BO posted a Notam for today/tomorrow

[tater]

Not much to add other than the airspace of TX just south of the NM border has a 2 day hole in it... if I had a decent time frame, I'd drive down there, it's only ~4.5 hours.

[Kaos]

Sorry, I do not understand your post.

BO = Blue Origin, TX = Texas, NM = New Mexico?

Still do not get it.

[tater]

Notice to airmen. Blue Origin is gonna launch something. 

That or they already did and haven't posted vid yet.

 

And yeah, I'm in New Mexico

Edited January 23, 2016 by tater

[fredinno]

I would recommend you replace "bo" with Blue Origin, to make people less confused.

[KerBlammo]

Saw this on my twitter feed earlier today

 

I wonder if this location is close to the West Texas town of El Paso.

Edited January 23, 2016 by KerBlammo

[KerBlammo]

And here's the slick video:

https://www.blueorigin.com/news#youtube74tyedGkoUc

Pretty cool stuff.  Suicide burn into a low altitude hover followed by a gentle touchdown.

Maybe they'll be able to reduce the turn around time to under 2 months next time* 

 

*(I'm sure they spent a lot of time inspecting the vehicle and making sure it could fly again)

[Frybert]

I'm not a very big fan of Jeff Bezos, but this one-upsmanship is probably going to be really good for spaceflight.

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

I would recommend you replace "bo" with Blue Origin, to make people less confused.

You mean my Ex's body odor isn't causing causing flights to be diverted? Darn.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

12 minutes ago, Frybert said:

I'm not a very big fan of Jeff Bezos, but this one-upsmanship is probably going to be really good for spaceflight.

[...]

Spaceflight competition, minus threat of nuclear annihilation!  Everybody wins.

[Exoscientist]

 

 Congrats to Blue Origin. They beat SpaceX again.

 

  Bob Clark

[Scotius]

Very cool video Finally we started building spaceships that look and behave like spaceships

And as for who beat who...let's not go there, and support both. Shall we?

[tater]

Pretty cool. I'll reserve "spaceship" for something at least orbital.

Wish I knew long enough in advance to drive down and watch.

[Scotius]

It's a ship that goes above Karman Line - space as we define it. Hence - spaceship

[Rune]

6 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

 

 Congrats to Blue Origin. They beat SpaceX again.

 

  Bob Clark

Without getting into the foodfight (but they should really stop claiming firsts they have no right to), this IS a pretty awesome achievement.

Then again, due to the lack of communication form BO (they tell less than SpaceX, and that's quite something), we still don't really know how much of an accomplishment it really is. How much work did the rocket need? Two months of turnaround for a prototype seems awfully short (which is good), but since he didn't even even tweet a "the rocket is looking really good, will do it soon without much refurbish", they technically had time to rebuild the whole freaking thing, if they were hauling ass about it.

That said, the BE-3 is a respectable little engine. It's really hard to get such deep throttling and reliability numbers... now if only they released TWR and Isp figures to know just how good it is!

 

Rune. Again, I would like to hear Burt Rutan's comments on the captions.

[fredinno]

6 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

 

 Congrats to Blue Origin. They beat SpaceX again.

 

  Bob Clark

That's not really beating anybody Clark. They are in completely different leagues of stage recovery- F9 needs to expend a lot more energy before returning.

6 minutes ago, Rune said:

Without getting into the foodfight (but they should really stop claiming firsts they have no right to), this IS a pretty awesome achievement.

Then again, due to the lack of communication form BO (they tell less than SpaceX, and that's quite something), we still don't really know how much of an accomplishment it really is. How much work did the rocket need? Two months of turnaround for a prototype seems awfully short (which is good), but since he didn't even even tweet a "the rocket is looking really good, will do it soon without much refurbish", they technically had time to rebuild the whole freaking thing, if they were hauling ass about it.

That said, the BE-3 is a respectable little engine. It's really hard to get such deep throttling and reliability numbers... now if only they released TWR and Isp figures to know just how good it is!

 

Rune. Again, I would like to hear Burt Rutan's comments on the captions.

How is a surface engine able to be used as an upper stage? I'm pretty sure it would need mods, but Vulcan proposed it for use in ACES. 

[EladDv]

15 minutes ago, fredinno said:

How is a surface engine able to be used as an upper stage? I'm pretty sure it would need mods, but Vulcan proposed it for use in ACES. 

I am not a rocket scientist and especially not an engine expert but from what i understand every engine has the capabilities to be a booster and a vacuum engine it mostly depends on the expansion rate and bells the engine has- take a look at the merlin 1D Vac 

[Rune]

9 minutes ago, fredinno said:

How is a surface engine able to be used as an upper stage? I'm pretty sure it would need mods, but Vulcan proposed it for use in ACES. 

It's actually pretty simple, really. You can run any engine in vacuum without modifications, with only a slight decrease in performance, because the ambient pressure is only really important for nozzle efficiency, every other pressure in the whole rocket is self-regulated. You would need a good tank design to prevent sloshing, of course, and a settling system to relight (the ignitor I imagine they already have covered ), but really, the only thing you would really change in the engine is adding an nozzle skirt extension to improve your expansion ratio, increasing Isp and thrust from those at sea level. Which is why BE-3 is supposed to give >600kN in vacuum.

 

Rune. It's the other way around that gives problems, an overexpanded plume, because it stops hugging the engine bell before it exits.

[GeneCash]

33 minutes ago, Rune said:

Two months of turnaround for a prototype seems awfully short (which is good), but since he didn't even even tweet a "the rocket is looking really good, will do it soon without much refurbish", they technically had time to rebuild the whole freaking thing, if they were hauling ass about it.

OTOH, for reference, DC-XA demonstrated a 26 hour turnaround. It did a turnaround of 21 days after being damaged by overheating during a slow landing.

Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia page for DC-X claims that several DC-X engineers now work at Blue Origin.

[Streetwind]

This flight is awesome news. It means Blue Origin is on track for perhaps even starting to service customers later this year (though they would be customers for unmanned science payloads, AKA oversized sounding rocket / parabolic flight stuff).

I can't wait until we finally get a space tourism company flying people, too... Blue Origin might yet beat both Virgin Galactic and XCOR to the punch. And the sooner someone starts, the sooner it becomes normal, and the sooner the price drops... which will eventually bring it within my reach. 'Cause I wanna go and fly

[Kryten]

If they really did just have to replace the igniters and inspect the vehicle, as the accompanying letter claims; and DC-X shows this is plausible for this regime; then VG are in BIG trouble.

[Kaos]

I also see Blue Origin a bigger competitor for Virgin Galactic than for SpaceX.

I also find their achievements impressive, but not quite as impressive as SpaceX achievements.

[lajoswinkler]

8 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

 

 Congrats to Blue Origin. They beat SpaceX again.

 

  Bob Clark

They've never beaten SpaceX. Blue Origin rocket goes up and down. Falcon 9 first stage pushes second stage+cargo into suborbital flight with a substantial downrange distance. Going into an arch means you need to considerably negate that arch and then do a precision landing on one spot (barge, etc.).

Blue Origin just goes up and down. Trivial, compared to SpaceX, not even worth mentioning.

[SargeRho]

1 minute ago, lajoswinkler said:

They've never beaten SpaceX. Blue Origin rocket goes up and down. Falcon 9 first stage pushes second stage+cargo into suborbital flight with a substantial downrange distance. Going into an arch means you need to considerably negate that arch and then do a precision landing on one spot (barge, etc.).

Blue Origin just goes up and down. Trivial, compared to SpaceX, not even worth mentioning.

Not to mention they are fundamentally different vehicles. The Falcon 9 is several times as big, and can't hover.

[Kryten]

 

10 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

They've never beaten SpaceX. Blue Origin rocket goes up and down. Falcon 9 first stage pushes second stage+cargo into suborbital flight with a substantial downrange distance. Going into an arch means you need to considerably negate that arch and then do a precision landing on one spot (barge, etc.).

Blue Origin just goes up and down. Trivial, compared to SpaceX, not even worth mentioning.

This is a pretty disingenuous position to take. Blue isn't just some suborbital vehicle company, and this is not the end goal; it's the next step in the iterative chain of Charon->Goddard->PM-2, and just happens to be one they think they can make some money with. We know the next step is orbit, and by then Blue will have the kind of extensive experience with vehicle refurbishment and general reusable vehicle operations that would take years to get with the SpaceX approach. The result will be a vehicle designed from the start for VTVL reusability, not a jury-rigged one.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Kryten

[EladDv]

34 minutes ago, SargeRho said:

The Falcon 9 is several times as big, and can't hover.

Technically it can hover even at launch, the new merlin 1D+ engines are throttleable down to 55%.  hovering isnt a big deal landing is much more demanding and the way spaceX does it makes it much harder with a lot more points of failure, i am also sure that the single merlin on the F9v1.2 can throttle deep enough to make it hover(it'd be way more risky to not have this capability, if you can you probably want to maintain speed at the last couple dozen meters) i just dont see why they'd want to do it. 

Edited January 23, 2016 by EladDv

[Frozen_Heart]

15 minutes ago, EladDv said:

Technically it can hover even at launch, the new merlin 1D+ engines are throttleable down to 55%.  hovering isnt a big deal landing is much more demanding and the way spaceX does it makes it much harder with a lot more points of failure, i am also sure that the single merlin on the F9v1.2 can throttle deep enough to make it hover(it'd be way more risky to not have this capability, if you can you probably want to maintain speed at the last couple dozen meters) i just dont see why they'd want to do it. 

The min thrust of a single Merlin engine is greater than the weight of an almost empty Falcon 9 first stage. On the way down they can't hover to readjust at all.