Blue Origin Reveals Blue Moon

1. I would guess that he will be announcing a starting date for tourist flights, presumably this year, and that they will soon begin taking reservations. If he does announce that then I would expect he will also finally reveal the price. He may also reveal some more details on plans for New Glenn, as well as eventual future plans for New Armstrong, presumably related to his cryptic Shackleton post two weeks ago. Some of the speculation being that it refers to a base at Shackleton crater.

   Clues as to why I think he will announce the start of tourist flights:

   Since last year they have been pretty steady with estimates of starting in 2019.

   In February Bezos said “This is the first time that I’ve ever been saying ‘this year.'”

   A week ago they completed another successful test flight of their capsule, again carrying scientific payloads as on the last flight. Although the test flight occurred a week after the tweet of the photo of Endurance with a May 9th date, it’s possible that they were expecting the flight to be successful and that it was planned as the final test flight prior to the start of tourist flights.

   Edit – to be more clear I should have said last week’s flight might have been the final test flight without astronauts, as I doubt if there will be any tourists on the first flight. I would think there will probably will be at least two crewed test flights but still time in theory for tourist flights to start by the end of the year.

   1. This, plus I wouldn’t be surprised if he offers the reporters there a free ride on it (given the limitations on who can attend from the media).

      It definitely would be nice if we got an update on New Glenn.

      1. But New Glenn and Vulcan aren’t going anywhere until BE-4 escapes development hell, with their maiden launches likely sliding right. That poses a big risk for the new USAF contracts.

         1. Blue Origin satisfies the most important contract requirement, they have a facility in Huntsville, so they will probably get it. SpaceX, not being in Huntsville, is only in the running because they actually have a flying rocket.

   2. It was mentioned that the last flight used a human-rated capsule they named the “First Step” and it performed perfectly from all reports. Given that it’s likely the next flight will have a crew, but they may want to do one more flight with a crew rated booster. A New Glenn update would be nice, and perhaps one on Blue Moon. But we shall see.

      1. Although I’m not exactly sure exactly what the “crew” will do since the capsule is apparently fully automated with no controls for a pilot. Not that an astronaut on any capsule actually flies it to and from space, but if it’s really fully automated then a crewmember on New Shepard will essentially be filling the role of a flight attendant.

         1. That is true enough for the suborbital version, but they will have more to do on the orbital version.

            1. Yes probably so although it could also be that we are thinking traditionally. Bezos may intend to make even his orbital spacecraft fully automated. We could be right back to the debates in the late 1950’s about whether spacecraft needed a pilot. In hindsight yes they did, but that was using 1960’s and 1970’s technology. The discussion may arrive at a different answer this time, at least for some spacecraft.

            2. Perhaps, but the events of the B737 Max might argue for the need for the ability to over ride it.

            3. Well but then again the MCAS system was created to give the Max the same “feel” to pilots as the NG, a computer wouldn’t have needed it. Not disagreeing with your point as there are other examples that back up your point at least with existing aircraft. But there is a huge complexity and dynamics of airline flying with weather and traffic adding to the already.complex and almost infinitely variable dynamics of maneuvering 100 tons of mass through the air using mainly airflow for control.

               Obviously spaceflight is complicated also, but based on years of successful Progress, Dragon, ATV etc cargo missions I think the case can be made for unpiloted passenger flights to orbit, with any needed additional controlling for mission management or off-nominal situations being handled from the ground as with existing unpiloted spacecraft. Now a computer can’t stick chewing gum in an airleak or connect cube shaped carbon dioxide canisters to cylindrical ones, so there will probably always be trained crewmembers on board, they just won’t need to be pilots.

            4. I think they will always want to fly with one of their employees onboard (and the FAA may insist on it), simply to keep the passengers from doing something stupid and to respond to emergencies like an on-pad abort. The same person could also deal with the sort of in-flight emergencies. Technically, that would make him or her a flight engineer not a pilot.

            5. That’s a benefits and risks trade. On a 737 MAX carries 175 to 200 passengers. Replacing the pilot and copilot with a computer would not increase the aircraft’s capabilities significantly. Certainly not to justify the added risk. (Note that the rest of the crew doesn’t count, since they’re set at a certain number per passenger. They’re there to make sure the passengers fasten their seat belts and, if necessary, evacuate the aircraft without anyone getting himself or someone else killed.)

               A contrast would be the Apollo lunar lander. There was quite a bit of debate about having the copilot’s flying experience. (Well, formally, the lander pilot, since the commander was actually the pilot.) During the early missions, he was an astronaut with military test pilot experience. But on later missions, having a copilot taking up half the vehicle’s capacity was criticized. Specifically, that they should be flying astronaut-scientists (much less flying experience) instead. That is what they eventually did, but not until the last mission.

            6. After astronaut selection Schmitt was sent off for a year of pilot training with the Air Force where he was qualified to fly jet aircraft. But agreed I don’t think there was any intention of having him fly the LM but he could in all other aspects perform as copilot.

         2. Possibly the same thing Beth Moses did on last February’s SpaceShipTwo. She wasn’t flying and her job titles are chief astronaut instructor and interiors program manager. If that means teaching rich tourists what they can, should and shouldn’t do in flight, flying would be valuable training. Presumably Blue Origin will want someone with a similar job.

            1. Shuttle mission specialists, even though they would never be called upon to fly the shuttle, had to spend a certain number of hours riding in high performance aircraft as part of spaceflight readiness training (SFRT). The requirement was satisfied by riding in the back seat of the T38’s flown by the pilot astronauts as they travelled between NASA and manufacturer centers. It was felt that just being in the cockpit of a high performance aircraft was a good analog for the spaceflight environment.

               So I could see that definitely crew members will be given some similar flight experience even if not actually flying experiece.They may not need to ride in high performance supersonic aircraft though, a subsonic jet environment might suffice.

            2. I’m not sure if flight time actually matters. I’ve been re-reading some histories of the Vostok, Mercury, Voskhod and Gemini missions. It occurs to me that the important part of “test pilot” was actually “test” not “pilot.” That is, the experience those astronauts had with technically complex, experimental systems, having them fail in life-threatening ways, and having to diagnose and solve (or stabilize or otherwise deal with) those problems rapidly. Those technically complex, experimental systems happened to be aircraft. But that fact may not be too relevant. I’m pretty sure a million hours as a passenger on a jet would not teach the necessary skills. Nor would thousands of hours of piloting an operational aircraft on routine flights.

         3. Which is to say, not piloting the craft but saving the backsides of the passengers when it gets into trouble.

            1. Yes, you will need a trained crew of some sort for emergencies unless it is cargo only.

   3. I certainly hope that Blue Origin has learned the free lesson that SpaceX recently handed out, that successful test flights do not necessarily mean that your craft is ready to carry human cargo.

      1. Since the accident occured as part of a test I’m not sure what lesson they needed to learn other than whatever the technical/manufacturing/procedural issue it turns out to be.

      2. When did SpaceX learn that? Remember, we do not have any solid data on the explosion during a SuperDraco test. It could have been ground issues. It could have been something related to reuse (i.e. something which would not be relevant to a new Dragon 2. It could have been a whole lot of things. It’s important not to learn the wrong lessons, so I wouldn’t recommend Blue Origin start studying before the incident investigation report is out.

         1. Rather than specific technical issues, I was thinking more of the broad lesson to, as one Han Solo put it, not ‘get cocky’. Thus far, BO has taken a very conservative path. However, the splashy nature of this event and Bezos’s recent infatuation with Hollywood and publicity could signal a ratcheting down of that conservatism in ways that may bite them down the road.

            1. Yes the presentation yesterday really does lead to a lot of rethinking about what Bezos is up to. Until now I have been intrigued by the conservatism that you mentioned, the idea of just doing it right and taking as long as it needs regardless of what anyone else is doing, because you have enough money to do it that way. I have been interested to see how far that approach will take them. Considering that it’s the richest person in the world doing this it seems like the perfect experiment.

               And for that reason I have been ignoring the naysayers who chide Bezos for the lack of progress. But I really expected yesterday that he would be announcing the starting date for tourist flights because, well they really have been working on that for a long, long time and the indications were that they are getting really close, and anyway why hold a big press conference if you don’t have something tangible to announce? I did expect the grandiose plans to be a part of the presentation since it would be his first time laying out his vision. But I just assumed that when putting out things that presumptuous that you would want maximum credibility, and would thus tie the big ambitious plans to a significant announcement of current progress, after all that’s part of what the presentation was billed as, “an update on our progress”.

               So when he didn’t announce when tourists will start flying and how much they will pay, or even when the first crewed test flights will start (other than the vague “this year”), I immediately recalibrated that tourist flights must still be somewhat far away or he would have said more about it. I thought okay fine, take your time, do it right, we look forward to seeing it whenever it happens.

               But then to your point, it was unsettling to hear him say “We’re going to be flying humans using the New Shepard this year”. I know he’s said that before, but it’s now nearly halfway through the year and no specifics mentioned of when that might happen. Or how long after that tourists might be flying.

               Then another surprise when he makes this claim about New Glenn “We’ll fly it in 2021 for the first time.”

               Really Jeff, you know that’s year after next right? You haven’t even launched one of your employees over the Karman line yet.

               Like you I wonder now if there is a crack forming in the conservatism and he is starting to look at the guy in the next lane and it’s affecting at least his public statements, and who knows maybe also the internal pressures on the team.

               The absolute stunner though was when he brought up the administration’s 2024 Moon goal and said “We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago.”

               Game over. Insert new coin. With that statement he immediately reduced himself in my book to Richard Branson saying he will be providing point-to-point travel with his spaceships. I know Bezos is not an engineer, but it’s clear now that he either believes what he wants or whatever his people are telling him.

               Yes Musk can certainly overpromise on schedule, but you never get the feeling that he doesn’t know what he is talking about or what his company is capable of. Bezos came across as really clueless, in my opinion. Maybe others still have confidence, I’m not trying to discourage anyone, yes they have demonstrated some capability, but you would hope so after spending years and billions of dollars. I just feel like I am starting to see how this experiment is going to turn out.

            2. I think you may have made a typo:

               “Then another surprise when he makes this claim about New Glenn “We’ll fly it in 2021 for the first time.”
               Really Jeff, you know that’s next year right?”

               2021 is actually two years from now (1.64 to 2.64, if you want to get technical…) But, honestly, if they have been seriously working on Blue Moon for three years, they can probably fly one by 2024. Actually, five years for an unmanned version isn’t unreasonable, and that would be 2021 or 2022. Regardless of what you think of the 2024 schedule, a three year head start over the competition is definitely significant.

            3. Typo thanks. Yes those schedules in theory are possible if everything goes right (Elon admits that’s what he bases overoptimistic schedules on). And out of character for Blue Origin’s stated philosophy

            4. I didn’t know Blue Origin had a stated philosophy. Various press statements imply what you suggest, but we know very little about what goes on inside the company. Their internal schedules may have been much more aggressive or optimistic. But I agree that basing a schedule on everything working isn’t realistic. When I said they could be making the first robotic landings by 2022, I wasn’t assuming that. It’s about what I’d expect for a project of this complexity and the usual bugs, glitches and mistakes that will probably come up. Not a list, since I obviously don’t know enough to make one. But based on how long it’s taken in the past to develop robotic spacecraft. At the system and subsystem level, they don’t seem to be doing any new technology development. All the pieces or very similar pieces exist, and don’t need to be invented.

            5. Gradatim Ferociter – Step by step, ferociously. And yes also inferred from how they have been proceeding, from the little we are able to observe.

            6. The primary takeaway for me was this: a simple way to think about what we are collectively [sorry, Dr. M.] doing in space. A way to think about it in a more global way.

               Which was obvious to many here, including me, but probably came as news to many. Relating the need for infrastructure in terms of how Amazon is built on existing facilities brings it home.

            7. Yes as far as a presentation about what we (the human race) should be doing in space it was fine and lots of good points. And also that as Bill Gates has done with vaccinations, Bezos wants to use his wealth, or at least a good part of it to contribute to advancing technology towards those long term goals. And I am supportive of him on that. I just have now decided to tune out any of his rhetoric and will be interested only in what I see demonstrated, not what they are only talking about or showing mockups of. I know it’s tempting to look at lunar lander mockups and get excited, but I will wait for the first test flights of the lander in Earth orbit to start getting excited.

               I guess it’s just a gut reaction but I was really miffed about his “we can help NASA reach their goal of getting astronauts to the Moon by 2024 because we have already been working on it” (my paraphrase). Because even if they could get their lander completed by then, which I think is optimistic even if they have already started on it because not only will orbital test flights be required but also test landings on the Moon, and then integrated tests with an ascent module which isn’t even being designed yet, at least not one that will work with Blue Moon. Not to mention everything else needed to get a landing accomplished by 2024. This isn’t the JFK early sixties with the commensurate budgets willingly (for the most part) handed over by congress. It’s Trump and Pence wishful thinking in 2019.

               And as I mentioned to fcrary the statements were out of character for Blue Origin and what at least was believed to be a strategy of going at a steady, methodical, don’t waste time but take however long it takes pace. And now suddenly he’s caught up in 2024 hoopla and showboating. Yes Musk can get pretty out there himself at times, but he also has quite a bit more track record and technical knowledge to support his claims.

            8. To be fair, Mr. Bezos didn’t say Blue Origin could get people to the Moon by 2024. He said they could _help_ NASA do so. I think they could. And from the way things look, NASA’s going to need all the help they can get. He described a very capable lunar descent and landing stage, which sounds like it’s already at what NASA would call Key Decision Point C. (Preliminary design work complete and reviewer, and ready to go from working out the concept to actually building and testing.)

               I think Blue Origin could realistically have flight articles built ready for launch within three years. possibly less. Since it can be used for robotic payloads, there isn’t any need for orbital tests. They can go directly to landings. If something goes wrong, some scientists will be disappointed and some graduate students will need eight instead of six years to finish their PhD. That’s a massive improvement over the development of the Apollo landers, where only minimal flight tests were possible without people onboard.

            9. “To be fair, Mr. Bezos didn’t say Blue Origin could get people to the Moon by 2024”.

               Neither did I

               “He said they could _help_ NASA do so.”

               Which is what I said. And what I objected to. Sure he can help NASA make a feeble attempt at it but with current budgets and very little actually started, not to mention recent track record and demonstration of competence (by NASA not BO) I don’t know of anyone who thinks it’s possible, the consensus seems to be that it’s pretty much impossible or at least highly unlikely.

      3. One of the lessons being that if you push a system beyond its normal parameters it will bite you, just as was the case in the Challenger and Columbia Accidents.

         1. Yes, but another benefit of a good flight test program is learning how far you can push a system. Most are overdesigned to make sure they are good for the initially planned requirements. Then you fly it, test it, learn what the limits really are, and find out that you can push it a fair amount further than you originally planned for. Challenger and Columbia were the opposite. Inadequate testing, not paying attention to the data, and pushing the limits despite flight experience that they really going beyond the limits.

            1. Yes, one of the great advantages of reusability and inexpensive hardware is its practical to test and test again, both to learn those limits and improve on them. Just look at all the test data SpaceX has on both the Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon compared to the CST-100. Same with Blue Origins capsule system.

2. I am going to guess an announcement of tourist flights, but also a Moon landing/orbit attempt. Just the past two days BO career page listed 31 open positions from Advanced Concepts, as well two positions working on a “Blue Moon Lander”.

3. Meanwhile, down Texas way, the SLS Killer SpaceX is building is starting to look like a real Heinlein style Moon rocket should!

   https://twitter.com/NASASpa…

   1. I admit that when I look at this thing, I’m constantly reminded of the phrase “And now, for something completely different…” from a newscaster; Monty Python, I think.

      But truthfully it’s a terrifically wide gap in the approach: Elon vs. everyone else with those silly landers.

      1. Yes, industrial sized vehicles are needed if you are going to industrialize the Moon. BTW Elon Musk has send a tweet out that he will be doing a big update on Starship on June 20. Hopefully the orbital test vehicle will be mostly finished by then.

4. Reuters is saying it is a Moon announcement.

   1. Well, so Blue Origin wants to land on the Moon and build a space infrastructure, etc etc. Might have waited to announce all of that after getting at least one tourist above the Karman line first, but who am I to question the PR strategy of Jeff Bezos.

      Kind of wish now that they had found the Endurance, now that would have been a news story.

5. Well it looks like there is going to be a new Moon Race, between SpaceX and Blue Origin, which will basically make the NASA SLS/Orion/Gateway irrelevant.

   1. Right. But more than that- it’s a race to determine what the infrastructure will look like. Apollo-style landers, or landing spaceships?

      1. If Bezos is actually going to follow the Apollo-style LM – that would mean his Blue Moon lander would become a permanent resident of Luna! That is to say, unlike his other designs and despite having all that 21st Cent tech — Jeff’s BML is going to be an EXPENDABLE vehicle!

         OTOH, I think if might be easier to load the top of that thing with heavy / bulky cargo and building materials, then it might be to open up the Starship’s cargo-bay doors (if it even has such things) and deploy a big crane (cool as that might look). Plus…I’ll grant extra leniency in my critique, if it is Jeff’s plan to use the lander as additional building material in making “Shackleton (or Endurance) Base”

         1. He did say it was a hydrogen/oxygen engine and could be refueled if lunar ice were available. That could make Blue Moon an expendable vehicle in the early years, and later shifting to fully reusable once in situ propellent becomes available.

            That’s not a bad approach. It would avoid developing a new lander once in situ propellent is available, or the inefficiency implied by continuing to use one designed for reuse without in situ propellents. But would also be a gamble on the availability and exploitability of lunar ice.

            1. After a bit of searching, I know a bit more about where the ice is, but not much about the depth, and hence volume. Does anyone?

            2. The depth is a problem. The recent analysis of Moon Mineralogy Mapper data looks very promising, with 2-30% concentrations over sizable areas. But that instrument is only sensitive to the surface (top eight of an inch or so.) The instruments which can see deeper (e.g. radar) have lower resolution and have given more ambiguous results. If the ice is cold trapped, then that means it would be diffusing in from the surface to the subsurface, so the abundance would be higher at the surface.

               But how far it would diffuse in depends on a whole lot of things we don’t know. Someone could do a theoretical calculations of that (and someone almost certainly has…) But I wouldn’t have a whole lot of confidence in the results. It would depend on time, porosity, geothermal heat flux, etc.

               The horizontal distribution doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either, since there’s no obvious reason for ice to be trapped in some permanently shadowed regions and not others. But that’s exactly what they see.

               This really is something which will require going to many locations, on the surface, and digging. (I know someone who did a whole lot of that on Earth, and he once said PhD stands for “Post hole Digger.”) And that may require people on the surface. Our latest and so far only attempt at deep, planetary drilling (well, tunneling, I guess) is Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package on InSight. It’s stuck about one foot down out of a planned 16 feet (with 10 feet as a minimum to the intended measurements.)

            3. The explanation I saw in a recent article (don’t have the link at the moment) was the the lunar axis has changed slightly and some of the craters that are in permanent shadow now weren’t in the past. But there is indeed a lot we don’t know about the process simply because it is an alien world.

               There is also the interesting case of the Hydrogen signals in the lunar highlands. One strong signal is near the Apollo 15 landing site. Interesting enough in the 1970’s they did find some water in s sample from Apollo 15, but dismissed it as contamination from Earth some how. Like the old Viking data it might be useful to revisit that research based on current knowledge.

            4. I’ve seen the idea about shifts in obliquity. I had the impression is was more changes in the plane of the Moon’s orbit rather than the rotation axis, but either work. But that also says something about the influx of comets (presuming that’s where the water came from), and that the ice is old. Otherwise there would be more recent ice deposited in the new, permanently shadowed craters. You’d need to invoke a much higher cometary flux prior to the change in obliquity.

               Personally, I’m just willing to invoke my usual explanation. The Moon is a real world. Real geology is complicated and a result of many things acting in combination. I’d actually be surprised if one simple theory did a good job of explaining where the ice was.

               As for the Apollo 15 sample, I thought that was water down at the tenth of a percent level. That could easily be very slightly hydrated minerals. You’d need to squeeze a whole lot of rocks pretty hard to get a significant amount of water out of that.

            5. One would think that some sort of bespoke rover landed at the pole would be the first thing on the list.

            6. Well, we are talking about permanently shadowed regions, so a robotic lander/rover wouldn’t be using solar power. Telecommunications with Earth would be also problematic, but not hopeless. The Earth’s elevation varies more than the Sun’s, so you could probably manage something. (I’m thinking of the sort of robotic missions we could fly today, not one with all sorts of added infrastructure like microwave power transmission from a solar array on the crater wall.)

               A sample return from the South Pole–Aitken basin has been on the list of potential New Frontiers missions for fifteen years, but it’s never been selected and would be landing in sunlight, not a permanently shadowed region. There a CubeSats in development to do neutron spectroscopy from very low altitudes (5 km). That does sound to greater depths and the low altitude would give good resolution. But it’s one of the secondary payloads on SLS EM-1, so when it will launch is a matter of opinion.

               Other than that, a robotic precursor for human missions is sort of an odd thing. Planetary scientists don’t like the idea of funding them out of their part of NASA’s budget. Scientific studies of the Moon are fine, but we’re talking about prospecting for resources. The lunar scientists are more interested, but others get cranky and would rather spend the money on Mars, Venus, asteroid, or whatever missions. At the same time, the human spaceflight side of NASA doesn’t seem to enthusiastic about robotic missions, unless it directly feeds into planned human mission. Plans for in situ resources are too far down the road and too nebulous for that.

   2. Wait, how does Blue plan to get astronauts to the Blue Moon? And how will the crew return to Earth? A three-stage New Glenn should be able to get Blue Moon to the Gateway. Astronauts will have to arrive by other means and transfer to Blue Moon there, no?

      And is NASA ever going to allow astronauts to launch aboard a Starship, another giant launch vehicle with no escape system? That seems extraordinarily unlikely to me. They’ll probably have to transfer to Starship from another vehicle as well, either in LEO or at Gateway.

      1. I may be reading too much into the words, but… Mr. Pence or Mr. Bridenstine have not actually said anything about landing NASA astronauts on the Moon by 2024. They specified American astronauts, not NASA astronauts. I believe landing American astronauts employed by a private company would achieve the stated goal. So NASA’s willingness to put _their_ astronauts on New Glenn (or Armstrong) or Starship may not be relevant.

6. Jeffie’s big reveal of the ” Blue Moon ” lunar lander sure looks a lot like the bottom half of Apollo’s LEM. The Descent Stage only , stripped down but very nearly the same size and configuration. Maybe Bezos found an old set of Grumman LEM blueprints on eBay…

   1. Using a hydrogen/oxygen engine is a big difference. That’s also taking a risk that lunar ice will be fairly easy to extract, crack and use for in situ refueling.

      1. Yes, otherwise you will need to ship the Hydrogen from Earth and mix it with LOX from the regolith. But how easy it will be to produce LOX is also an unknown. The theory is there, but not the practical engineering.

         1. I don’t think I can patent the idea, so I’ll mention it. Shipping hydrogen, as such, would be a a real pain. Cryogenic temperatures, boil off on long trips (e.g. if electric propulsion is used for cargo), low density even when liquid, etc.

            I’d suggest shipping polypropylene. It’s 14% by mass hydrogen (the highest for anything solid at room temperature.) Is, as I just said, solid at room temperature, has a nice, high density a hair over 0.8 g/cm^3 and is also useful for graded-Z radiation shielding. Methane would get you 20% hydrogen by mass, but isn’t as easy to transport.

            That would mean shipping a sizable amount of carbon as well as the hydrogen needed for fuel. But the Moon is carbon poor (to put it mildly) and carbon is a necessary part of lots of useful chemicals.

            1. Yes, that would be a good option. Another one is shipping Ammonia, which gets you Nitrogen as a by product with many uses. If nothing else you will need it to mix with LOX for use in lunar habitats.

            2. You need nitrogen for all sorts of things, and that’s also something lacking on the Moon. As well as a buffer gas in the habitats, plants need nitrogen or nitrogen-bearing fertilizer. I assume a sustainable presence means not shipping all the food up, recycling isn’t 100% efficient, and that means a need for carbon and nitrogen. I can see some economic opportunities here. I suspect they’d end up shipping hydrogen in the form of ammonia, polypropylene and probably a few other things. You’d balance the manifest to deliver the needed mix of C, N, and whatever else.

            3. That is why I would be far more excited if they found frozen Ammonia at the poles instead of water, as the lunar regolith could serve as a source for LOX.

            4. Starship refuelled in a high elliptical orbit can do TLI, land and return to Earth without refuelling. No need to take carbon for ISRU.

            5. Even if it could (and I’ll wait and see), why would you want to? If in situ propellents are available on the Moon, I think it would be very inefficient to launch propellent from Earth instead.

            6. Apparently metal borohydrides have up to 18.5% hydrogen by weight:

               https://www.sciencedirect.c…

               And possibly easier to get the hydrogen out? Not a material scientist, so just uninformed speculation. Of course no carbon then.

   2. Why reinvent the wheel? Those Apollo engineers were pretty good ! And all without 3D CAD or much CFD. It does look like a lot of RCS thrusters on the bottom of the descent stage capable of thrusting along the main axis of the vehicle. I wonder if this is to lessen the throttling requirements (I don’t think BO uses pintle injectors)?

      1. It might help, but you’d want RCS thrusters on the bottom and pointed down. Actually, on the top and pointed up as well. That’s where they’d need to be, if you want to tilt or level the deck, while firing the thrusters away from the spacecraft. The Apollo lander arrangement had them on modules sticking out the the sides, and probably had some plume impingement anyway.

         1. Yeah the LEM had two firing on each axis. If I look at the picture, it looks like they have two additional angled thrusters in the verticlal direction. Maybe it is for additional thrust at the low end of their throttling range or maybe it’s artistic license.! The LEM used a translating pintle to control effective injection area and avoid chug instabilities during descent. I also think the AF had a demonstration program ( XLR 129?) Where the turned off a portion of their coax elements to extend throttling range. There were also some tests with the RL 10 where they ran into instabilities at the low end of their test range. It will be interesting to see what BO comes up with.

   3. Form, meet function.

7. Even with this announcement, I don’t think there will be quite as much competition between Blue Origin and SpaceX as people think. I don’t think Musk cares all that much about the moon, except maybe if his company was contracted by the government to provide launch services for a lunar mission. Musk famously has Mars in his sights. Musk is also focused on Starlink right now. Blue Origin supposedly has a competitor to that, but it is nowhere near as far along in development.

   1. Musk has said that SpaceX has plans for the Moon with the StarShip, even released concepts etc.

   2. And pass up all that low hanging fruit? 100 passengers for a lunar fly by .. lunar landings? There is billions there he is going to grab up ..

8. Pretty ambitious for a company that hasn’t gotten to orbit yet, or fired any of its big engines.

   1. What? In January Blue Origin said they’d fired BE-4 at 70% thrust for 200 seconds.

      1. Glad to hear this! Is there any more details on BE-4 testing & qualification? Evidently, Methane/LOX is the way of the future, with ULA Vulcan and BO’s own rocket as the anchor customers, the future is very bright. I wonder how far along is SpaceX’s metha/lox engine for their next generation launcher. I have seen plans for a liquefaction plant to be built in Cocoa, FL (Port St John) to produce liquid natural gas (LNG). I presume, the main purpose of this plant is to provide fuel for these new rockets. As a by product, the plant gets to establish a presence in LNG production and will ship it out on barges or rail to other customers.

9. Elon Musk has responded…

   https://www.cnbc.com/2019/0…

   Elon Musk pokes fun at Jeff Bezos’ new moon lander spacecraft with lewd tweet
   by Arjun Kharpal

   Looks like we have a Moon race!

10. Bezos gets the big picture.

11. At least the moon has entered discussion and hardware is supposably being constructed. Unlike Mars landers are always 20 years into the future part of concept artwork. Moon being just three days away means if set it as a goal, then lunar lander gotta be built now (putting the moon 20 years into the future is ridiculous).

    This is big news for rest of us not privy to Bezo’s development which has been in shroud of secrecy. Kind of like A-12/SR-71 that was a major program with real hardware and general public had no idea it existed.

    I’ve not studied the numbers (mass, fuel, thrust, Rocket Eqn), it seems too good to be true. Because timelines are much shorter than 20 years, we’ll see if this becomes a game changer like the 747 or a footnote in history like the Bristol_Brabazon.

    1. I haven’t studied the numbers because I haven’t seen any. At least not enough of them to plug into the rocket equation, make reasonable guesses about delta v and mission profiles, etc. Direct landing with 4500 kg (or whatever) of payload isn’t insane. But I don’t know what the dry mass of the vehicle (non-payload mass) is, so I couldn’t guess what the initial mass in low Earth orbit would be. It might be a whole lot, and it might require drop tanks (for on orbit maneuvering, you wouldn’t need full staging, but a drop tank would still be expended.) There’s no good way to tell at this point.

    2. “Unlike Mars landers are always 20 years into the future ” NASA has used landers for Mars already to drop hardware. Why would NASA need to build a human lander for Mars and absolutely no way to get it or humans there?

       1. I meant humans to Mars which is always 20 years into the future. i.e. in 1960s we will have a man on Mars in the 80s. These days we will have humans on Mars in 2030s (well that will have be updated soon as we are at end of this decade). You also mention getting a lander there, transit vehicle, which is another piece that is always two decades away.

          Now the moon being much closer, whoever says there going there needs to present hardware very soon or they are simply vaporware.

    3. Bezos was pretty specific about the numbers for the Blue Moon lander during his presentation. I was pleasantly surprised at both the candor and the impressive claims about the Blue Moon.

       BE-7 engine: LH2+LOX, 10,000 lbf trust, 453 seconds ISP, deep throttling

       Blue Moon lander: BE-7 engine, hydrogen fuel cell power 2.3 kilowatts, fueled mass 33,000 pounds, dry mass less than 7,000 pounds, fits within 7 meter payload shroud of New Glenn launch vehicle

       From which we can infer a propellant load of 26,000 pounds. And that the payload mass is additional to the 15 tonnes mass of the fueled lander.

       We can also infer from the payload claim of 3.6 metric tons, that Blue Moon directly launches to the Moon by the New Glenn launch Vehicle. So if a fully fueled Blue Moon departed from Gateway in Lunar NRHO, that a payload of 9 tonnes could be landed at the lunar south pole.

       Blue Origin is an as advantageous a position for the 2024 NASA lunar lander contract, as was Grumman in 1962 for the Apollo Lunar Excursion Vehicle contract, because of all the detailed development work that Blue Origin has been doing for the last couple years.

       1. Ok. With those numbers, I get about 4.4 to 4.5 km/s of delta-v. That would get it from LEO to Gateway, or from Gateway to the lunar surface. New Glenn could not, however, get that fully fueled vehicle (15 tonnes) to Gateway on its own. Especially not with 3.6 tonnes of cargo added on. It’s supposed to get about 13 tonnes to a geostationary transfer orbit. So some refueling at Gateway will be required. Possibly cargo and passenger transfer as well.

          That’s along the lines of NASA plans for the human landings. But for robotic precursors, I don’t think it fits well. It looks like they could do a direct landing for robotic precursors, although it would require a reduced payload. I get 3.2 tonnes, and that’s without margin or propellent reserves. Still, with the sort of margin and reserves they ought to carry at this point in development, that’s perhaps a tonne and a half. That’s not too shabby.

          1. How could Bezos have made such a boneheaded error about the actual payload of his Blue Moon lander?

             Could it possibly have anything to do with the glaringly obvious contradiction of the payload numbers promoted for the New Glenn launch vehicle? 45 MT for LEO vs 13 MT for GTO?

             1. I’m not sure I see any errors in the Blue Moon payload. Maybe some salesmanship, but nothing more. I believe Mr. Bezos said Blue Moon could be lunched on a New Glenn and go directly to the lunar surface. I believe he said it could land three and a half tonnes. But did he actually say it could do both at the same time? Look at the wording, grammar and syntax very, very carefully. Those subtitles are what keep many people in advertising out of jail. (And, ignoring them can get you in trouble with the SEC, as Mr. Musk may or may not have learned.)

                I also don’t see any contradiction in the New Glenn payload numbers. Getting onto a geostationary transfer orbit from low Earth orbit takes about 2.3 km/s. A factor of three or so difference in delivered payload is pretty typical.

                Now that you mention it, the lower initial, direct to the surface payload makes sense. With one design and one vehicle (well, model), Blue Origins gets something which can (1) deliver robotic payloads which NASA wants to send as soon as practical, (2) support human landings in the way NASA wants, soon and expending the descent stage and (3) serve as a fully reusable lander for a “sustainable” presence, once in situ propellent is available. Having one design which can serve all three roles is actually a clever approach. In fact, he might even be able to offer it (with in situ fueling) as a suborbital, ballistic hopper from a base (propellent depot) to remote locations and back.

                He’s a serious risk on the third application, since it isn’t clear if and when lunar water will be available. And for the robotic missions, he may get undercut by companies providing smaller landers for smaller payloads. Being able to land four rovers at a time is only marketable if customers want to land at the same location. Arianespace ran into that with their Ariane 5, since it’s most cost-effective when launching two satellites at a time.

12. Blue Origin’s factory complex at Kennedy Space Center is impressive to say the least, a massive factory, a smaller facility that appears to be for payload processing, and a new vertical test building, among others. Blue will be building fiber wound boosters for the Glenn, and has acquired one of the largest fiber winding machines in the world. I realize SpaceX has reasons for going with welded steel, but the Glenn booster is not entering at orbital velocity and will not experience as much heating. Apparently they will recover the booster several hundred miles offshore. SpaceX will face real competition but perhaps they can both help expand the market.

    1. Yeah, I took a look online before this event and their Merritt Island facility is one seriously impressive building. If looks are any indication, they’ll give SpaceX a run for the money. Hope as you say they’ll expand the market.

13. A bit of a let down yesterday seeing the media tweets during the event. Somewhat less so today when I saw the replay. I’d be more excited/impressed if they had more to show than a mockup. When Bezos says they’ve been working on the lander for 3 years, I’m guessing that really means they’ve been working on the BE-7 for 3 years. If they’d been working on the lander structures and systems for that long I’d expect an actual prototype, not just a mockup. BE-4 to BE-7… wonder what BE-5 and BE-6 are for… maybe the rumored “New Armstrong”.

    1. The BE-5 and BE-6 might just be RCS thrusters.

       The New Armstrong will more likely have more BE-4s rather going through another development program for a larger liquid engine. There ain’t that many test stands for a 4.4 mN (1000000 lbf) plus liquid engine.

       Of course the only thing we know about the New Armstrong is it’s name and it is supposedly more capable than the New Glenn.

    2. I suspect they have been working on the whole lander for some time. I know their schedules and approach are different from NASA’s, but a NASA program wouldn’t start on hardware, except at the subsystem level, until after the Preliminary Design Review. Something like a full-up prototype, if they decided to build one, wouldn’t happen until later. For an eight year project (three years ago to a 2024 manned landing), I think three years of design and analysis before seriously bending metal sounds about right.

       1. My post wasn’t the most charitable, and clearly they’ve done at least some conceptual design work, and likely have looked at requirement flow downs, and done some trades. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a full up prototype with complete flight-like sub-systems, but perhaps something like the MSL scarecrow which I believe was in testing a year after PDR. I’ll also note that not all proposed NASA flight projects follow typical mission phasing… e.g., Resource Prospector I believe was Pre-Phase A and had already completed a rover prototype.

          Bezos specifically mentioned that the lander would be able to land on slopes (up to 15° if I recall) which makes me think they’ll have some sort of active suspension. Having a video or picture of that subsystem in testing would have given me greater confidence that they had started a concentrated effort developing the lander as a whole 3 years ago.

14. The other side of the story: Mr. Bezos treats Amazon employees much like the throwaway Chinamen who built much of the Transcontinental Rail; Amazon has paid zero federal tax in at least one recent year:

    https://itep.org/amazon-inc…

    For all of his talk about using the infrastructure, Mr. Bezos has really put a new spin on the word *use,* as in use but don’t pay.

15. Ok, I have a question.

    Maybe someone else here has already mentioned this.

    First Lockheed and now Blue Origin…why are we still designing LEMs that would clutter the Lunar surface with descent modules instead of reusing them? Am I missing something?

    1. The new LM Lunar lander is a monstrous 62 tonne wet single stage reusable lander with quad RL-10 engines. Altair Redux.

       The Blue Moon lander can be reuse if you can supplied new propellants. Secondary Blue Moon function is to be power generator with fuel cells using Hydrogen and Oxygen, possibly by ISRU process with Lunar Regolith.

       Due to NASA’s insistence on staging landings from the LOP-G Gateway in NRHO orbit. Takes more Delta-V than most reusable Lunar lander concepts can offered.

       1. There are two Lockheed designs that I read about. The new one for the accelerated boots-on-the-ground-before-Trump’s-second-term-ends uses a separate ascent module.

          1. The more recent lander concept is a LEM redux since IIRC it only have a 2 person crew with not much return payload. Suitable for a Flag & Footprint political stunt mission.

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