Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Magion]

Magnificent!

 

[StarManta]

1 hour ago, Mighty1 said:

Not to open a new topic but can someone enlighten me on the payload. There are 11 satellites that were released with no engine burn between them so their orbit is basically the same. What good are 11 comm satellites clustered together? Do they change their orbit after deployment using some on board maneuvering system? 

Yes, each satellite has about 10kg of maneuvering fuel. It's not a lot, but if used judiciously, it's more than enough to get them spread around their orbit evenly. The tiniest spurt of prograde thrust can change their 90 minute orbit into a 90-minute-1-second orbit; it will fall 18 seconds behind its neighbor per day, and in about 5 months, it'll be on the opposite side of the orbit from its neighbor. (I've heard it will be months until they are in their final positions, so I suspect this is precisely what they're doing.)

[Cloakedwand72]

Did any one watch this event.?

Falcon 9 First Stage Landing | From Helicopter

 

And i have a few science questions about the launch.

1:Can this Falcon 9 version carry the same weight the Space shuttle carried and still reland the booster?Or would that be the Falcon heavy's job?

2:Can this Falcon 9 version carry a crewed moon fly bye mission and still reuse the first stage?Or like i said would that be a Falcon Heavy's job

[Glaran K'erman]

There is already a thread for this, feel free to join in there 

 

[Pecan]

I nominate this for rocketry photograph of the ... decade or more, since it's the first that shows a rocket launching and landing.

However, KSP fans, it does show (as if we didn't know anyway) that this first stage is still a sub-orbital vehicle.  It it went to orbit it would be a lot easier (and dV-efficient) not to reverse direction but to allow it to complete an orbit and land from the West.

Thoughts on that reversal and the effort it takes?

Edited December 22, 2015 by Pecan

[Nibb31]

8 minutes ago, Pecan said:

However, KSP fans, it does show (as if we didn't know anyway) that this first stage is still a sub-orbital vehicle.  It it went to orbit it would be a lot easier (and dV-efficient) not to reverse direction but to allow it to complete an orbit and land from the West.

Thoughts on that reversal and the effort it takes?

It's a first stage. It does what first stages do.

If it went all the way to orbit and back, it would be an SSTO, meaning that it would have an abysmal payload fraction.

55 minutes ago, g00bd0g said:

So what happens to the orbiter stage after the satellites have deployed? De-orbit or Keppler syndrome?

They are required to deorbit it.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Nibb31

[Motokid600]

12 minutes ago, Pecan said:

I nominate this for rocketry photograph of the ... decade or more, since it's the first that shows a rocket launching and landing.

However, KSP fans, it does show (as if we didn't know anyway) that this first stage is still a sub-orbital vehicle.  It it went to orbit it would be a lot easier (and dV-efficient) not to reverse direction but to allow it to complete an orbit and land from the West.

Thoughts on that reversal and the effort it takes?

If it went to orbit it would be destroyed on reentry. The reversal is very little effort after it looses the upper stage. Too little effort in fact. The rocket is overpowered with just one of nine engines burning.

[Technical Ben]

Neat!

Now to hold off the temptation to imitate real life in KSP... wait, who needs real life to imitate fiction!

[cubinator]

5 hours ago, Kerbol Macrosystems said:

Where was that? I missed it. 

It was right at the end of the livestream.

[Shpaget]

9 minutes ago, Motokid600 said:

If it went to orbit it would be destroyed on reentry. The reversal is very little effort after it looses the upper stage. Too little effort in fact. The rocket is overpowered with just one of nine engines burning.

It still uses three engines for boostback burn.

 

Unrelated to that, but at around T+ 3:00, just after second stage startup, the acceleration seems rather horrible, as indicated by the graphics in the upper right corner. Does anybody know what's the second stage TWR at the beginning of the burn?

Edited December 22, 2015 by Shpaget

[Nibb31]

6 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

It still uses three engines for boostback burn.

Yes, but only one, throttled down, for landing. The boostback burn needs more oomph.

[Vanamonde]

Several threads have been merged. Let's keep the SpaceX dicussion all in one place, please. 

[Ten Key]

57 minutes ago, Cloakedwand72 said:

And i have a few science questions about the launch.

1:Can this Falcon 9 version carry the same weight the Space shuttle carried and still reland the booster?Or would that be the Falcon heavy's job?

2:Can this Falcon 9 version carry a crewed moon fly bye mission and still reuse the first stage?Or like i said would that be a Falcon Heavy's job

A few quick numbers off the internet. . .

Space Shuttle Payload Capacity

    LEO: 27,500 kg
    GTO: 3,810 kg

 Falcon 9 Payload Capacity

    LEO: 13,150 kg
    GTO: 4,850 kg

It looks like Falcon 9 can only lift about half of what the shuttle could for low earth orbit payloads. It does enjoy an advantage for payloads headed for a geostationary transfer orbit though.

To answer your second question, the Apollo CSM (Command/Service Module) massed about 15,000 kilograms, and the combined Orion spacecraft masses about 26,000 kilograms. The Falcon 9 can only heft about 13,000 kilograms to LEO, so no, it won't be sending any manned missions to the Moon.

[SargeRho]

How about Falcon Heavies? It'd probably require launching Orion and a REI stage on one, and a TLI/LOI stage on another though, I'm not entirely sure.

[Wjolcz]

48 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

A few quick numbers off the internet. . .

Space Shuttle Payload Capacity

    LEO: 27,500 kg
    GTO: 3,810 kg

 Falcon 9 Payload Capacity

    LEO: 13,150 kg
    GTO: 4,850 kg

It looks like Falcon 9 can only lift about half of what the shuttle could for low earth orbit payloads. It does enjoy an advantage for payloads headed for a geostationary transfer orbit though.

To answer your second question, the Apollo CSM (Command/Service Module) massed about 15,000 kilograms, and the combined Orion spacecraft masses about 26,000 kilograms. The Falcon 9 can only heft about 13,000 kilograms to LEO, so no, it won't be sending any manned missions to the Moon.

What about two seperate rocket launches and then assembly in orbit? Wouldn't that be cheaper with the 1st stage returning and being reused?

Edited December 22, 2015 by Veeltch

[Nibb31]

11 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

What about two seperate rocket launches and then assembly in orbit? Wouldn't that be cheaper with the 1st stage returning and being reused?

"Cheaper" is not anything that anybody knows yet, not even SpaceX. Recovering a spent stage is a great achievement. Reusing a spent stage is the next step that SpaceX is only just going to start on. Reusing stages economically is yet another step that will come some time later. We don't know what amount of refurbishing and testing is necessary, how many times a stage can be reused, nor what the break-even point is in terms of flight rate compared to the economies of scale due to mass-production, not if the reduced payload is sustainable on the launch market.

So it's too early to speculate on what can or can't be done economically with a reusable Falcon Heavy. We don't even know what sort of payload it put into LEO or GTO depending on the configuration, whether 0, 1, or 3 cores are recovered, and where they land.

[g00bd0g]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

They are required to deorbit it.

So where'd it go? Maybe there's a perfectly useable merlin engine at the bottom of an ocean somewhere?

Edited December 22, 2015 by g00bd0g

[Nibb31]

I doubt it would be perfectly usable after burning up on re-entry. Any bits that survived would splash down into the ocean.

Recovering an upper stage is a much harder problem than the first stage: you will need a seriously beefy (and heavy) reusable heat shield, a very deep-throttlable Merlin D-Vac, and a way to light that huge engine bell facing a hypersonic airstream while staying stable. It makes sense to spend a manageable effort to recover 9 engines, but it doesn't make economical sense to spend a huge effort to recover 1 engine.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Nibb31

[Pecan]

2 hours ago, Motokid600 said:

If it went to orbit it would be destroyed on reentry. The reversal is very little effort after it looses the upper stage. Too little effort in fact. The rocket is overpowered with just one of nine engines burning.

You, and Nibb31, miss my points:

1. If first stage is sub-orbital and blue origin is sub-orbital then arguments about landing from orbit are moot - what the payload or later stage(s) might do after separation is their own affair.  I do think people have been a bit too sniffy about the first vertical landing, even if SpaceX's vehicle is more useful.
2. The effort of reversal is not so much about TWR but dV.  It's hardly surprising the launch stage doesn't have to use all the engines it used to lift the whole vehicle just to manoeuvre itself, minus most fuel.
3. A few people simulated the barge-landing in KSP but I have yet to see anyone turn their rocket around to come back to KSC

 

[Nick481]

Standing on my roof just waiting for almost ten minutes after liftoff and then seeing it light up for that re entry burn was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life. 35 miles away and some cloud cover didn't prevent it from being really bright and you could tell it was hauling some serious mail at the beginning of the re entry burn. Then that gap of suspense before the landing burn was so intense.

[SargeRho]

55 minutes ago, Pecan said:

A few people simulated the barge-landing in KSP but I have yet to see anyone turn their rocket around to come back to KSC

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTaQ6-nNB-Q

You were saying? First result on google.

[KerbonautInTraining]

51 minutes ago, Pecan said:

If first stage is sub-orbital and blue origin is sub-orbital then arguments about landing from orbit are moot - what the payload or later stage(s) might do after separation is their own affair.  I do think people have been a bit too sniffy about the first vertical landing, even if SpaceX's vehicle is more useful.

The F9 first stage has to travel downrange and reach a pretty precise state vector when it cuts off. New Shepard can go wherever it needs to to get back down to the pad even before separation. As long as its payload goes up it was a successful flight.

Note that this is all comparative. Both companies are doing amazing things by increasing our accessibility to space and bringing it back into the public's eyes.

[KerBlammo]

1 hour ago, Pecan said:

 

1. A few people simulated the barge-landing in KSP but I have yet to see anyone turn their rocket around to come back to KSC

 

After reading this I decided to give it a try myself.  Success on first attempt.

[Motokid600]

1 hour ago, Pecan said:

You, and Nibb31, miss my points:

1. If first stage is sub-orbital and blue origin is sub-orbital then arguments about landing from orbit are moot - what the payload or later stage(s) might do after separation is their own affair.  I do think people have been a bit too sniffy about the first vertical landing, even if SpaceX's vehicle is more useful.
2. The effort of reversal is not so much about TWR but dV.  It's hardly surprising the launch stage doesn't have to use all the engines it used to lift the whole vehicle just to manoeuvre itself, minus most fuel.
3. A few people simulated the barge-landing in KSP but I have yet to see anyone turn their rocket around to come back to KSC

 

Blue Origins doesn't have to accelerate a 100 tons downrange. It's as simple as that.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Motokid600

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

I doubt it would be perfectly usable after burning up on re-entry. Any bits that survived would splash down into the ocean.

Recovering an upper stage is a much harder problem than the first stage: you will need a seriously beefy (and heavy) reusable heat shield, a very deep-throttlable Merlin D-Vac, and a way to light that huge engine bell facing a hypersonic airstream while staying stable. It makes sense to spend a manageable effort to recover 9 engines, but it doesn't make economical sense to spend a huge effort to recover 1 engine.

Didn't the orbital version of DC-X originally plan to use the engines as a heat shield (at least until the extra lift of a heat shield on the top of the rocket was required by the DOD)