I mean about Jeff Bezo's New Shephard reusable spacecraft? It made a great launch into space and then made quite the pretty landing back on earth making it the first reusable spacecraft. Sorry if I'm late to the party (or if this is more of a /g/ thing) but I say all hail the suspiciously dildo shaped missile and all the engineers and scientists that worked on ir. HOORAY!!!!
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/news/blue-origin-makes-historic-rocket-landing
looks like a dong
Yeah, there's been a thread, just not a good one.
I'm pretty excited about this. Soon they'll be flying regularly, then they'll have scientific payloads, then there will be manned tests, then maybe daily space tourism flights.
They're using the same basic design, for their orbital launch vehicle. I estimate that the booster for orbital launch will only be about 25% bigger, linearly, with twice the volume and four times the mass, so the aerodynamics will be almost the same. The LOX/CH4 engine is supposed to be about five times as powerful, and I expect there will be a larger proportion of upper stage and payload, compared to this thing's capsule.
They will likely use this booster engine on the upper stage of their orbital vehicle. It's LOX/H2, so it has good specific impulse. It's clearly also suitable for landing, if they do a reusable upper stage.
Congrats, team dickship.
>>7679901
>space is where the dicks belong
>outta my swamp
>feminist victory on earth
Shitposting aside, this is pretty exciting stuff.
>>7679885
Is Blue Origin still making an Orbital Vehicle? I thought they dropped that when they got the contract to make engines for ULA's next rocket.
successful launch, deployment, recovery, landing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo
>>7679848
>making it the first reusable spacecraft.
Except nah
>>7680044
THAT did not go into space. if my memory serves.
Does anyone know how muich this thing will reduce launch costs by? 70%? 85%? 95%? Just wondering how much this financially busts the balls of the non reusable rockets.
>>7679958
>I thought they dropped that when they got the contract to make engines for ULA's next rocket.
Nope. I figure there's actually a good chance that Blue Origin's reusable rocket will be ready before ULA's expendable one.
Bezos has a good design team, and they've just worked together to build a working rocket. They have experience and momentum. Now they're going to make another very similar rocket. This should go much faster than their last job.
It's similar to what SpaceX is doing: keep the design teams busy, one challenge after another. This is how you do good work. You don't design one system, fire the team, and just operate the system for twenty years, then expect to be able to design another system.
ULA simply hasn't ever designed and built a new rocket. The parent companies developed the rockets they're using in the 90s. Whatever team they put together, it won't know what it's doing. They won't be experienced working together on actually building a rocket, they certainly won't have recent experience as a team, they won't be coming off a successful project.
>>7680046
Yes it did, it broke the Karman line at least twice.
>>7680046
The X-15 was a reusable spaceplane. It had two flights that went over today's most commonly-recognized arbitary 100 km altitude, and another 11 that went by the Air Force's space boundary altitude at the time: 50 miles.
New Shepard has done two new things:
1) vertical powered landing after going to space, and
2) it lifted a signficant separable payload to space, then landed.
Remember, this is a passenger vehicle. They're in the testing phase now. Space tourists might ride on this same rocket that flew. This is their second test which took the capsule to space and had it return to the ground safely. Recovery of the launch vehicle after separation is important for economic feasibility, but not for passenger safety.
Why does Elon get so butthurt about anyone being better than him?
god damn this shits cool
>tfw went to school for chemical engineering
>tfw like chem eng but should have done metallurgy or aerospace so I could an extention of my childhood dream of being an astronaut
fug
>>7680216
Not better. That's why he is butthurt. This was suborbital only. That is much easier than what Elon's rockets are doing--- launching a payload to orbit. Also, landing on land is a couple of factors of 10 easier than landing on a barge at sea.
What the new Shepard did was good, but vertical landing is extremely risky, It will crash and burn at some point in the future, because that's just how rockets and jets doing vertical landings do. They crash and burn a lot on landing. To easy for something minor to go wrong that ends in crash and burn.
>>7680228
I know it is way easier. But the second someone accomplishes something in a field related to spacex he instantly gets butthurt. It's annoying. He wants the retarded capitalistic version of space exploration but then can't handle it once he has competition.
>>7680228
>This was suborbital only. That is much easier than what Elon's rockets are doing--- launching a payload to orbit.
Not really. This took a substantial payload to space and separated it. That could have been staging for orbital flight. Furthermore, this is a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, something SpaceX is avoiding because it's technically challenging, but which makes higher performance upper stages.
Getting a substantial payload from the ground to space is harder than getting from space to orbit. Once you're in space, you have consistent and ideal conditions for rocket engines. You just need a reasonable specific impulse and mass ratio. To get from the ground to space, you need a clean lift-off (a bigger problem than it may seem, there is no tolerance for even a momentary loss of thrust at this stage, and the vehicle is at its heaviest), and then you have to deal with every air pressure and speed from the troposphere and stationary to vacuum and hypersonic.
Blue Origin has overcome every major technical challenge that's needed for orbital spaceflight, and then some. Bezos has more money than Musk, so he didn't have to rush to establish a revenue stream after minimal development work and then struggle to find an incremental path to reusability, he could just go straight to developing reusability.
It's a good rivalry. Blue Origin grinds forward relentlessly, while SpaceX advances in fits and starts as they gamble and kludge. We're much more likely to get better results with both of them competing.
>>7680256
The makers of SpaceShipOne strongly disagree with you. Making a launch system that gets a payload to orbit and returns safely is several orders of magnitude greater than suborbital. If you go hunt up from when they won the Suborbital reuse prize, you will see they were saying they were a good 10 years away from reusable orbital launch system because it is a much more massive challenge than sub-orbital.
Reusable sub-orbital is great, but reusable orbital is many more challenges to come for them. It isn't just a matter of scaling up a working suborbital system.
>>7680256
>We're much more likely to get better results with both of them competing.
Or we could just fund NASA properly and get real results.
>>7680270
>>Getting a substantial payload from the ground to space is harder than getting from space to orbit.
>The makers of SpaceShipOne strongly disagree with you.
SpaceShipOne never took a substantial payload to space. Like X-15, it only took a pilot.
New Shepard lifts a capsule to space. They could have an upper stage rather than a capsule. It would have a small payload, but it could go to orbit.
Look, the first stage of any orbital launcher only goes to space, not orbit. Have you ever heard of a space program that had no trouble getting their first stage to work, but their upper stage failed over and over for years?
Putting that upper stage in space is the main challenge. If you can do that, making the upper stage work is easy by comparison.
>>7680288
You're arguing with an obvious spaceX fanboi
>>7680287
>Or we could just fund NASA properly and get real results.
Are you kidding? NASA gets oodles of money, billions of dollars every year to spend on manned spaceflight. They waste it. Look at SLS/Orion, for instance. It's a fucking joke.
NASA is a stale old politicized bureaucracy with congress breathing down its neck. It has always depended on private contractors to design and build its vehicles.
>>7680288
SpaceShipOne was the capsule. it used the WhiteKnightOne to get a few miles up so it didn't have to deal with launch issues, just landing issues.
The point is that what Blue Origin does is a lot lower and slower than what SpaceX's first stage is doing. The fact SpaceX wants to land on a barge at sea is an insane finishing flourish, but that's their call.
Space history teaches us that most space programs had issues with their upper stages. However, they usually figure them out as they have already done the heavy lifting of getting a launching first stage.
I'm not saying what Blue did was trivial. But upscaling to reusable orbital is not just a matter of stuffing a second stage with a payload on it.
I look forward to seeing what both companies do and how that improves the business of space launches.
>>7680296
I'm a fanboy of whatever gets us off this planet. What I really want to see is the British SSTO space plane and see what comes from being able to take off and land like a plane and still reach orbit. That seems like it should be good for human and small payload delivery to LEO. But for the big loads, we are still going to need big rockets, I think.
>>7680298
Unfortunate but true.
And the worst part will be this: As SpaceX and other private launchers get contracted to NASA, their costs will rocket up to general NASA contractor rates. Why? Because of the requirements that their work force be comprised of x amount of disabled vets, y amount of women, z amounts of ethnic group 1, ethnic group 2, etc. And let's not forget about the mandatory week of training every year on sexual harassment training, auroma sensitivity training, the monthly safety trainings on how to avoid slips trips and falls, the monthly safety trainings on how to wear your safety boots, the monthly safety training on how to stretch once an hour, etc etc etc.
Seriously, I was a NASA contractor for 17 years (as a software developer for their aerospace contractors), and the amount of pure feel good BS and other wasted work effort to comply with either a political feel good mandate or a middle manager cover our ass effort was extreme. And NASA demands all its contractors/workforce comply with these things. So once the privates are incorporated fully into NASA ecosystem, they will be forced under contract to do all the outrageous extra stuff as the current NASA suppliers. And their costs to launch will inflate to the same levels, ruining "cheap access to space".
And just wait for the federal governments to seriously start regulating and licensing private launches.
>>7680306
>upscaling to reusable orbital is not just a matter of stuffing a second stage with a payload on it.
It pretty much is, though. If they wanted to do an upper stage that went to orbit, they could.
The BE-3 engine that powers this thing has about as much thrust as the Merlin 1C that powered the Falcon 1 (and original Falcon 9), and much better specific impulse. The capsule they're lifting is quite large. They could definitely just stick an upper stage on there.
That's not the plan, though. This isn't SpaceX. They're not in a rush to prove they can get to orbit with some measly payload so they can win launch contracts.
Instead, their plan is to get a lot of experience with these suborbital flights doing space tourism, while developing a larger rocket for orbital launch. The BE-4 engine, five times as powerful, is well underway. Because it uses LNG, not hydrogen, the propellant will be much more dense, so they'll only have to scale New Shepard up to about double the fuel volume. They'll stick an expendable BE-3-powered cryogenic upper stage on it.
>>7680319
Thank G*d ( PBUH ) for China then.
The stars will belong to them, and i say they deserve them, or more precisely we don't.
>>7680355
From what I've read, China wants space for military superiority reasons, while Russia wants it for energy baron reasons. Which is still something more than the US, as the US is busy toilet bowl racing in LEO because President Clinton said so for his own political accolades.
Luckily, we have giant investors like the Google founders who want to mine asteroids for their wealth, so that might get a significant reason for US companies to go and stay in space.
I'm an old neckbeard science lover. I figured by the time I was this old, we'd have manned mission on mars and be talking about sending a manned mission to one of the outer planets as "pie in the sky dreams". But instead, we are still talking about "man on Mars" as our "pie in the sky dreams" for the next generation of space lovers.
>>7680319
>spaceflight is being held back by disabled female ethnic minorities
What am I reading?
>>7680653
The truth.
The sooner women are replaced by artificial wombs, the better.
>>7680227
Hella looks like a virus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo
That was sexy AF. Except for the gay music and voiceover but the landing itself blew my mind.
>>7680319
>As SpaceX and other private launchers get contracted to NASA, their costs will rocket up to general NASA contractor rates. Why? Because of the requirements that their work force be comprised of x amount of disabled vets...
The whole point of the commercial crew program is that they're not subject to such meddling.
Anyway, general NASA contractor rates are primarily caused by one key factor: cost-plus contracts. A cost-plus contractor has no motivation to keep costs down, and particularly no motivation to fight the customer to keep costs down.
Employees representing the customer will always be interacting with the contractor primarily to ask for more. If their part of the project is inadequate, that's their head on a plate. If it's over budget, well maybe the guys who did the original estimate screwed that up. If the contractor has no reason to push back, careerism is going to push costs way up.
>>7679848
>Blue origin goes to space and lands back on earth
>Musk write a angry strings of tweets to say "b-b-but they're not the f-first!"
>Musk and his fanbois on suicide watch, must literally be eating their own shit right now
[eqn]\mathfrak{Absolutely}\ \ \mathfrak{Rekt}[/eqn]
>>7680227
Not all astronauts have degrees in aerospace. They want a variety of people anyways. Chemical engineerers can go up as long as their resume shows for it with a metric shit ton of extra skills that would benefit the team.
>>7680926
>Musk write a angry strings of tweets
He didn't write an angry string of tweets.
He congratulated Blue Origin, then posted a couple of comments clarifying the difference between suborbital and orbital spaceflight.
>>7680233
Elon paid a lot of money to have his image as the savior of humanity created. Do you think Robert Downey Jr. really based his Iron Man character on Elon Musk? The studio was paid well to push that meme. Musk has been taking every page out of the Steve Jobs playbook to make himself into a rock star while guys like Bezos have been more focuses on rockets than rock. Musk wants glory and sees his companies as a means to that end. Too bad for him science doesn't care about that. He's making the same mistake the Soviets often did when they thought party edicts would triumph over physics.
If Musk wants to win the commercial space race, he needs to focus on science and engineering rather than getting his face on E! and People Magazine.
>>7681002
I agree partially but getting the public interested is an important job too.
Sure, he might just be posturing but I think the net benefit of having people follow scientific progress is good.
>>7681002
what is scientific dicaprio after now ?
>>7681002
That's so fucking retarded. Neither Musk nor Bezos are rocket scientists. They merely manage fund the companies. It does not matter at all to the technological success of either company how "focused" the owner is. Just because Bezos does not flirt with the media does not mean he is focused on Blue Origin anyway. This is merely a side project for him. The only substantive difference is that SpaceX gets billions of dollars in investment due to the hype.
tfw we will never have nuclear pulse propulsion
Eventually chemical rockets will be "cheap enough"
That we'll just accept paying 10x what it would cost to launch massive payloads with NPP
>>7680937
Still, look at this
https://twitter.com/elonmusk
The damage control attempt is downright hilarious. "Angry" wasn't a good choice of words, I admit. "Jealous butthurt" would have been more accurate.
>>7681042
>links to xkcd
jesus christ
>>7681042
Kinda shows how retarded spacex shills are really. There's a company out there that's doing just as good work as spacex, but they don't get mindless cheerleading for it because they don't do as much pr.
Same observation goes for ula and arianespace by the way. They're doing a much better work than spacex, their rockets are both more powerful, more precise and more reliable, but all they get is hate because they don't fart around the internet to boast how great and awesome they are. Especially arianespace. The number of people right here who hate them is just mind-boggling (the fact they're european probably doesn't help tho -- god forbid these people can beat us to space).
My $0.02
>>7681022
>Neither Musk nor Bezos are rocket scientists. They merely manage fund the companies.
>manage fund
Couldn't make up your mind what to claim?
I don't know about Bezos, but Musk is a very active manager at SpaceX. He hand-picks all the engineers and gets final say on all design details. He's as responsible for his team's results as von Braun was.
>>7681075
>doing just as good work as spacex
>Blue Origin
>founded 2 years before SpaceX
>never been to orbit
>only gotten to space twice
>no customer payloads flown
>ula and arianespace ... doing a much better work than spacex
>cost doesn't matter
>progress toward reusability doesn't matter
>near-term vehicles don't matter
>progress toward manned spaceflight don't matter
>>7679848
It looks like a fleshlight
>>7681084
Someone needs to make a New Shepard model fleshlight.
...and a New Shepard dildo.
>>7681083
>never been to orbit
not their goal
>only gotten to space twice
have gotten to space twice already
>no customer payloads flown
payloads will be customers and will soon be sent
>>7681077
Couldn't type an / actually.
>He hand-picks all the engineers and gets final say on all design details. He's as responsible for his team's results as von Braun was.
That's a ridiculous comparison. Elon doesn't know anything about rocket design.
>>7681099
>customers and will soon be sent
Human spaceflight certificates aren't just handed out on a whim and they wouldn't be stupid enough to fly paying customers anytime soon even if they got it certified today for human passenger because a failure would be catastrophic for space tourism.
>>7681099
>>never been to orbit
>not their goal
Of course it's their goal. Don't be stupid. The suborbital space tourism business is a stepping stone.
>>only gotten to space twice
>have gotten to space twice already
>already
This is a 15-year-old company. This is the first year they've gotten to space.
SpaceX:
year 5: got to space
year 6: got to orbit
year 8: launched a capsule to orbit and recovered it safely on Earth
year 10: delivered cargo to the ISS
year 11: launched a comsat to GTO
This is year 13, they're a major player in the commercial launch business, and they may yet recover a stage for reuse after an orbital launch. In year 14, they're likely to take humans to orbit and back, and to start operations of the most capable rocket in service. Year 15 is likely to see their first launch to Mars.
>>7681109
>Elon doesn't know anything about rocket design.
You have no idea. His original university education was in physics.
Read anything about how things work at SpaceX. He's deeply involved in the design and production of the rockets.
so much ignorant spouting in this thread, holy shit
You can only compare like to like.
Suborbital:
* Blue Origin New Shepard
* SpaceShipTwo
* XCOR Lynx
* Copenhagen Suborbital
and dozens of failed enterprises, since this is the entry level
Orbital:
* SpaceX
* ULA
* Ariane
* national space programs
comparing between these groups is meaningless
>>7681170
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are not limiting their ambitions to suborbital flight.
Blue Origin's suborbital work is clearly aimed at developing technology for orbital spaceflight.
With New Shepard, they're developing:
- reusable booster technology
- upper stage propulsion technology
- manned capsule technology
At the same time, they're already:
- completing development of BE-4, their orbital booster engine
- preparing Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral
A manned orbital launcher will be a pretty modest step for them after this. It'll be like SpaceX going from Falcon 1 (first successful launch in 2008) to Falcon 9 (first successful launch in 2010).
Don't be too surprised if Blue Origin starts putting people in orbit in 2018.
>>7679848
I think this is awesome and all, but why is everyone trying to do reusable spacecraft? What is the main advantage over disposable ones? I don't think the material they use for the tank is that expensive, protecting tank in re-entry is going to be challenging. Is there something I'm missing?
>>7681155
What does his dick taste like?
>>7681197
The material itself may not be that expensive but the construction process is extremely expensive. Not that all the fuel, research and development, extra parts and such of reusable spacecraft are cheap. Obviously all these frontier research projects will never turn end up positive. But IF it proves to be reliable and not a clusterfuck of possible failure points that can never be untangled, it could save tons of money in the commercial space freighting, satellite-launching business.
>>7681197
>why is everyone trying to do reusable spacecraft?
Why doesn't everybody just parachute out of airliners and let them crash out in the hills?
>Is there something I'm missing?
The labor cost of building rockets, which is the main expense in the orbital launch business.
>>7681212
I guess that makes sense, but I'm still not convinced.
Take the solid boosters from space shuttle for example, if you exclude the cost of finding them in the ocean it's pretty much the same what these projects are doing. Does it really make that much difference?
What I mean is, truly reusable spacecraft still doesn't look very viable to me unless there is a development that reduce the amount of fuel required or something.
>>7681213
For the aircraft, it doesn't really need to orbit, so it makes sense for them not to crash the thing, it's easily reusable. But when cargo is 5kg and rocket that takes it to orbit is 1e6kg lines get blurry to me.
>>7679958
They'd have to be, really. Their architecture really doesn't make a lot of sense as a suborbital launcher - it's very clearly been designed as a scaled-down testbed for an orbital system.
>>7681253
>cargo is 5kg
>rocket that takes it to orbit is 1e6kg
A typical ratio's about 50:1. A million kg rocket should take about 20,000 kg to orbit. Going beyond LEO you'll see less payload, but it's generally only a single-digit divisor, depending on target trajectory and specific impulse of the upper stage.
Anyway, why would the fact that the rocket's a big, expensive thing mean that it should be expendable? There's some backwards logic if I've ever seen it.
>>7680052
According to SpaceX's cost breakdown, materials and fuel make up just 2.3% of a rocket's cost, which does check out with the conventional wisdom in the rocket industry. 75% of the cost is in building the first stage.
If it uses something like the current architecture, Blue Origin won't totally remove all other costs, since you do still need to recover the separated first stage and capsule (which will be in different locations, since the capsule comes down under parachute), re-pack the parachute, do any necessary maintenance checks, and attach the two stages back together.
But you're looking at perhaps a minimum 70% cost reduction, depending on whether they recover the second stage or not, and on the frequency and lifetime with which the components can be reused. If all parts of the vehicle are recovered, and can be reused for a very long lifetime, you might get as high as 90% cost reduction.
>>7681284
That was the joke.
What I was trying to get at was that single stage to orbit and back is going to be very inefficient, and making sure it comes back makes it even more expensive to build and maintain.
I'm not trying to say that it's never going to happen, I hope it does and dearly support these ventures. But there's a reason Atlas is so successful.
My conclusion is, drop and recover > single stage with current rocket technology.
>>7681288
>If all parts of the vehicle are recovered, and can be reused for a very long lifetime, you might get as high as 90% cost reduction.
You can go much higher than that.
Airline tickets sell for about triple the cost of fuel. The fuel cost of expendable rockets is down around 0.1% of the launch.
Per unit mass of cargo capacity, rockets have a similar construction cost to airliners.
>>7679848
USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA
>>7681253
>Does it really make that much difference?
Massively. Landing a booster in the ocean is only *slightly* better than just letting it burn up in the atmosphere - rocket engines really, really don't like seawater. Just about the only thing you can recover is the outer shell; everything else has to be disassembled, individually checked, possibly replaced, and put back together. You save almost no cost.
Also, you have to go fish the boosters out of the ocean and ship them back to the launch site. This does no favors for your cost.
>>7681304
Blue Origin isn't trying to do an SSTO. They're aiming at a TSTO, which is far saner. They're just planning on recovering both the upper and lower stages.
>>7681304
>there's a reason Atlas is so successful.
The US government needs a domestic launch provider and after consolidation of the aerospace industry into an anticompetitive blob they were stuck with people who couldn't compete in the global launch market to save their lives, so it throws money and Air Force manpower at babysitting ULA and double-checking everything they do so they don't screw up?
>>7681213
>>why is everyone trying to do reusable spacecraft?
>Why doesn't everybody just parachute out of airliners and let them crash out in the hills?
Why don't we build tanks to roam the land like battleships roam the seas?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster
Because thinking tanks can be like ships is as stupid as thinking rockets can be like airplanes. Some superficial similarity doesn't mean shit. And arguing like that only reveals one's own stupidity and lack of understanding of the fundamental differences.
>>7681305
Some quick math to back this up:
>747-8F maximum payload: 140,000 kg
>747-8F cost: $357 million
>Falcon 9 v1.1 maximum payload to LEO: 13,150 kg
>Falcon 9 v1.1 cost: $61.2M
In other words, kg for kg, a rocket is about twice as expensive as an airliner. So, if rockets were as reusable as airliners, you'd expect the cost to be on the same order of magnitude as a transatlantic flight.
>>7681309
>rocket engines really, really don't like seawater.
People say this, but basically it hasn't been tried.
The Falcon rockets were designed from the beginning for splashdown recovery, but they found they needed propulsion to stabilize re-entry, and once they decided to use propulsion, they said, "Fuck it, we'll just do flyback."
>>7681309
I'd imagine they would have to run quite a few inspections on the Falcon 9 stage as well, though no way as much as the SRB's got.
>>7681197
>What is the main advantage over disposable ones?
A 10x-100x cost reduction, in theory.
Materials and fuel are a tiny component of a rocket's construction cost - less than 5%, of which maybe 0.5% is the fuel. Virtually all of the rest is the labor required to produce a new rocket every time you launch, primarily in the construction cost of the engines. (It's much the same with jet aircraft - jet engines ain't cheap.)
In fact, per pound of payload, it costs about as much to buy and launch a rocket as it does to buy and launch an international airliner. Pretty much the only reason that you can afford a ticket to the other side of the Atlantic, but you have to be a multimillionaire to buy one to orbit, is that the reusability of aircraft lets you spread that construction cost over thousands of flights.
So anything you do to let you quickly and efficiently re-use the rocket engines - the closer and closer you get to being able to just land it, fuel it up, and wheel it back onto the launchpad - can make an extreme difference in cost savings. A Falcon 9 v1.1 costs $60 million to launch, and $45 million of that is in building the first stage - which is why they're so desperate for first stage reusability. Can you safely re-use the first stage twice? Bam, instant $23 million off the launch cost.
>>7681336
Sure, but you want to run inspections on jet engines too. It's a matter of how reliable you can build your rockets.
And this is another area where reusability really matters - because once you can re-use a rocket, you can flight test it and then never have to worry about new manufacturing defects cropping up next time you launch. And you can build it more robustly, because that extra cost is now spread out over many flights - an extra $2 million, say, over 100 flights becomes an extra $2 per kilogram.
>>7681341
This is one of the things that makes me wonder if the strut failure was sabotage.
Not only was the strut drastically under rated strength, this was the most troubling way for a Falcon 9 to fail: an abrupt explosion of the upper stage.
Because it's in the upper stage, this would not be resolved by a previously-flown reusable lower stage. The site of the explosion is as near to the capsule as it can possibly be, raising the spectre of a crew loss. It was difficult to figure out the cause, there could be a reasonable expectation that they'd be unable to solve it.
The part failed drastically under rated load. It was from an established aerospace supplier. It was a type of part not conventionally individually tested by vehicle builders, who trust the supplier to do proper quality control of such components.
If someone wanted to sabotage a SpaceX rocket, this is a likely way they'd choose to do it.
>>7681042
The only cause he would have to feel butthurt about are the number of people who think there is any need for damage control.
It isn't that he's been one-upped, as he hasn't been; it's that so many of the public are unable to grasp the gulf of difficulty between what Blue Origin has accomplished and what SpaceX is attempting.
It is as though one company had aspirations of making the first transatlantic flight, and another smaller company succeeded in flying across lake superior, and most people weren't sure if there was much difference between Lake Superior and the Atlantic.
If you think he's attempting damage control, it makes me suspect you're the sort that would mistake a lake for an ocean. Are you? Do you understand how much more difficult orbital flight is than suborbital?
>>7680288
>New Shepard lifts a capsule to space. They could have an upper stage rather than a capsule. It would have a small payload, but it could go to orbit.
Yeah, no. People forget that most of the energy in the first stage of an *orbital* launcher is used to go *sideways*. Suborbital designs save a fuckload of weight by only designing to go straight up.
In the early days there were "pop-up" first stage designs (cf. the book "The Rocket Company"), but that requires much beefier upper stages to attain the full 8 km/s orbital velocity all by themselves, which through the tyranny of the rocket equation means an 8x beefier first stage, and then you lose much of your advantage.
>Look, the first stage of any orbital launcher only goes to space, not orbit. Have you ever heard of a space program that had no trouble getting their first stage to work, but their upper stage failed over and over for years?
Yeah, many of them. Most recently even the venerable Soyuz and Proton have been wringing out long-standing upper stage design problems that lost payloads.
>Putting that upper stage in space is the main challenge. If you can do that, making the upper stage work is easy by comparison.
One problem with getting the upper stage right is test environment. It is expensive to mimic the high-vacuum, weightless conditions on the ground in order to fully test an upper stage.
>>7680227
This looks like a ship from some 60's Sci-fi movie.
>>7680338
>size is the same thing as mass
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6Il58Ln4cI
How come they get to land on land while SpaceX is still forced to land on floating barges?
>>7681705
Yeah. New Shepherd is designed as a scaled-down orbital system, but you'd have to scale it up a lot. It's more to gain a flight history and the data from it, so that they can build a real orbital system based on that experience, than an actual prototype.
>>7681883
Bezos has a very big ranch. Enough space to launch a rocket and bring it back down.
>>7681902
Still doesn't explain why SpaceX is forced to land their rockets on a barge, by the government.
>>7681918
Because SpaceX does not have a big enough piece of territory to try and land their rocket with no chance of civilian casualties if something went catastrophically wrong.
I'm sure if SpaceX wanted to touchdown on a 1000 acre plot of land they owned in the salt flats the Government would be fine with it.
>>7681918
The other difference: New Shepard is coming straight down from a measly 100 km. The original pad is the most probable place for it to land in case of guidance failure.
By contrast, the first stage of Falcon 9 would be coming *back* from hundreds of kilometers downrange if it were to land near the launch pad, so they first have to prove pin-point accuracy somewhere safer, like barge in the middle of open ocean. The other advantage of the barge is that it can be positioned downrange, so no need to waste fuel on the boostback.
>>7681895
>New Shepherd is designed as a scaled-down orbital system, but you'd have to scale it up a lot
About 25%, linearly, with the BE-4 booster engine.
New Shepard is powered by the BE-3, about a hundred-thousand-pound-thrust LOX/H2 engine. BE-4 is about 5 times as powerful, with propellant about twice as dense.
So if the booster is 4 times as massive as New Shepard, and the upper stage and payload are about the same mass as New Shepard, that should be about right. To be 4 times as massive would take about twice the volume of the denser LNG propellant, which means the orbital booster would need to be about 25% thicker and 25% longer.
It is a really straightforward scale-up. The aerodynamics of ascent and recovery won't change much. The upper stage will be easy to develop. It'll basically be a stripped down New Shepard, with a larger expansion nozzle on the BE-3 engine. They already know how to do a lightweight fuselage, tanks, avionics, and stage separation.
While this is only about half the total lift-off mass and thrust of Falcon 9, both booster (methane staged combustion) and upper stage (liquid hydrogen) will get considerably better specific impulse, so the overall performance should be similar.
There's no significant obstacle for them to go orbital. They just have to continue the path they're walking, showing the same competence they've already demonstrated.
I am sure i am just stupid but why are dragon and new sheperd a big deal when the space shuttle has been landing and reused for years. Cost? Larger payloads? To extend that, why was the space shuttle program discontinued?
>>7682106
Because the space shuttle was an old piece of shit, that cost an asston of money, built specifically to go up and capture enemy satellites, which never happened
>>7682106
>Cost?
Yes. The space shuttle was not reusable in a way that saved any money. It was fake-reusable. They had to put more work into fixing it up each time after it came back than it would have cost to just build a new expendable vehicle. It ended up costing about $1.5 billion per launch, $200 million per passenger.
>Larger payloads?
For Falcon Heavy, sure. But that's not generally what's at issue.
>why was the space shuttle program discontinued?
It was responsible for the majority of spacecraft passenger deaths. It should have been canceled for other reasons, but the second crew loss is what actually did it.
>>7682136
Thanks! Some follow up questions: What other reasons were there for discontinuation? Also if you happen to have it handy, how much of a cost difference is it? It sounds like a major reason for dragon/new sheperd development
>>7682189
>Space Shuttle cost per kilogram of payload to LEO: $18,200 to $55,000
> Falcon 9 cost per kg to LEO: $4,700
>>7682189
New Shepard's a space tourist thrill ride. You'll be able to ride on it if you're wiling to spend a house. It doesn't go to orbit. It is on the development path for an orbital vehicle, though.
Dragon's going straight to orbital, so it will cost more like 100 houses for a ride.
>how much of a cost difference is it?
Manned Dragon V2 is supposed to cost ~$140 million per launch, for up to 7 passengers, so $20 million if you go up packed like sardines. NASA's using it for 4 passengers at a time, so more like $35 million each.
It won't be able to take a big payload like the space shuttle, though. But payloads are cheaper to launch separately. Falcon Heavy is supposed to be ~$80 million and capable of putting twice as much payload (53 tons) into LEO as the space shuttle (24 tons, IIRC).
>>7682207
Thanks! So it sounds like it is much more worth it.
>>7682210
Im talking about dragon not new sheperd or i am talking about the comparison between them. Its interesting to hear that its basically tourism that might fund the projects. I assume this is not true for both (blue horizons made it clear). My biggest confusion is saying that dragon would not be able to take as large a payload as the space shuttle. Is this true or am i misunderstanding?
>>7682240
>My biggest confusion is saying that dragon would not be able to take as large a payload as the space shuttle. Is this true or am i misunderstanding?
Dragon's a little capsule with a little trunk. It launches on Falcon 9, which can only launch about 13 tons to orbit. Dragon weighs several tons before you put people and cargo in it, so there's just room for a couple of tons of cargo.
The shuttle was a big spaceplane with a big cargo hold. It could take ~24 tons of cargo to orbit in addition to a full load of crew. They used it to build the ISS.
>>7682247
Ok so what is the significance of the dragon launches? Its just that its cheaper per kg? If so, would continuing with the space shuttle program yeild the same results? Sorry kinda drunk
>>7682247
Thanks for your responses. Helped me a bunch
>>7680227
>tfw thats the exact reason im going into areo
>>7680227
This makes me ROCK HARD. Holy shit that looks nice.
>>7681213
I'd much rather just jump out when we're above our destination, I'll take that over waiting an extra hour to be told I can stand up and fight over getting my belongings and getting off the damn plane.
>>7684703
Wrong thread
>>7680227
Go be a rocket fuel designer.
>>7684949
Chemical engineers aren't chemists. Designing a rocket engine is closer to their work than the rocket fuel: pumps, pipes, and a reaction chamber.
>>7681083
>cost doesn't matter
They're expansive for a reason. As the other guy said, more power, more reliability, more precision. Ariane has what, 70 consecutive successes? I wonder if companies still bother to pay an insurance when they fly with them.
>progress toward reusability doesn't matter
Reusability is far from guaranteeing cheaper space access. The French and the Russians have conducted studies on that and found, broadly speaking, that mass-producing is cheaper than complex acrobatics and refurbishment. But hey, what would they know, they're only launching rockets for 60 years. If anything is going to make space more accessible, that would be SSTOs. Half-assed solutions like 1st stage retrieval are an intermediate step at best.
>near-term vehicles don't matter
wut
>progress toward manned spaceflight don't matter
"Yeah, let's send more people watch ants having sex in weightlessness on the ISS." Much interesting, very wow. And if you're referring to Mars landings, well, Musk couldn't do it even if he was twenty times richer. This is nothing but a company image thing. But people buy into it, so I don't see why they should stop indeed.
if i play kerbal space program can i into rockets?
>>7685001
>They're expansive for a reason.
That reason is not because it's necessary to achieve the level of quality they do.
>more power, more reliability, more precision.
>more power
At the top end, sure. But Falcon 9 is much more cost-effective per kg, and Falcon Heavy will be even more so.
>more reliability
Infant mortality. It's completely normal to have a failure or two early in a rocket design's life. Ariane 5 and Atlas V have certainly had them.
>more precision
Falcon 9 isn't any less precise.
>>near-term vehicles don't matter
>wut
Falcon Heavy. It'll be the most capable vehicle on the market by a large margin when it comes out.
>>7685001
>The French and the Russians have conducted studies on that and found, broadly speaking, that mass-producing is cheaper than complex acrobatics and refurbishment.
Big difference between the first stage parachuting in the ocean, and turning around & landing again.
It costs nothing for the rocket to do that, if its designed for multiple launches then there is no refurbishing needed.
Just a loss of payload since you can't burn all your fuel.
Single stage to orbit is a pointless meme. Cripples payload, never going higher than low earth orbit
