Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Wingman703]

Wait, Russians will start buying/trading for seats on Dragon? When was that announced?

[Albert VDS]

[quote name='Wingman703']Wait, Russians will start buying/trading for seats on Dragon? When was that announced?[/QUOTE]

It seems like a more efficient way to send up the new expedition members in 1 rocket, instead of dividing them up in 2 rockets.

[Streetwind]

^--- This, pretty much.


I don't think there was such an announcement because it's not really necessary. It's not going to work out smoothly any other way. I also think I heard Charles Bolden mention it during a press event at some point, but I've watched so many of them for Commercial Crew over the past two years that I couldn't possibly remember which. I think he was asked by a clueless reporter about whether or not Russia was going to scrap Soyuz.

[Kryten]

[quote name='RainDreamer']Soon we will see if there will be a replacement for Soyuz.[/QUOTE]
There is a Soyuz replacement, PPTS/Rus, but it is intended for lunar missions. Any ISS missions will be test ones, and not long before ISS retirement.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Interesting and all, but I'm getting a little nervous waiting for SpaceX to fly ANYthing right now. They're rapidly running out of 2015 to do anything in, and still say two flights last I heard.

[Kartoffelkuchen]

The first stage for Orbcomm OG2 has been shipped to Cape Canaveral a few days ago. So we probably had a successful full duration static fire test now, man, that took like ages, though there's still no confirmation on that from SpaceX.
It seems like they would be on schedule for the OG2 launch, I just hope that they won't run into anymore issues.

[CatastrophicFailure]

The wife just sent this on to me, worth noting:

[URL="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-move-spacex-blue-origin-just-secretly-landed-a-reusable-rocket?utm_source=vicenewsfb"]Blue Origin secretly lands rocket[/URL]


Hey, Elon! Elon! The competition's knocking, let's see a launch schedule, huh? Chop chop!

[Red Iron Crown]

Musk's been slagging them on Twitter. Claiming that grasshopper was the first suborbital rocket landed successfully (didn't pass the Karman line afaik) and a successful "water landing" of F9R. Pretty classless IMO, he should congratulate them and get back to work.

[s]Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised after his equally classless response to the Antares failure.[/s] Retracted, I was misremembering when he said what. Edited November 24, 2015 by Red Iron Crown

[Kryten]

[quote name='Red Iron Crown']Musk's been slagging them on Twitter. Claiming that grasshopper was the first suborbital rocket landed successfully (didn't pass the Karman line afaik) and a successful "water landing" of F9R. Pretty classless IMO, he should congratulate them and get back to work.[/QUOTE]
If grasshopper is suborbital then so was DC-X, and BO's Goddard demonstrator. He's acting like one of his clueless fanboys.

[Mitchz95]

I guess he feels cheated. If CRS-7 hadn't blown up it might well have been the first landing.

[Cirocco]

I made a thread about this in the space lounge as well and I'll repeat the same arguments here: this landing has almost nothing in common with what SpaceX is trying to do. The falcon 9 is designed to boost a payload + upper stage halfway to orbit. It's far, far, FAR bigger, heavier, more flexible, its engines don't allow it to hover like the New Shepard, etc. SpaceX has to overcome a whole lot more difficult problems.

That being said, this [I]was[/I] a historic event: it was the first rocket that passed the Karman (I swear I almost typed Kerman there) line and come back down to land safely. The team behind it definitely deserves all the recognition and credit for that. And I definitely agree that the civil response from musk would have been to say "hey, good job on achieving your goal. Now we're going to go back to work on ours". I have great admiration for what Elon Musk has done and continues to do to drive technology forward to a more sustainable future, but I really dislike how he reacts to these sort of things, or to people investigating technologies or things he considers not worth researching.

[Lukaszenko]

As much as a Musk fanboy I am, that's beyond cool that not one, but at least two people are going full-in into reusable rockets. It makes me really believe that somebody WILL succeed, and there are great things on the horizon.

[Red Iron Crown]

[quote name='Cirocco']That being said, this [I]was[/I] a historic event: it was the first rocket that passed the Karman (I swear I almost typed Kerman there) line and come back down to land safely.[/quote]
I guess we're not counting the Space Shuttle or X-15. :)

[quote]The team behind it definitely deserves all the recognition and credit for that. And I definitely agree that the civil response from musk would have been to say "hey, good job on achieving your goal. Now we're going to go back to work on ours". I have great admiration for what Elon Musk has done and continues to do to drive technology forward to a more sustainable future, but I really dislike how he reacts to these sort of things, or to people investigating technologies or things he considers not worth researching.[/QUOTE]
You said that much better than I did.

[Albert VDS]

[quote name='Red Iron Crown']Musk's been slagging them on Twitter. Claiming that grasshopper was the first suborbital rocket landed successfully (didn't pass the Karman line afaik) and a successful "water landing" of F9R. Pretty classless IMO, he should congratulate them and get back to work.[/QUOTE]


Actually Elon Mentioned this:

"[URL="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/669199392231063552"]Jeff maybe unaware SpaceX suborbital VTOL flight began 2013. [B]Orbital water landing 2014[/B]. Orbital land landing next. https://t.co/S6WMRnEFY5[/URL]"

Why he posted the grasshopper video, I don't know. But

He also congratulates them in the first tweet he posts about it:
"[URL="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/669129347555430400"]Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster.[/URL]"


[quote name='Red Iron Crown']Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised after his equally classless response to the Antares failure.[/QUOTE]


How he said: "[URL="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/527247155954610176"]Sorry to hear about the @OrbitalSciences launch. Hope they recover soon."[/URL]

[quote name='Kryten']If grasshopper is suborbital then so was DC-X, and BO's Goddard demonstrator. He's acting like one of his clueless fanboys.[/QUOTE]

He didn't say grasshopper was suborbital. Edited November 24, 2015 by Albert VDS

[CatastrophicFailure]

[quote name='Red Iron Crown']I guess we're not counting the Space Shuttle or X-15. :)


[/QUOTE]

We're not, context is [I]powered[/I] landing :sticktongue:

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

... and where's the "slagging?" [URL="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor"]First tweet [/URL]from Musk [I]is [/I]congratulatory, followed by some pretty reasonable explanation of the differences in what's been accomplished... and credit to the X-15 & SpaceShipOne.

[Red Iron Crown]

[quote name='Albert VDS']How he said: "[URL="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/527247155954610176"]Sorry to hear about the @OrbitalSciences launch. Hope they recover soon."[/URL][/QUOTE]
You're right about that, I was recalling the quote of his that got tossed around after: "The results are pretty crazy. One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s—I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere." Which was a bit tasteless but long before the failure occurred.

[Red Iron Crown]

[quote name='CatastrophicFailure']... and where's the "slagging?" [URL="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor"]First tweet [/URL]from Musk [I]is [/I]congratulatory, followed by some pretty reasonable explanation of the differences in what's been accomplished... and credit to the X-15 & SpaceShipOne.[/QUOTE]
Here: [url]https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/669194136248041472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw[/url]

Albert VDS, the above is also where he claims Grasshopper was suborbital. Edited November 24, 2015 by Red Iron Crown

[razark]

[quote name='Red Iron Crown']...the above is also where he claims Grasshopper was suborbital.[/QUOTE]
Well, it was suborbital. It went up, it didn't go into orbit, it came down. Neither Bezos or Musk mentions space in their tweets, only used rockets.

(However, what Musk was [i]implying[/i] is quite clear.)

[wumpus]

retracted and redundant. Edited November 24, 2015 by wumpus

[sgt_flyer]

One thing though (outside of the great accomplisment of landing the rocket), the BO crew capsule seems to have kicked a lot of dust when it landed on parachutes - wouldn't that be a bit of a hard landing for a tourist crew ? (Or do they plan to have something to cushion that landing ?)

[Shpaget]

The dust is from retrorockets.
[url]https://www.blueorigin.com/technology[/url]
[QUOTE]The crew capsule descends under parachutes for a smooth landing, in the same way as the earliest space pioneers. Three independent parachutes provide redundancy, while a retro-thrust system further cushions your landing.[/QUOTE]

Soyuz does the same.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyvIw_yO60w[/url] Edited November 24, 2015 by Shpaget

[sgt_flyer]

Thanks :)

[magnemoe]

[quote name='razark']Well, it was suborbital. It went up, it didn't go into orbit, it came down. Neither Bezos or Musk mentions space in their tweets, only used rockets.

(However, what Musk was [i]implying[/i] is quite clear.)[/QUOTE]
Common use of suborbital maximum height above 100 km, yes some extend this downward towards 60 km or so as you can not use control surfaces efficiently that high.

Grasshopper never went higher than some km. Yes it might have been able to go suborbital fully loaded but this was never done.

[Streetwind]

[quote name='Mitchz95']I guess he feels cheated. If CRS-7 hadn't blown up it might well have been the first landing.[/QUOTE]

I think the same, pretty much. To be honest, I've never seen Elon Musk this [I]salty[/I] ever before. There really isn't any other words for it than that.

It's a good indicator of just how much that one single failure has thrown SpaceX back, how much momentum it has cost them. Return to flight can't come soon enough!

[Mitchz95]

I wonder if this is exactly what SpaceX needs. Someone they can compete with on near-equal footing. Should be quite the motivator to keep things moving. :)