Blue horizons launched and landed their New Shepard rocket after suborbital flight yesterday

[Cirocco]

[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34909713[/url]

interesting little article. Short version: Jeff Bezos (creator and CEO of Amazon.com) has started a company called Blue horizons which is aimed towards space tourism. Yesterday they launched a full-sized test vehicle, made a suborbital hop and brought the (empty) capsule as well as the rocket back down. The capsule lands on parachutes, the rocket uses powered descent (though not a suicide burn like SpaceX does).

Note: while there may seem to be a big similarity to SpaceX's attempts at powered landing att first, the two scenario's are completely different. SpaceX has to haul far larger payloads, far larger rockets, aims for orbit, can't have their rockets hover because of the extremely powerful merlin engine, etc.

Still, it's nice to see technology evolving on multiple fronts :)

[selfish_meme]

[video=youtube;9pillaOxGCo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo[/video]

Video, wow this is amazing. I know it's not hardcore launch stuff into outer space, but it's a giant step for rockets science and rocket economics. Being able to return and redeploy all parts of the rocket is amazing!

[Raptor9]

Very cool! SpaceX has some potential future competition for reusability. I like how the rocket slammed on the brakes right before impact. :cool:

[Whirligig Girl]

Wow! Stick another engine on it, extend the stack a bit, and add a second stage and you may very well have yourself a reusable launch vehicle!

[Kryten]

[quote name='GregroxMun']Wow! Stick another engine on it, extend the stack a bit, and add a second stage and you may very well have yourself a reusable launch vehicle![/QUOTE]
Blue do want to extend the same technology to an orbital vehicle, but from what little we've seen of it it seems to be considerably larger than this booster.

[lextacy]

props

[selfish_meme]

My recreation needs a bigger ring airfoil

[Randazzo]

[I]That. is. sick.[/I]

Mechjeb doing those last second burns always freaks me out, but it's a lot more impressive watching Mechblue do it with a real piece of hardware.

However, I'm not sure I'd want to ride in that pod, considering how hard the touchdown appeared to be. Edited November 25, 2015 by Randazzo

[Kanukki]

What's the main advantage to powered landing, vs parachutes for recovering the launch vehicle? I'm guessing being able to precisely pick the landing spot?

[Nibb31]

[quote name='Kanukki']What's the main advantage to powered landing, vs parachutes for recovering the launch vehicle? I'm guessing being able to precisely pick the landing spot?[/QUOTE]

Less weight. The parachutes to gently land a rocket stage would have to be huge. The Shuttle SRB parachutes were the largest ever made and weighed nearly 5 tons with their deployment systems. Yet, the boosters still splashed down at 23 m/s (80 km/h) in the ocean and were often dented and buckled.

To land on the ground, you would need much larger chutes, and to add some sort of dampening system such as airbags or Soyuz-like landing motors, which would also increase the weight.

In the end, it's easier to just carry some more propellant for the landing and use the same propulsion system.

[Champ]

I did not even know spaceX had a new concurrent. Good thing !

The powered landing of the rocket is very impressive