Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

62 replies on “What Blue Origin Did”

    1. NASA has been flying sounding rockets for more than half a century. Clearly they are useful. Now they can fly payloads and get them back and fly them again and again and again …

        2. Did it? I’m quite impressed with Blue Origin’s accomplishment, but let’s not overstate the case. Their rocket may be reusable, but it is quite gigantic and extremely complicated compared to most typical sounding rockets, so it’s not a no brainer that it is cheaper for any given mission. It also can barely clear the atmosphere as opposed to many sounding rockets which fly to altitudes of hundreds of miles, so it’s not clear either that it is even capable of performing many traditional sounding rocket missions.

          1. For upper atmosphere and ionospheric science, I actually like the altitude of these commercial suborbitals. 100 miles is pretty much in the middle of the “ignoreosphere”, the region of the atmosphere which everyone ignores because we have so little data. It’s too high for aircraft and balloons and too low for orbiting spacecraft. Since you get most of the observing time at apogee, an apogee around 100 miles is actually quite nice.

    2. It’s a low-end sounding rocket (4 min of free fall, as opposed to up to 20 in a traditional sounding rocket). It’s comparable to a ride in a Vomit Comet right now. I wonder how the cost compares.

      1. Well Zero G’s plane (I have flown on it twice) takes several dozen people (or fewer scientists and experiments) and costs crew time and fuel. Perhaps $100,000 or so per flight. From the prices quoted thus far for Blue Origin they may be cheaper and provide longer – and continuous microgravity exposure.

  2. Good comparison! And good for high-altitude tourism, if they can make the capsule ride reliably safe and reusable as well.

  3. Good for Bezos & Co! It isn’t orbital, but remains a great day for space access. Hmmm… …I wonder if it could fly with an upper stage instead of that fat Apollo capsule?

    1. A vacuum version of its engine will be the upper stage engine for Blue Origin’s 2 stage (with first stage reusable, second stage disposable) orbital rocket.

      1. It seems like it would be much cheaper to launch experiments on a suborbital rocket that didn’t have the costs, weight, systems, etc. for passengers added to it.

        This seems to me like another dead-end. Targets a very limited market (rich people who want an expensive afternoon ride), with the “can launch experiments” bolted on as further justification… but how economically?

        The Space Shuttle could also launch communications satellites… but that didn’t mean it made sense to use it for that.

        1. I can see where the capsule might be useful for short-exposure IR and UV astronomy if the telescope can be properly stabilized… and you get your instruments back each time. You can even use film!!!

          Mind you, the capsule needs a lot more work to make landing less of an impact; Some instruments will be far less fragile than human beings.

          (laughs as he imagines the release of an exceptionally high altitude balloon so we can watch some entertaining dynamics)

          Hmmmm…

          Talk about high altitude hang-gliding…

          1. That’s a niche filled by SOFIA which by the way was plagued by stabilization issues (and opening the doors at cruise on a 747 has certain challenges.)

          2. Somehow, 100km seems to be above more altitude than SOFIA can reach.

            I suspect someone with vision (ahem) will figure out what kind of special instruments can be flown at 100km AGL which is well above where either a U-2 or SR-71 can fly.

          3. People are already working on it. There was a session at the DPS (Division of planetary sciences) conference two years ago on exactly this subject. My main disappointment is that, at the time, the first Lynx flight was expected within a year, and that’s still true two years later.

          4. SOFIA is only good for infrared astronomy. For IR work, you mostly need to get above atmospheric water vapor, and the stratosphere is fine for that. For ultraviolet, even 100 miles is a little lower than I’d like. There are plenty of UV absorbers even at that altitude.

            Stability is less of a problem at 100 miles, since there is less atmosphere to produce torques. Also, there has been some nice, recent work on high-speed, actuated secondary mirrors and guide stars. That can correct for a relatively unstable observing platform.

        2. “t seems like it would be much cheaper to launch experiments on a suborbital rocket that didn’t have the costs, weight, systems, etc. for passengers added to it.”

          With the capacity for 6 passengers, New Shepard can already carry much larger payloads than most sounding rockets used for suborbital research (a market large enough that NASA has a program dedicated to expanding the sub-orbital provider base to try and catch up) – strip out things like life supporting and seating and it will be even more.

          1. Sure… but is there a NEED for that much capacity in a sounding rocket? Even with many payloads packed in, the thing will likely still be more expensive than a simple launcher… plus, with many payloads, you have many customers all dependent on everyone else performing on time, etc.

            It just doesn’t seem economically viable to me. Seems like another SpaceShip One, which I figured was a dead end from the beginning… UNLESS Blue Origin can add stages or scale this up to be an orbital launcher. But that’s essentially like building a whole new vehicle.

            I don’t see the “suborbital tourist flights as a starter” thing to be a smart strategy. This seems like an idea whose time passed a decade ago.

            But I’d be happy to be proven wrong (apart from the fact that I admittedly have a personal dislike of Bezos).

          2. Actually, launching many experiments on one flight could be an advantage for a suborbital launch. If you do it right, you would not have “many customers all dependent on everyone else performing on time.” If you can carry ten experiments per flight, and have contracts for 20, then you put the first ten delivered payloads on the first flight. You tell the other ten customers that, since they were late, they have to wait for the second launch.

        3. No, unlike SpaceShipTwo this is just a stepping stone on the way to orbit. Yes, they will look for revenue for this system, but it is not the end, merely the beginning. The first mail planes of the 1920’s were not much to brag about, but they started the road to the jumbo jets of the 1960s.

          1. That’s the same thing SpaceShip Two etc. were saying.
            This, being more conventional, is easier to see a path to orbit from, but it will take more to convince me they are on the right track.

  5. I wish Blue Origin would fill it up and fly it two more times before SpaceX’s return to flight 🙂

    Didn’t sound like Jeff was in any hurry to fly it again though?

    Re fly it till it pops!

    1. You would want to check out all the systems for wear and stress before flying again. Rapid turnaround will come later with experience.

  6. They also recreated SS1, but without crew and without yet reflying it with a short turn around. They’ll get there. Good Luck to them.

    1. Except that SS1 has turned out to be a dead end. They may get SS2 flying, but its not the route to orbit.

  7. Except that Shepard reached 187km and also flew 487km down range. It was a cool ride, to be sure. If SpaceX had done it, we’d all be hooting and hollering, so props to the BO crew for successfully peeling off this bit of flying into space. As DTARS notes, I’d like to see them run it repeatedly, but I expect that will come after a bunch of testing on the vehicle they recovered.

    A note of curiosity – the aft end of the booster was fairly scorched. The engine is hydrolox, so it shouldn’t be coking. If they burn their vehicle that much each time, how reusable will it be?

    2. My guess is that it’s just burnt paint. Scorch marks / soot can be seen up the side of the Falcon 9 in the landing attempt videos.

      Of course, the amount of refurbishment and the associated costs are the big unknown for these rockets.

  8. I’m pretty sure SpaceX will stick the next barge landing,

    Because Elon will be on the barge to catch it himself 🙂

  9. What is the best shape length VS Diameter for a reusable orbital launch vehicle? Falcon is a thin pencil to allow for highway transport.
    Blues little ship is short, but sub orbital.

    Is the best design a wide first stage like Shepard with a second stage that is part of the orbital ship shaped like the shuttle or dream chaser so the wings/lifting body can bring both the crew or cargo and the “second stage” safely back to earth?

    Seems to me that’s the solution to second stage recovery for earth to LEO vehicles

    1. You’re asking about the fineness ratio.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

      Von Braun once said the fineness ratio for big rockets should not exceed 10-1, that is, ten units long for 1 unit wide.

      You don’t want a rocket to be too long and skinny or else it becomes subject to bending from to aerodynamic forces during launch or from wind shear while in flight. (Note: airplanes can have higher fineness ratios because they use internal braces for structural support)

      The current Falcon 9 has a very high fineness ratio close to 20-1, which it can get away with because of the strength of modern alloys used in its construction.

      However, it’s close to the maximum I would be comfortable making a rocket, and I was actually surprised when they announced that among the upgrades for the Falcon 9 Full Thrust was stretching the fuel and oxidizer tanks. I highly doubt they will be able to stretch the tanks any more without making the rocket wider.

      2. Blues short little rocket seemed better and making that last minute adjustment without flopping over, but seems to have more weight in landing gear.
        Wondering if SpaceX might be considering any major changes in control fins?

        1. More important than the shape of the rocket is the thrust to weight ratio of the engine and the rocket. The Falcon 9’s engine produces more thrust than the (nearly) empty 1st stage weighs, so it can’t hover and adjust right before landing, but it looks like the New Shepard can hover and adjust.

          I think that during the Grasshopper and F9R development program, SpaceX focused on more accurate control of the landing descent / targeting of the landing site so that last second adjustments would not be necessary. I doubt that SpaceX will make any major adjustments to its grid fins, etc. since the existing components appear to have performed well, running out of hydraulic fluid and a stuck throttle valve aside. Really the only reason the 2nd barge landing attempt didn’t succeed was that stuck valve, which caused the rocket to have lateral movement that it wouldn’t normally have had.

          1. With 30 percent more power in the engines I wonder if the center engine can throttle as low as before, or do they now have more of an over power thrust problem than before???

          2. No, they’re the same Merlin 1D engines, they have just been running them at 80% throttle rather than 100% throttle until now. So they should have the same lowest throttle setting.

          3. Did you mean to say that it can’t hover because the engine produces more thrust than the mass of the empty stage? Isn’t the opposite true?

          4. No, to hover, you need to balance the thrust and weight. Too much thrust, and you’d slow down, stop, and start going back up. So you need to be able to throttle the engines way down.

            But I’m not sure how much of a problem that would be for a Falcon. If you land using only one of the nine engines, wouldn’t that give you 1/9th of the launch thrust, even without throttling the one engine down?

          6. To clarify, a single Merlin 1D engine at its lowest throttle setting (approximately 70% of its maximum thrust) produces an amount of thrust that exceeds the weight of the nearly empty first stage. So if a Falcon 9 rocket were to attempt to hover, it would fail to do so, instead it would begin flying upward again. In order to land, it must perform a maneuver called a “hover-slam” where its landing burn reduces its downward speed to 0 at the precise moment it reaches its landing pad.

            The New Shepard is a different story, it has a singe BE-3 engine that reportedly can throttle down to 18% of its maximum thrust, which is about half of the estimated weight of the New Shepard. Therefore the New Shepard can hover and then throttle down in order to land.

        2. Not just that, but look how the top of the rocket moves (yaws?) when the engine is re-lit. While BO may be touting a “perfect landing”, after watching this landing sequence several times, was it perfect, or seriously lucky? Did all of that movement indicate real control, or lack of control?

          Also DTARS, I wonder if SpaceX will pick up anything from this as far as the control surfaces.. I’m really fascinated at the differences between BO’s booster (the whole circumference at the top becoming control surfaces) and Falcon 9 (grid fins + control jets).

  10. According to the rocket landing press release, New Shephard is named in honor of Alan Shephard. That was probably obvious to everybody else, but I just put 2 & 2 together.

  11. The crew capsule landing didn’t seem to be all that comfortable unless they are planning on a water landing…

    1. They are planning to use retropropulsion combined with the parachutes, similar to Soyuz.

      1. Well, that’s not a very good selling point. You are aware that even good Soyuz landings have been described as like being in a car crash, right?

        1. The numbers I saw were that entry pulls 5+Gs, which is quite a load of stress for commercial passengers. This doesn’t really seem appropriate for tourists.

    2. That plume of dust that looks like an impact was just kicked up from the retro-rockets on the capsule firing. The actual impact velocity was less than 5km/h, according to BO.

      1. I thought that was the velocity they stated for the first stage landing? I haven’t yet read a landing velocity for the capsule portion. It certainly appeared to be much more than 5 km/h in the video.

  13. They did a bit better than Al’s flight – their payload was much larger, and they used a nice new HO engine. These are rather more use going into the future than the first Mercury flight!

Comments are closed.