Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[DBT85]

Thanks guys didn't know the chutes would be so heavy!

[bigdad84]

Sooooo, when's the next launch attempt? I've seen on NASA Spaceflight that the next launch date has been pushed back to Feb. 8th.

[Dodgey]

http://www.cnn.com/videos/tech/2015/01/16/spacex-rocket-crash-landing-crane-orig-mg.cnn i dont believe it CNN had a decent clip on the SpaceX landing

That's just the clip that Ellon posted, nothing new really.

[B787_300]

Dodgey I was mainly talking about the commentary that accompanies the clip where CNN does not say it was a total failure and laugh at SpaceX for even trying...

[Airlock]

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/nasa/report-spacex-launch-nasas-dscovr-mission-slips-net-feb-9/

DSCOVR has slipped to no earlier than Feb 8. Fits with Elon's statements on twitter regarding the next landing attempt, so no big surprise. The good news, however, is that the launch/landing may actually occur in daylight, unlike the previous flight.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Airlock

[Dodgey]

Ah ok, my mistake, sorry.

[Cirocco]

Just saw the gif... There are no words ... That was even closer than I thought!

The rocket killed almost all it's horizontal velocity before impact and if it hadn't been angled, it would have been bang on target. Holy Kraken on a bicycle.

PleasepleasepleasepPLEASE let this work when they launch DISCOVR in february. It would be AMAZING. Man, I haven't felt like this since I was a kid waiting for my christmas presents.

I'm nerding-out so hard right now.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Cirocco

[Aethon]

SLS booster on the stand in Utah ( "What's he a Mormon?" ) prepared for a March 11, 2 minute static test fire.

http://www.nasa.gov/sls/booster-aimed-and-ready-to-fire.html#.VMGI9kfF-Yc

[Motokid600]

Just a few pessimistic thoughts:

In reality, I think it will be no manned interplanetary ships at all. Moon landing was just a political show. Humans were put to risk for no valid reason. With advances in AI and remote control, manned interplanetary missions becoming more and more meaningless, before they ever happen. It is a curiosity of the few and political show of the many, but nowadays no one is willing to pay for such a show, especially if someone dies in process.

Yes, I understand, it's very unpopular opinion on this forum, but today I feel especially pessimistic and depressive, so I decided to spill it.

Id agree with you for any distance farther then Mars/Venus is improbable until we can make cryosleep or new, super powerful propulsion a reality. That's for another generation. For the current generation id wager the area between Venus and Mars is perfectly explorable. So in terms of the Moon, Mars and asteroids humans have got to get out there. Once we can learn to live out there effectively it'll help us back here in the greatest way possible in terms of quality of life. If we can perfect an efficient life support system for a Mars colony imagine what that would mean if that system was adopted into every newly built home? What if it became natural practice for human beings to grow and nurture there own food under their own roof? And for many more things that can help us now. Morale for one.. great for a country to see its citizens doing what is the greatest thing human beings could ever do. Good for inspiration. Kids get to see humans in space, hopefully on TV instead of what arabic city got bombed and the death count. ( we had the same back with Vietam, but we had Apollo to go along with it so... what missing here now a days? ) Good for jobs. We got all these kids coming out of college with 4+ year degrees only to go back to flipping burgers. Takes a great deal of people to put humans beyond LEO. And it cascades all the way down to the little guy.

And yes in terms of scientific discoveries and rewards humans have a far greater capacity. Now im probably exaggerating this so forgive me, but what took Curiosity over a year to achieve a human could have done the same in a week. You can have AI that's naturally curious to an extent and will get better over the years as computing power increases. But no where near the extent of a human when it comes to decision making. Im 24 years old. So I only take my time to enthuse over what could feasibly happen over the next 60 or so years. True A.I is long beyond that point. Elon Musk says. "We need to become a multiplanet species" And for good reason. The long term survival of the human race. "Oh well the suns not going to blow up for another billions year pshhh were fine." No were not... we have all our eggs in one basket at the moment. We could be blown away by anything any day now, who knows... by ourselves chances have it. Or blight. So by getting human beings to Mars as soon as possible to get a foundation going is very, very important. It may take that 60 years before you start seeing biodomes sprout up on the Martian poles, but we have to start somewhere. And preferably as fast as possible.

At our current rate things are dim. With the only the glimmers of light being pictures like the one above and SpaceX. SLS may not happen if NASA cant get the money they need in time before SpaceX kicks them to the curb. How long before Elon proposes to put the Orion on top of his rockets? Because as fate would have it the Orion capsule and the Falcon rockets are coming together at a faster ( more equal ) rate then the SLS. ( citation needed )

Edited January 23, 2015 by Motokid600

[Nibb31]

Morale for one.. great for a country to see its citizens doing what is the greatest thing human beings could ever do. Good for inspiration.

How much are you willing to pay for morale and inspiration? How much are your fellow taxpayers willing to pay? I suspect most people would be happier with free beer, cable TV, and football games as a morale and inspiration booster... That would cost a lot less than sending people to Mars.

And yes in terms of scientific discoveries and rewards humans have a far greater capacity. Now im probably exaggerating this so forgive me, but what took Curiosity over a year to achieve a human could have done the same in a week. You can have AI that's naturally curious to an extent and will get better over the years as computing power increases. But no where near the extent of a human when it comes to decision making.

In the case of spaceflight, human's decision-making is trumped by human's need to rest, sleep, eat, breath, stay out of danger, and get back home. The slight advantage of not having to wait 10 minutes for a round-trip of orders-responses from mission control on Earth is tiny compared to the huge disadvantage of having to ship 100 tons of equipment just to keep the human alive so that he can EVA a couple of hours per day.

I've already said this, but for the cost of sending a single manned expedition to do a 3 month survey over a small radius around the landing site, you can have a fleet of hundreds of rovers to survey a much wider area for several years. You will actually get orders of magnitude more science over long-duration studies of a wider area than spending several weeks in the same spot.

The only science that really benefits from sending humans to Mars is studying how we can send humans to Mars. Anything else can be done by robots for a fraction of the cost.

Im 24 years old. So I only take my time to enthuse over what could feasibly happen over the next 60 or so years. True A.I is long beyond that point. Elon Musk says. "We need to become a multiplanet species" And for good reason. The long term survival of the human race. "Oh well the suns not going to blow up for another billions year pshhh were fine." No were not... we have all our eggs in one basket at the moment. We could be blown away by anything any day now, who knows... by ourselves chances have it. Or blight. So by getting human beings to Mars as soon as possible to get a foundation going is very, very important. It may take that 60 years before you start seeing biodomes sprout up on the Martian poles, but we have to start somewhere. And preferably as fast as possible.

We haven't been blown away in the last 200 000 years. The chances that we get blown away during the next 1000 years is infinitesimal. There is no rush. There isn't much that can happen to us on Earth where we wouldn't have at least few million survivors. I can't think of a single scenario where having a few thousand people on Mars would make any difference.

At our current rate things are dim. With the only the glimmers of light being pictures like the one above and SpaceX. SLS may not happen if NASA cant get the money they need in time before SpaceX kicks them to the curb. How long before Elon proposes to put the Orion on top of his rockets? Because as fate would have it the Orion capsule and the Falcon rockets are coming together at a faster ( more equal ) rate then the SLS. ( citation needed )

SLS is flying in 2017, at about the same time Dragon v2 will start carrying people to the ISS. There is no antagonism between NASA and SpaceX. SpaceX is a contractor for NASA, just like Boeing, ULA, and others. SpaceX only exists because NASA is paying for it.

[78stonewobble]

How much are you willing to pay for morale and inspiration? How much are your fellow taxpayers willing to pay? I suspect most people would be happier with free beer, cable TV, and football games as a morale and inspiration booster... That would cost a lot less than sending people to Mars.

In the case of spaceflight, human's decision-making is trumped by human's need to rest, sleep, eat, breath, stay out of danger, and get back home. The slight advantage of not having to wait 10 minutes for a round-trip of orders-responses from mission control on Earth is tiny compared to the huge disadvantage of having to ship 100 tons of equipment just to keep the human alive so that he can EVA a couple of hours per day.

I've already said this, but for the cost of sending a single manned expedition to do a 3 month survey over a small radius around the landing site, you can have a fleet of hundreds of rovers to survey a much wider area for several years. You will actually get orders of magnitude more science over long-duration studies of a wider area than spending several weeks in the same spot.

The only science that really benefits from sending humans to Mars is studying how we can send humans to Mars. Anything else can be done by robots for a fraction of the cost.

We haven't been blown away in the last 200 000 years. The chances that we get blown away during the next 1000 years is infinitesimal. There is no rush. There isn't much that can happen to us on Earth where we wouldn't have at least few million survivors. I can't think of a single scenario where having a few thousand people on Mars would make any difference.

SLS is flying in 2017, at about the same time Dragon v2 will start carrying people to the ISS. There is no antagonism between NASA and SpaceX. SpaceX is a contractor for NASA, just like Boeing, ULA, and others. SpaceX only exists because NASA is paying for it.

Well, if you guys didn't have to spend so much on defence, there would be money for more of an effort. Tho I don't really foresee that becoming possible, but it would be nice. Alternatively It would be nice to see increased working together across the pond.

In principle I agree, that you can do alot with robotics, but the fact of the matter is that trained biologists and geologists on the ground, even in space suits, could more vigorously survey an interesting area. And the cost of robotics increases alot if you find something that you want to check out in "detail" and possibly even bring samples back from.

I say... Send robotic equipment for large scale surveying and finding interesting areas, then follow up with manned landings in the "must check" areas, so we can then be sure we get the right samples back.

IF offcourse the economy and politics allow for it... As you also say, that is no rush.

I do agree with the other poster that long term, the future of humanity must include living and working in space and on other planets, but again no rush, as far as we know that is. So not a high priority, but it should be a priority, to slowly work on the science and knowledge needed for that to happen. Ie. testing out the damn centrifuge at some point.

Agree with the nasa and spacex thing.

Edited January 23, 2015 by 78stonewobble

[Motokid600]

How much are you willing to pay for morale and inspiration? How much are your fellow taxpayers willing to pay? I suspect most people would be happier with free beer, cable TV, and football games as a morale and inspiration booster... That would cost a lot less than sending people to Mars.

How much are tax payers willing to pay? Zero for the uninterested and a lot for the interested. Myself? Id be willing to give a few dollars out of my weekly paycheck to NASA. But until the day comes where tax payers get to dictate where their money is spent NASA will have to make do with their pennies. We fought Vietnam AND landed on the Moon at the same time back in the 60s so don't tell me we dont have the money for it. We do. Its just the manner in which that money is divided that has to be reevaluated. The idea here among many is to get people interested so that can happen. Manned flight is far more interesting ( especially to kids ) then unmanned flight. Free beer and cable? What does that have to do with anything? Sounds strawman to me. When I say "morale" I mean more along the lines of inspiration. As Niel Degrasse Tyson says we need to get people dreaming again. Free beer and cable wont do that. That wont change the way people think and live.

In the case of spaceflight, human's decision-making is trumped by human's need to rest, sleep, eat, breath, stay out of danger, and get back home. The slight advantage of not having to wait 10 minutes for a round-trip of orders-responses from mission control on Earth is tiny compared to the huge disadvantage of having to ship 100 tons of equipment just to keep the human alive so that he can EVA a couple of hours per day.

I've already said this, but for the cost of sending a single manned expedition to do a 3 month survey over a small radius around the landing site, you can have a fleet of hundreds of rovers to survey a much wider area for several years. You will actually get orders of magnitude more science over long-duration studies of a wider area than spending several weeks in the same spot.

The only science that really benefits from sending humans to Mars is studying how we can send humans to Mars. Anything else can be done by robots for a fraction of the cost.

There are more reasons to send people to Mars other then science. Learning to live like that. Meaning more efficiently. That will help us back here in the ways that we really need. The technologies and advancements in getting an efficient Mars colony up and running will aid us back here again, in the greatest way possible. A fleet of rovers cant do that. And when it does come to science a rover cant scrutinize and make last minute decisions. A rover could drive right by a great discovery and we wouldn't even know it. And lets say your fleet of rovers has a problem. Impossible to fix from back home. Real easy if a human was there to give it a kick. No, the ultimate solution is what 78stonewobble said above. You really need both rovers and humans to really make field science pay off and get faster, more meaningful results.

We haven't been blown away in the last 200 000 years. The chances that we get blown away during the next 1000 years is infinitesimal. There is no rush. There isn't much that can happen to us on Earth where we wouldn't have at least few million survivors. I can't think of a single scenario where having a few thousand people on Mars would make any difference.

"blown away" again it would be anything. Doesn't have to be something from space such as a CME or asteroid. Like I said chances are it will be ourselves or over population/blight that gets us. "There is no rush" Why must we have a procrastinatic ( if that's a word ) view of humanity's future? The sooner we get started the better for the generation that NEEDS it when the time comes. Our job here as future parents, grandparents and so forth is to provide a foundation for the next generations to build upon. We are currently failing at that job. Nibb31 you said it yourself. People these days are more interested in beer and sports games. So what do we have to do to change that? Put people in space. Back to the Moon. To asteroids and Mars. Save your fleet of rovers for the distances further then Venus/Mars.

SLS is flying in 2017, at about the same time Dragon v2 will start carrying people to the ISS. There is no antagonism between NASA and SpaceX. SpaceX is a contractor for NASA, just like Boeing, ULA, and others. SpaceX only exists because NASA is paying for it.

Its been delayed to mid 2018. Even so 2017 is pathetic. That's not a snails pace. No if NASA was moving at a snails pace then maybe that date would be mid 2016 instead. No NASA is moving at a glaciers pace. Which brings us back to the first comment regarding taxpayers and money. By time 2018 hits SpaceX will have a rocket that can put the Orion into orbit. With a transfer stage? I don't know. The Falcon heavy would be needed, but idk the rate of which that is being developed versus the SLS. We'll see. But at the current rate of development things are not looking good for SLS. Few year from now lets say a contractor wants to put something big into orbit. Who do you think they'll turn too?

Edited January 23, 2015 by Motokid600

[Nibb31]

How much are tax payers willing to pay? Zero for the uninterested and a lot for the interested. Myself? Id be willing to give a few dollars out of my weekly paycheck to NASA. But until the day comes where tax payers get to dictate where their money is spent NASA will have to make do with their pennies. We fought Vietnam AND landed on the Moon at the same time back in the 60s so don't tell me we dont have the money for it. We do. Its just the manner in which that money is divided that has to be reevaluated. The idea here among many is to get people interested so that can happen. Manned flight is far more interesting ( especially to kids ) then unmanned flight. Free beer and cable? What does that have to do with anything? Sounds strawman to me. When I say "morale" I mean more along the lines of inspiration. As Niel Degrasse Tyson says we need to get people dreaming again. Free beer and cable wont do that. That wont change the way people think and live.

Did Apollo change the way we think and live ? Maybe for some of us. Most of the public got bored after Apollo 12 and switched to SuperBowl and the Vietnam War. Today, the public's attention span is even shorter. We have a freaking space station up there doing amazing stuff, yet most people don't even know it exists. Something like a Mars landing would have the entertainment value of the Olympic Games or a blockbuster movie. After a week, most people will have moved on to the latest Kanye scandal or the next newsworthy headline the media throws at them.

It's a sad state of affairs, I agree, but the inspirational value simply isn't worth the billions of dollars that you need to throw at it.

There are more reasons to send people to Mars other then science. Learning to live like that. Meaning more efficiently. That will help us back here in the ways that we really need. The technologies and advancements in getting an efficient Mars colony up and running will aid us back here again, in the greatest way possible.

Living more efficiently is going to be a necessity, whether we go to Mars or not. It makes no difference. If we don't, there will be no Mars because we will have much bigger problems on our hands.

A fleet of rovers cant do that. And when it does come to science a rover cant scrutinize and make last minute decisions. A rover could drive right by a great discovery and we wouldn't even know it.

A human can also drive right by a great discovery, especially if he is focused on driving, navigating, and staying alive at the same time. A rover scans every square inch of the terrain that it covers with all sorts of sensors and has a team of scientists looking at every detail.

As for quick decisions, they are important when you're on an EVA with a 2-hour air supply. A rover has all the time in the world, so it doesn't need to make quick decisions.

And lets say your fleet of rovers has a problem. Impossible to fix from back home. Real easy if a human was there to give it a kick.

Compare the cost of landing a 100-ton Mars habitat with the cost of attaching a multi-purpose arm to your rover to give it a kick. heck, for a fraction of the cost, you could land a couple of teleoperated robonauts to maintain your rovers, do an oil change and even swap tires when needed.

The limits of rovers are dictated by their size and mass. If you had the funding to send 100-ton payloads to Mars surface, you would still get more science from a fleet of robots than from a bunch of squishy humanoids, because most of that mass will be just to prevent those humanoids from dying.

No, the ultimate solution is what 78stonewobble said above. You really need both rovers and humans to really make field science pay off and get faster, more meaningful results.

Again, who cares about faster? Mars isn't going anywhere. There is no rush. And the results are only as meaningful as the science package that you send there. There is no technical limit to the science that can be automated. Just about every manned experiment can be replicated by a machine if you design it to.

"blown away" again it would be anything. Doesn't have to be something from space such as a CME or asteroid. Like I said chances are it will be ourselves or over population/blight that gets us.

Sending a dozen people to Mars won't solve overpopulation. Neither will sending a few million for that matter. To solve overpopulation, you need to spend the money on education and contraceptives, not rockets.

"There is no rush" Why must we have a procrastinatic ( if that's a word ) view of humanity's future? The sooner we get started the better for the generation that NEEDS it when the time comes. Our job here as future parents, grandparents and so forth is to provide a foundation for the next generations to build upon.

Rushing things has never been a good way to build a foundation. A foundation needs a broad and solid structure that you can build upon. It means taking time to do things right. It means building a sustainable infrastructure. Apollo was not sustainable. It was a rushed crash program, and therefore was a crappy foundation to build upon.

If we want to inspire, we need to aim for goals that are reachable now and to achieve them successfully. We shouldn't focus on long term goals that we can't reach. Plans for a Mars landing in another 20 or 30 years will just get cancelled as soon as the political wind changes and people get bored with it.

The "rush" comes from people who want everything now, or at least during their lifetime. It's a trait of our modern culture. I was born too late to witness the Moon landings, and probably too early to witness Mars landings, but I am still living interesting times. If you step back and look at the big picture, the Earth and Mars are billions of years old. We are only 200000 years old, and yet we have already accomplished a lot. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter whether people land on Mars during my lifetime or my descendants' in 100, 1000 or 10000 years, because that short period is a tiny drop in the timescale of Humanity.

[KerikBalm]

I have yet to see any compelling reason to send people to Mars.

Mostly its just hyperbole about the value of having "boots on the ground" doing science, and inspiring people.

Personally, I'd be more inspiried by a robot going beneath the surface of Europa's ice crust, turning on some flood lights, and showing us what is down there. (plus microscopy images of the seawater, who knows what is floating down there.

Or enceladus...

I'd be more inspired by a amphibious titan rover

Or a rover that goes to the martian geysers, or into the martian caves/lava tubes.

You could accomplish all of the above, simultaneously, for much much much less than 1 crewed mission to mars.

When we get working fusion power, then we can talk about sending human places beyond Earth orbit....

[Airlock]

[KSK]

Heh - after the last test Only Slightly Bent might have been a better name for the spaceport drone. Although so long as they're not calling it Zero Gravitas, we're good.

[magnemoe]

So they are making another barge, a west coast one?

is this for the texas launchpad?

[Streetwind]

Texas is not on the west coast, silly

California however is, so I'd assume this is for Vandenberg launches.

[Motokid600]

@Nibb31 what you say is true. But the fact of the matter is rovers are boring and do nothing for changing societies mind set. Infact they make it worse because they are so boring. Apollo was the cold war mind set. Wave the flag and done. A Mars, Moon or asteroid landing now a days id like to think would be for the right reason. A long, permanent stay. It creates role models for kids to look up too and is vastly more interesting to people. People who've had nothing to talk about other then who killed who since the 1970s. And again the technologies developed to make a colony on Mars or the Moon would help us back here in just the right way. That's something that rovers cant do.

All im proposing is the space between Venus and Mars is perfectly explorable for Humans. That's not stretching anything what so ever. Perfectly realistic to say that I expect a Mars landing within 50 years. I don't think that is saying too much.

@KerikBalm - We can have all that and more if NASA could get just a few more pennies from people. But more rovers and probes wont make that happen because they put people to sleep.

[78stonewobble]

Also I don't think it's about inspiring joe the plumber, but possibly the next einstein.

[Newt]

'Joe the Plumber''s taxes pay for Einstein's research grants. If the average person thinks science is useless, their congress should think science is useless. Einstein is already into physics; we need those other people to be, too.

[78stonewobble]

'Joe the Plumber''s taxes pay for Einstein's research grants. If the average person thinks science is useless, their congress should think science is useless. Einstein is already into physics; we need those other people to be, too.

And "Joe the Plumber" benefits from those. Free to stop using refrigerated foods, antibiotics, electricity, computers and what not that science has given him.

Certainly the average person is intelligent enough to recognize that science has meant an incredible improvement in lifespan and quality of life.

The average joe, doesn't need to be interested or knowledgable in sciences, beyond that... It's an investment like so many others.

[Nibb31]

@Nibb31 what you say is true. But the fact of the matter is rovers are boring and do nothing for changing societies mind set. Infact they make it worse because they are so boring.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on this.

You might not appreciate the engineering and science that goes into something like Curiosity, Galileo, or New Horizons, but I find robotic space exploration exciting. For me, actually achieving something like that is so much more awe-inspiring than doing DRMs, CGI clips, and Powerpoints, which is, whether we like it or not, the closest we will get to a manned Mars expedition for the next 30 years.

Apollo was the cold war mind set. Wave the flag and done. A Mars, Moon or asteroid landing now a days id like to think would be for the right reason. A long, permanent stay. It creates role models for kids to look up too and is vastly more interesting to people. People who've had nothing to talk about other then who killed who since the 1970s. And again the technologies developed to make a colony on Mars or the Moon would help us back here in just the right way. That's something that rovers cant do.

Again, you need to have a better justification for spending $100 billion than just inspire the kids and make media headlines for a week or two.

The technologies that you talk about (ISRU, closed-loop life support, etc...) will have to be developed, whether we go to Mars or not. It's a matter of survival here on Earth. Going to Mars does not change anything, because we need to have those technologies prior to going to Mars. If we don't develop them, nobody is going to care about going to Mars because we will have bigger problems on our hands.

@KerikBalm - We can have all that and more if NASA could get just a few more pennies from people. But more rovers and probes wont make that happen because they put people to sleep.

We don't go to Mars just because it makes good entertainment. That's what movies, sports, and TV shows are for. Even a trip to Mars will be boring to most people. The first foot on the surface will be on CNN for a day or two, but there is no reason to believe that the 6 month journey and 3 month stay on the surface won't be just as boring as the ISS is to the general public.

The fact is, we simply don't have a good enough justification at this point to send humans to Mars. You can throw around buzzwords like "inspiration" and "excitement" all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the cost outweighs any potential benefit, and huge investments like that need to have some sort of measurement ROI.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Nibb31

[Motokid600]

Yea. I hear ya Nibb. And no I definitely appreciate the engineering that goes into these probes and rovers. The Curiosity landing is a fond memory of mine. It's the majority of the people that don't is what concerns me. I just think we really need something to get people looking up again, ya know? What would it take to get society to enthuse about space in general as much as we do with our sports? Idk if such a mindset shift is possible unless a major event were to occur.

And I just can't help, but think that if NASA and SpaceX were more adept at PR ( more so NASA ) it'd be a step in the right direction. For starters I believe launches need more/bettter cameras for coverage. There's plenty that's tv worthy in those 8 minutes. I hope to soon see a major news outlet cut from beheadings to a rocket launch just for 8min. Gotta get the mass public seeing these views from space and the awesome engineering that goes into it.

And if not then somethings gotta happen to shift the public so people are willing to throw NASA just a little more money. We may disagree on the unmanned/manned approach when it comes to space travel, but if I said that 2018 for the first SLS flight is absurdly slow... Would you say the same in a way? I'd hate to bring up Apollo again. Different times, different people, but if you look the Apollo capsules maiden flight was in 67 ( or was it 66? ). The equivalent of what Orion just had. We landed on the Moon in 69.

So when I see that type of progress made in just a few years ( and we we're fighting a major war ) I compare to today's progress and I die a little inside, lol.

Edited January 25, 2015 by Motokid600

[Bill Phil]

Apollo technically started as soon as NASA started... At least the concept.