Another Used Rocket Ship Launches And Lands – Again
Blue Origin Successfully Launches New Shepard on its 4th Reusable Flight
Watch the full launch video and see some of the highlights in images.
“Blue Origin successfully launched its reusable rocket New Shepard today deploying the crew capsule on its suborbital mission. This was the 4th time this New Shepard rocket has flown, a feat never achieved to date by any other rocket.”
FYI @BlueOrigin streamed launch of #NewShepard rocket into space Everything went according to plan. Have a nice day. pic.twitter.com/odu0jaweXe
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) June 19, 2016
So did the commentators not say we would see the capsule fire thrusts shortly before landing? Didn’t see anything of the sort.
Yes, but I didn’t see that either. Could have been the dust.
I suspect the deceleration motors last ~1sec or less, and fire so close to the ground that the dust plume is immediate. Only way you would see them is if they got the camera much closer.
The dust is from the landing jets firing – they fire only a few feet – literally – from the ground.
Fantastic! What’s the plan for taking passengers/how many qualification flights?
I am more interested in when Blue Origins will roll out their booster powered by the Be-4’s that will take the capsule to orbit.
Suborbital tourism is just a side show on the real road to the development of the Solar System.
Same here — one of the real races to me is who will debut it’s new engine with Meth/LNG + LOX first.
Congratulations! Here’s to ending the throw away rocket culture for good!
Many congratulations to Blue for an extremely successful as well as
spectacular to watch test flight. Many thanks for the chance we had to
view this live, and I’m personally hoping to see more of those tests
like this.
Regarding New Shepard, it is built like a tank (as it
should), it is fit for the purpose at hand (scientific research + crewed
suborbital flight) and it has shown amazing durability, precision and
resilience so far in its development history.
For the first time
in history, we are close to a true space tourism vehicle. And that is a
damn impressive start, especially if you think about the big picture
here (what Blue has already done, what they are developing, what they
want to accomplish, and what resources they have available).
Gradatim Ferociter, indeed.
Yes, it has all the qualities needed to make it a great lunar lander.
Don’t let the suborbital fool you. That is just a side show. I expect Jeff Bezos is indifferent to it and would not be surprised if he farms it out to some group.
Really, if you want to understand Jeff Bezos plan just read some of the articles written up during the DC-X era in the old Journal on the Practical Applications of Space.
But don’t try to fit him in either the NASA paradigm or the New Space paradigm. He is traveling a different road.
Could someone explain why Blue Origin is doing this?
I get the technological achievement, more or less; there’s a Hawthorne company doing something that seems similar but in truth is much more difficult with a rocket that reaches 5000 MPH (and sometimes doesn’t land, true).
But what is the long game for BO? I do see that SRI had some rocks in a previous flight, doing some research; is that the game plan? A few minutes of zero-G? Or is it intended as a thrill ride for adventurous people (like me, I admit)?
IMO even if Bezos think the New Sheppard program is not performing up to expectations. He can not halt the program without major loss of face. So he will press on without disclosing how much it cost him.
Long term goal for BO is to be still in business after other launch providers faded away from under-capitalization and/or technical huddles. Profitable return on investment is not a priority.
There could be a future that you can only picked either BO or SX as you choice of US launch providers.
Remember, Jeff Bezos has much deeper pockets. He only spent a mere $500 million of his $59 billion net worth on it.
Also he won’t stop it because he has been driven to move humans into space since he was inspired by Dr. Gerald O’Neill.
http://www.miamiherald.com/…
“When Jeffrey Preston Bezos graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High in 1982, he had big plans to change the world.
The valedictorian, National Merit Scholar and Silver Knight award winner for science told the Miami Herald he wanted to “build space hotels, amusement parks, yachts and colonies for two or three million people orbiting around the earth.””
That is why Jeff Bezos went to Princeton University to earn dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Yes, he is not only a billionaire, but also an engineer, part of the family tradition. His grandfather was with the old AEC and his stepfather an engineer for Exxon. Keep that in mind when trying to understand Blue Origins approach.
Amazon was just taking advantage of a business opportunity when it showed itself to make the money he needed. Amazon is just his day job to make the money he needs for his passion, space settlement. 🙂
So he is just as focused as Elon Musk. He just isn’t as interested in PR or hanging out with space advocate groups who just talk and don’t do anything.
Suborbital tourism plus I thought I read somewhere that they have some sort of contract with NASA to fly experiments. What they have right now is a largish reusable suborbital rocket with a reusable capsule on top.
Later, of course, they want to make a two stage to orbit launch vehicle, presumably fully reusable. But even if that takes some time, they are working on BE-4 for ULA’s Vulcan. Considering what Aerojet Rocketdyne charges for engines, I think they’ll have a long relationship with ULA.
“Suborbital tourism” yes.. just this. You can even hear how it’s the focus in the launch commentary
Simple. The long run game for Blue Origins is to use the New Shepard as their second stage from their TSTO system. That is why they are building the BE-4 engine, to power their reusable booster.
Their goal is the same as SpaceX. They are just more systematic about it and approaching if for the other direction. But then Blue Origins is not about rushing off to Mars. Its about industrializing the Cislunar system.
Whereas Elon Musk’s muse was Dr. Robert Zubrin, Jeff Bezo’s muse was Dr. Gerald O’Neill and the DC-X team, many of which he hired for Blue Origins.
“what is the long game for BO?”
I don’t think anyone except for Bezos and a few of his top people know. As in all private companies, their business plans that includes proprietary, schedule, limitations, actual business plan (not fluffy stuff for websites), etc. are all kept under wraps. Rest of us are simply spectators. But with all that in mind I think Tom Matula summed it up best, this is part of orbital launch vehicle (the rest we will have to see when they release it).
I like the industrializing the cislunar system rather than rushing off to Mars.
Incidently I attended a AIAA banquet at Hiller Museum last Friday. Bruce Pittman said unlike previous visionaries, these space visionaries like Bezos and Musk have money they earned elsewhere and bringing to space development. Pittman said when Bezos and Musk were competing for Pad 39A, Musk said something about referring to unicorns (I didn’t get the whole quote) which appears to fire up more of Bezos ambitions. This also answered a question I’ve asked why this kind of development didn’t happen 20 years ago, there wasn’t billionaires willing to spend billions on spaceflight. And for govt there was no political reason for major space program spending.
They get to develop the second stage engine for their orbital rocket, develop their capsule, develop landing techniques for both rocket and capsule, and open up a suborbital market with ~4-5 minutes of a high quality microgravity environment, for which there is both research and tourism interest.
Thanks everyone for speculating on the BO long game. It still doesn’t make sense: if the idea is to build a multi-stage rocket, then why not just build the damn rocket? (that’s what Mr. Musk would say, I imagine).
For all his supposed engineering chops looks like the non-engineer figured out a more direct critical path. He’s making money with his launches; he figured out how to build a space company using OPM; he knows that sub-orbital tourism is a silly lark that will be nothing but a footnote once reusable rockets are the norm; and figured that sub-orbital is not on the critical path regardless of low-volume research interest.
Industrialization of space will require a lot of gear. So far, Mr. Bezos might have plans, but he’s not really in the race.
So many start ups have failed over the years trying to make one huge single leap from paper to an operational system. The space shuttle arguably did this successfully, since it flew for many years, but I’d argue it failed miserably at reducing launch costs.
Incremental design, test, and flight is key to reducing long term costs of a reusable launch system, IMHO. Blue Origin has developed the smaller stage required, but many of the lessons learned can now be incorporated into the design of their newer, bigger, engine and new first stage.
It’s a different approach to the problem, but it appears to be a quite valid approach.
We are in a new age and the comparison to old failed companies fails. The comparison nowadays is to SX.
Agreed, but remember that SpaceX survived partly by becoming one of the winning commercial cargo suppliers for NASA. Commercial cargo is a fluke caused by relations with Russia degrading coupled with the lack of progress first on Ares I/CEV and later on SLS/Orion. In other words, SpaceX just so happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Bottom line, if India’s government isn’t supportive of an Indian commercial startup, it will fail. I could be wrong, but I don’t see any incentive for any large government bureaucracy to support a commercial startup which could eventually destroy a large part of that same bureaucracy.
That’s an interesting question and in the case of India I’d say that it’s not quite correct. I’ve spent some time in India and can say that the Indians are absolutely manic about growing the economy and about Buy India.
“a feat never achieved to date by any other rocket”
*cough* DC-X *cough*
Well you can also count Armadillo’s & Marsten’s many VTVL vehicles. However AFAIK none of them got anywhere close to reaching the 100 km altitude (the Karman line).
I’m a huge fan of DC-X and it did fly repeatedly, with little to no maintenance between flights. But, it didn’t fly all that high (maximum of 10,300 ft) and never flew with a payload since it was an X-vehicle. What Blue Origin has here is arguably more capable.
In other words, you can make just about anything a “first” if you add enough qualifiers. So I agree that we need more qualifiers when “firsts” are reported.
I guess I should answer some of these questions. Why New Shepard? Well first of all, It’s a vehicle that will eventually launch Space Tourists to suborbital space. Right now, they are launching science micro gravity payloads. This flight launched two experimental payloads and they one before that two also. The first manned test flight is scheduled for next year and then Space Tourism will start after that. New Shepard is also for BO technologies leading eventually to an orbital class vehicle.