, and it sports some upgrades over its predecessors. For instance, this one actually has windows in the crew capsule; the second vehicle had its windows painted on. Blue Origin is building even more vehicles to carry passengers, though there isn't a firm date for when the first crewed flights will occur. The company's president Rob Meyerson has estimated that the first test passengers could fly as soon as this year, while commercial flights could start in 2019. Blue Origin also plans to start selling tickets next year, too.
My name is New Shepard, and this is my favorite spot in the atmosphere.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Maybe in a couple of years Blue Origin will actually put something useful into orbit. You know, like SpaceX has done about 60 some odd times so far.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Doesn't matter what they're shipping if they can't get it anywhere close to orbit - and Blue Origin can only get about 10% of the way there. Getting out of the atmosphere is easy - we've got space enthusiast groups launching balloons that can make it almost all the way out (see Airship to Orbit). The hard part is getting up to orbital velocity, which requires about 10x as much energy as required to reach to the right altitude.
While Blue Origin is doing some interesting and impressive things in rocketry that are fun to see done, and may eventually prove useful for space launches, for now they're engaging strictly in scale model R&D. Nothing they've done so far is even remotely capable of reaching space, unless you define "reaching space" as nothing more than crossing a completely arbitrary line somewhere above where the atmosphere has become too thin to be useful. Which might turn out to work well enough for casual "experience tourism" purposes, but is mostly irrelevant to space travel and research. They can get above more of the atmosphere than air-breathing aircraft, and can offer about 6x the free-fall duration of Vomit Comet parabolic aircraft flights, but that's about it. (And with 15 parabolic segments in a typical flight plan, the Vomit Comet still provides roughly twice the total freefall time per flight)
Now, they could design a second stage to replace the current passenger capsule that might indeed be able to reach orbit. Unfortunately the completely fueled second stage probably couldn't weigh much more than the mostly-empty passenger capsule while using the New Shepard booster, and that severely limits the maximum payload that could be delivered, but there is a market for micro-satellite launches.
So for now, while they're doing some interesting research that might eventually pay off, the only real contribution they're making to space travel is PR and a weak reminder to SpaceX that if they drop the ball to hard and long, they may eventually face real competition. And, I suppose, helping show governments around the world that reusable rockets can be done
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Aliens did it.
Howard the Duck took care of the quack up.. That's what...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A liar? Man, your marriage counseling sessions must get rough.
How fit will you have to be to make one of these trips? If you have to be able to withstand up to 10G for any amount of time, even if just in an emergency, how do you determine who is fit enough to be a space tourist? Granted, that is less than many car wrecks but still dangerous...
--I like turtles...
Falcon 9 will be human-rated soon. Blue Origins is not 'space travel', yet. Its a ticket to nowhere. We are not at the stage where you can fund actual space travel through democratization of the tech.
Good-bye
As of February, there are no plans for the Falcon 9 or the Falcon Heavy to ever be human rated. Elon is pushing that off until BFR, which won't even begin testing for another year. https://spacenews.com/spacex-n...
No, it still came back to Earth, it just didn't land so much as impact.
If it weren't for SpaceX, this would be impressive, but they have a lot of catching up to do. The H2/O2 engine is nice for upper stages, but I can't find any specific impulse numbers so it isn't clear how well they are doing. (there are valid arguments for either kerosine / O2, or H2/O2 for upper stages)).
The landing is still a hover / descend landing. That shows great throttability of the engine, but the SpaceX suicide burn is more efficient and they seem to be getting pretty good reliability with that.
They are only sub-orbital, so they don't yet need good engine performance.
Its not really clear where Blue Origin is pushing the envelope of existing space technology, but its good to have more players in the market. They have plans for an orbital rocket in ~2020, and that will be a better test of how they are doing.