Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Kryten]

44 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Overall very good work. 
However did the booster accelerate to reach 2500 MPH= 4000 km/h =  1.1 km/s, I thought they would start landing booster shortly after eject but it landed well after the capsule. It might be simpler to have it do its trajectory as they did not expected it to survive it was no reason to make an one time mission profile. 

It had close to a full fuel load at abort, it probably wasn't designed to land in that state. Easiest way to burn off the fuel is to continue as normal.

[Kryten]

On 29/09/2016 at 9:41 PM, Veeltch said:

 

http://spacenews.com/spacexs-shotwell-on-falcon-9-inquiry-discounts-for-reused-rockets-and-silicon-valleys-test-and-fail-ethos/

Big interview with Shotwell, with an update on the failure investigation. They're now sure that one of the COPV helium bottles 'let go', causing the failure, but they're not sure why. They don't think the cause was an issue with the COPV specifically.

[Basto]

One thing that struck me as interesting was that they said on the webcast that they actually throttled down the booster after separation to account for the fact that it no longer had a payload. 

Seems like a better test of the efficacy would be to actually cause a catastrophic failure on the booster to see if the capsule can escape intact. 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Kryten said:

It had close to a full fuel load at abort, it probably wasn't designed to land in that state. Easiest way to burn off the fuel is to continue as normal.

Another reason, even long distance planes can not land with the fuel load they take off with. 

[Ultimate Steve]

Watching 6 hours later (I was at school)

*Watches Ariane 5 launch*

*Sees that BO launch happened*

Me: Sorry, Ariane! I've gotta see this!

*Watches video*

Me: Holy cow, it SURVIVED?!?!?!?!?!?

Me: HOLY COW, IT LANDED AGAIN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Me: This is the second best day ever! A model rocket launch that almost crashed, and Ariane 5, and a BO flight!

 

[todofwar]

So we got to the moon because of the pride of nations, and it looks like we'll get to Mars on the egos of billionaires. Interesting world we live in. 

[Bluegillbronco2]

Just a quick note. According to the Blue Origin website the LES system puts out 70,000 lbs of thrust. And the capsule weighs 6,000 according to the live stream commentator. That means the thing has a TWR off the booster of 11. Quite impressive.

[tater]

As expected, nothing impossible, but conspiracy incredibly unlikely, just covering all bases. It's likely operational error at some level.

[Basto]

4 hours ago, Bluegillbronco2 said:

Just a quick note. According to the Blue Origin website the LES system puts out 70,000 lbs of thrust. And the capsule weighs 6,000 according to the live stream commentator. That means the thing has a TWR off the booster of 11. Quite impressive.

Also accounts for why it ended up flipping a couple times. 

[Northstar1989]

On Wednesday, October 05, 2016 at 5:24 AM, magnemoe said:

its the other way around making making an tanker of second stage would be easy, I'm pretty sure they will make an cargo only version you could put fuel tanks in. They might remove the huge hatch and don't need payload adapters and such stuff. 

Making the first stage an SSTO would require massive rework. unlike the second stage its not designed to re-enter from orbit. just from mach 6 like the falcon 9 first stage. 

Making a tanker of the 2nd stage is EXACTLY what they're planning on doing already.  If you didn't notice, the ITS has no dedicated 2nd stage.

The transfer-stage to Mars and the 2nd stage are, in fact, one and the same.  The tanker refuels the 2nd stage in orbit so that you're not hauling a bunch of empty fuel tanks to Mars.  The tanker itself is just an extea-large 2nd stage with no seperate payload- as the extra fuel it diesn't use to reach LEO *is* the payload.

SpaceX's strategy is actually highly efficient.  It eliminates the need for an extra set of engines for the transfer stage, and in fact, I've used it in KSP many times myself to save on mass... (although I'm not so silly as to stick with a direct landing of an upper stage on another planet/moon: you save a LOT of mass with a dedicated, reusable lander...  This is the one point I won't back down on- even with only sending 100-200 people in the first couple transfer windows, SpaceX REALLY needs to invest in a dedicated lander to carry crew/cargo to the Martian surface and fuel from the surface back up to the ITS in Mars orbit...)

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

To explain a bit why I'm so fixated on SpaceX needing to develop a reusable lander, it's helpful to look at what benefits you actually get with a lander...

A lander saves a lot of ignition-cycles and mass on the ITS/MCT.

In order to be able to land the entire crewed upper stage on Mars, you need to carry out a minimum of 4 additional ignition-cycles, and probably 5- as opposed to just 3 to reach Mars orbit and 4 more to return to Earth's surface.  The lifespan of a reusable rocket should in large part be measured in the maximum number of firings it is safely capable of, so this is a big deal.

The greatest number of g's that the ITS will ever pull, according to SpaceX, are during Mars re-entry.  So you also save structural mass as the ITS structure doesn't need to be as robust with a lander, and don't need as heavy a heatshield...

Finally, if you don't make use of a lander, then you need to design the ITS to carry enough Delta-V to travel all the way from Mar's surface to Earth.  This is actually a larger Delta-V gap than that between LEO and the Martian surface, as you can aerocapture at Mars, but the velocities you return to Earth at basically require a propulsive capture.  If your ITS carries any crew back to Earth, then you won't be able to take a slow return-trajectory either, and as the majority of your payload is in crew quarters that are built into the structure you won't have a much larger Delta-V budget to play with, all leading to the requirement for even larger fuel tanks...

In comparison, an ITS that relies on a dedicated lander won't face a large enough Delta-V gap returning to Earth to require additional fuel tanks, won't require as strong a structure or heatshield, won't need to carry out as many engine firings between refurbishment, and won't have to carry the empty fuel tankage it used to reach Mars orbit from the surface all the way back to Earth with it...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 6, 2016 by Northstar1989

[StarStreak2109]

Good job, Blue Origin!

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Basto said:

Also accounts for why it ended up flipping a couple times. 

Flipover was on the end then trust was low, it was going sideways and was tugged between drag and trust. 

[Elthy]

The engines arent limited by reignitions. They use spark ignition and can be reused way more than for 12-15 missions.

Also the spaceship isnt limited by how much reentrys it can survive (as the tanker is supposed to do 100), but by the mission time. It can only land every 2 years, an additional lander wont help.

Also, where do you want to service the lander? It never returns to Earth and i doubt Mars will be able to do such tasks in the first decades.

And how do you get the lander to mars? This would need another upperstage of the ITS, except when you design the lander as an upper stage itself. And at that point you have the planned spacecraft...

[Rakaydos]

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

(although I'm not so silly as to stick with a direct landing of an upper stage on another planet/moon: you save a LOT of mass with a dedicated, reusable lander...  This is the one point I won't back down on- even with only sending 100-200 people in the first couple transfer windows, SpaceX REALLY needs to invest in a dedicated lander to carry crew/cargo to the Martian surface and fuel from the surface back up to the ITS in Mars orbit...)

Out of curiosity, how many reloads do you spend nailing the perfect aerocapture-to-orbit? And IRL, you cannot predict your capture orbit that nicely because it depends on the atmospheric conditions you pass through.

You're also implying a seprate dedcated tanker as well as the dedicated crew/cargo lander, because you dont want to waste mass hauling people and cargo every time you refuel the mothership you left in orbit. That's TWO extra vehicals spaceX would need to design and test.

[Streetwind]

17 hours ago, todofwar said:

So we got to the moon because of the pride of nations, and it looks like we'll get to Mars on the egos of billionaires. Interesting world we live in. 

Perhaps we'll also go back to the Moon on the egos of billionaires, too

Blue Origin's suborbital rocket is named after the first US astronaut who did a suborbital spaceflight. Blue Origin's orbital rocket is named after the first US astronaut who did an orbital spaceflight. Blue Origin's next secret project is named after the first US astronaut who walked on the Moon... what does this tell us?

Could be a whole number of things, really, but that is kind of a strong nod towards the Moon. Also consider that Blue Origin works closely with ULA, and ULA wants to develop cislunar space in the coming decades.

[todofwar]

2 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Perhaps we'll also go back to the Moon on the egos of billionaires, too

Blue Origin's suborbital rocket is named after the first US astronaut who did a suborbital spaceflight. Blue Origin's orbital rocket is named after the first US astronaut who did an orbital spaceflight. Blue Origin's next secret project is named after the first US astronaut who walked on the Moon... what does this tell us?

Could be a whole number of things, really, but that is kind of a strong nod towards the Moon. Also consider that Blue Origin works closely with ULA, and ULA wants to develop cislunar space in the coming decades.

Yeah I know, but saying "we'll get to Mars and maybe back to the moon too" didn't flow as nicely

[DerekL1963]

7 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

To explain a bit why I'm so fixated on SpaceX needing to develop a reusable lander, it's helpful to look at what benefits you actually get with a lander...

There's downsides as well as benefits.  You can't only look at one side of the equation.
 

1 hour ago, Elthy said:

Also, where do you want to service the lander? It never returns to Earth and i doubt Mars will be able to do such tasks in the first decades.

Quoted for truth and because most people doing back-of-used-bar-napkin calculations leave servicing out of their equations.  This isn't like changing the oil in your car, or dropping it off at the dealers in the morning and then after the magic happens off camera while you're at work, picking it up all shiny and new.  They'll require corrective maintenance, anything from swapping out a card in the computer or the pilot's touchscreen all the way to swapping out an entire engine because a valve or other component failed.  They'll also need regular test, inspection, and preventative maintenance - inspection of the seals on the hatches, swapping out limited life components, replacing engines which are about to exceed their operating lifetime, etc...

If the vehicles are intended to operate for years, they'll need logistics support and regular maintenance.  Until the infrastructure is in place (establishing which will be an enormous endeavor, even in LEO), the best place to put your maintenance depot is at 1G right here on terra firma.

[Northstar1989]

On Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Rakaydos said:

Out of curiosity, how many reloads do you spend nailing the perfect aerocapture-to-orbit? And IRL, you cannot predict your capture orbit that nicely because it depends on the atmospheric conditions you pass through.

You're also implying a seprate dedcated tanker as well as the dedicated crew/cargo lander, because you dont want to waste mass hauling people and cargo every time you refuel the mothership you left in orbit. That's TWO extra vehicals spaceX would need to design and test.

Aerocapture to orbit?  What on Earth are you talking about that for?  That has literally nothing to do with the mass savings of landers.  And on that note, it's extremely easy to plan an aerocapture to orbit anyways- you just aerocapture into an elliptical orbit and the raise your periapsis so there's no chance of re-entering instead of aerobraking on the next pass.  Aerobraking is easy so long as you're conservative and give yourself a good 20-30% margin for error (that is, you assume you'll slow down more than expected, and so make shallower passes).  In real life it would only take a couple days to make 12 or 15 shallow passes and get the right altitude before circularizing...  KSP isn't real life- planning time is less of an issyee, and NASA mission controllers can work overnight in shifts and are patient enough to spend 2 or 3 days making aerobrake passes if they have to...

Also no, a seperate tanker is wntirely unnecessary.  The lander can easily have fuel tanks large enough so that each time it ascends to orbit it carries slextra fuel for the ITS with it, and each time it descends it carries down crew/cargo.  The most cost-effective way to use a lander is to have a smaller one that makes 10 or 12 trips to ferry down the crew anyways- which is plenty of launches to refuel the ITS...

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

On Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Elthy said:

The engines arent limited by reignitions. They use spark ignition and can be reused way more than for 12-15 missions.

Also the spaceship isnt limited by how much reentrys it can survive (as the tanker is supposed to do 100), but by the mission time. It can only land every 2 years, an additional lander wont help.

Also, where do you want to service the lander? It never returns to Earth and i doubt Mars will be able to do such tasks in the first decades.

And how do you get the lander to mars? This would need another upperstage of the ITS, except when you design the lander as an upper stage itself. And at that point you have the planned spacecraft...

The Raptor engines won't limited by reignitions due to running out of special ignition fluids, like with the Merlin, but the equipment to make sparks DOES wear out, just like the spark plugs in your car, and further, the single most stressful part of the flight for the engine structure and turbopump is the ignition cycle.  Eventually the structure or turbopump develops microscopic cracks or other defects under these extreme stresses and the whole engine becomes dangerous to operate and needs to be replaced...

The spaceship may be limited by mission time, but the engines need expensive refurbishment.  The less stess you place on them, the less often this will need to be...

The lander doesn't get serviced to any substantial degree (maybe a quick preflight check before each descent).  You send a new one every one or two transfer windows, and reuse it a dozen times or more each ITS trip (a pair of 4-man landers, two for redundancy, each with about 4-6 tons of cargo capacity could be used roughly a dozen times each with cargo/crew on every trip down and fuel on the way back up, then retired and left at the Mars colony site to be salvaged for parts- just like you could reture the ITS at the colony on its final re-use...)

The lander(s) would be a *fraction* (like 1/100th) the size of the ITS, and therefore could be sent with one or two Falcon Heavy launches (there might be a need to launch the lander on one launch and a transfer-stage on another launch...)

 

Edited October 6, 2016 by Northstar1989

[tater]

Sending landers as lighters seems like a very inefficient form of logistics. Again, it's completely outside the way spacex envisions things, so it seems very off topic, honestly, and would probably be better discussed in a thread dedicated to notional Mars colonization plans.

That is independent of how reasonable the ideas might be---it's sort of Elon's way or the highway in terms of spacex planning.

[Northstar1989]

On Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 11:37 AM, DerekL1963 said:

There's downsides as well as benefits.  You can't only look at one side of the equation.
 

Quoted for truth and because most people doing back-of-used-bar-napkin calculations leave servicing out of their equations.  This isn't like changing the oil in your car, or dropping it off at the dealers in the morning and then after the magic happens off camera while you're at work, picking it up all shiny and new.  They'll require corrective maintenance, anything from swapping out a card in the computer or the pilot's touchscreen all the way to swapping out an entire engine because a valve or other component failed.  They'll also need regular test, inspection, and preventative maintenance - inspection of the seals on the hatches, swapping out limited life components, replacing engines which are about to exceed their operating lifetime, etc...

If the vehicles are intended to operate for years, they'll need logistics support and regular maintenance.  Until the infrastructure is in place (establishing which will be an enormous endeavor, even in LEO), the best place to put your maintenance depot is at 1G right here on terra firma.

Seriously, stop constructing straw-man arguments just so you can knock them down.  First of all, you can't justify anything without looking at the benefits- and I've hardly ignored the downsides (the need to design and launch separate vehicles, mission complexity, etc) with anything I've discussed.

Second, you don't actually know how much servicing would be needed for a reusable spacecraft- you didn't exactly work on the Shuttle (which was the only reusable spacecraft of any real importance that's ever flown- and was almost purposefully designed to require lots of maintenence as it was basically a political boondoggle designed to infuse money into the economies of specific states), and technology has come a long way since the 1960's tech that was used in it as far as endyrance and reliability.

As I've said, you wouldn't service the lander for long anyways.  You would launch 2 or 3 small landers, maybe more, and re-use each about 12 times each transfer window.  Even if you could only get 12 uses out of each, that would be the same number of re-uses that Musk currently plans to get out of the ITS, and a fraction those he hopes to get out of the tanker.  Thus even 12 or 24 uses for each lander would be more than economical- you'd increase your payload capacity on the ITS due to not needing as much fuel more than enough to offset the cost of an extra 2-4 Falcon Heavy launches every transfer-window...

EVENTUALLY you'd develop the capacity to service the landers at the Mars colony itself.  As the landers would be small to maximize their cost-effectiveness anyways (two or three small landers used 12 times each are much more cost-effective than one giant lander used only once, and the landers would NEED to be small so you could launch them on a Falcon Heavy) it would be comparatively easy to move one inside a pressurized garage after it made one of its landings at the colony, and service it right there on Mars- once the colony's engineers and technicians (who would undoubtedly include some of the most knowledgeable people in space technology in the solar system) got to the point where they had the free time from more pressing necessities...

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

On Thursday, October 06, 2016 at 3:01 PM, tater said:

Sending landers as lighters seems like a very inefficient form of logistics. Again, it's completely outside the way spacex envisions things, so it seems very off topic, honestly, and would probably be better discussed in a thread dedicated to notional Mars colonization plans.

That is independent of how reasonable the ideas might be---it's sort of Elon's way or the highway in terms of spacex planning.

Perhaps Elon won't go in this direction, but he very well might.  The problem right now, as I've repeatedly emphasized, is that he has zero experience planning extraplanetary missions or actually even thinking seriously about orbital dynamics and some of the cool things they make possible.  Up until now, he hasn't needed to think of anything to do with space beyond what it actually takes to get to orbit.

I suspect many expert Kerbal players might actually have a better grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of certain types of mission architectures than Elon Musk at this point, as he has *just* started to refocus his attention on the actual design of a Mars mission now that it's starting to actually look like it might be feasible.  Of course he's a fast learner, and sharp as a whip- so I don't doubt he's catching on fast.  But I wouldn't be surprised to see more than a few changes to his mission-design over the coming years (it's still quite tentative from what I can tell), and neither should you...

Think of what Musk presented on as a first draft, if you will.  He has a general idea what he wants to accomplish, and clearly his engineers have already started working on the design- but like the saying goes, no plan survives first contact with the enemy (the laws of physics and economics, in this case...)

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 6, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Raven Industries]

I'm not quite understanding how sending a lander back and forth 10-12 times to unload a ship is more efficient if the landers have a lifetime of 12 uses. Isn't that basically 1 use? You would be sending a disposable lander with every ITS mission.

[DerekL1963]

41 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Seriously, stop constructing straw-man arguments just so you can knock them down.  First of all, you can't justify anything without looking at the benefits- and I've hardly ignored the downsides (the need to design and launch separate vehicles, mission complexity, etc) with anything I've discussed.

First, it's not a strawman - it's a very real concern for real world equipment.   In the real world, stuff breaks and wears out.  And you've repeatedly massively downplayed the downsides (when you have haven't ignored them entirely), for example, not only have you not addressed maintenance at all, now you're trying to handwave away the concern.  You're also handwaving away the greatly increased programmatic risk associated with increasing the number of launches (from Earth), and increased handling and operations (such as rendezvous and docking) out at Mars.  All you've discussed is budgets - real world engineering about more than just saving money.
 

43 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Second, you don't actually know how much servicing would be needed for a reusable spacecraft

No, I don't.  And neither do you.   The difference between our approaches is that I'm actually looking at other complex vehicles meant to last decades and/or operate in extreme environments (not just the Shuttle, but ships, and civilian and military aircraft) and making a few reasoned extrapolations.  I'm looking at the logistics involved.  You're simply assuming that it won't be a problem at all.
 

52 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

it would be comparatively easy to move one inside a pressurized garage after it made one of its landings at the colony, and service it right there on Mars- once the colony's engineers and technicians (who would undoubtedly include some of the most knowledgeable people in space technology in the solar system) got to the point where they had the free time from more pressing necessities...

0.o  Since the colony has precisely zero need of specialists in space technology - why would there be a collection there of the most knowledgeable people?  And if they've spent their time working on colony engineering, their skills and knowledge about spacecraft engineering will be rusty, and they've probably never been spacecraft maintenance technicians to start with.  (That's an important distinction few grasp  because we're in the habit of misusing the term engineer - there's two specialties involved.)  And there's more involved than just people - there's also all the required support equipment and spare parts.  Precisely none of which makes any sense to duplicate [the terrestrial facilities] and send to Mars.
 

39 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

I suspect many expert Kerbal players might actually have a better grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of certain types of mission architectures than Elon Musk at this point, as he has *just* started to refocus his attention on the actual design of a Mars mission now that it's starting to actually look like it might be feasible.

Um, no.  KSP abstracts most issues and doesn't even cover/address many more.  Most importantly, it doesn't encourage the study of tradeoffs - it encourages "MOAR BOOSTERS AND MOAR STRUTS".  (Mostly because it's a game first, and space simulator a distant second.)  A prime example is how often LV-N's are used, even in career mode - because they're not all that expensive, and the KSP player doesn't have to deal with all the issues that real world engineers do.  They just click on the LV-N in the VAB parts menu and drop it into place.  There's no tradeoffs between fuels, it's all just LF.  Etc... etc...

And what Elon himself knows or does is irrelevant - he's the ideas guy, the bankroll, and the very public face.  He isn't an engineer - he pays engineers to do all the heavy lifting while he faces the press with Powerpoints and pithy quips on Twitter.  (Gwynne Shotwell and her staff does all the heavy lifting on day-to-day ops at SpaceX.)  And he's had engineers working on this (as the quote a few pages back on cyclers showed) for a number of years now.  We're almost certainly at the same place Apollo was once they settled on LOR - many details will change between now and then, but it's very doubtful the architecture will change materially.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Watching all this banter back and forth, some of y'all are completely missing the point of Musk's vision, here. 

He wants to do this fast. 

Fast. As in, within his lifetime. Cuz he wants to go while he's still spry enough to make the trip. That means keeping to the age old engineering principal of KISS - keep it simple, stupid. What he and his engineers have hashed out here is incredibly simple: only three craft, one of which just returns to earth. No, it's not the most efficient approach but it's simple. They'll make up for some of that lost efficiency by taking advantage of economies of scale. Remember, he sees these things being mass produced by the thousands. 

Whether that comes to fruition or not is highly speculative at this point. So's the whole thing. So the best way to actually accomplish it fast is by staying simple. Stick to the plan, make operations routine. 

[tater]

12 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Watching all this banter back and forth, some of y'all are completely missing the point of Musk's vision, here. 

He wants to do this fast. 

Fast. As in, within his lifetime. Cuz he wants to go while he's still spry enough to make the trip. That means keeping to the age old engineering principal of KISS - keep it simple, stupid. What he and his engineers have hashed out here is incredibly simple: only three craft, one of which just returns to earth. No, it's not the most efficient approach but it's simple. They'll make up for some of that lost efficiency by taking advantage of economies of scale. Remember, he sees these things being mass produced by the thousands. 

Whether that comes to fruition or not is highly speculative at this point. So's the whole thing. So the best way to actually accomplish it fast is by staying simple. Stick to the plan, make operations routine. 

Actually, of the 3 Mars related craft, ALL return to Earth (ITS, tanker, and BFR. Or were you adding Red Dragon?

None the less, you are right on his "fast" goal. Honestly, alternative mission schemes that don't use any of the spacecraft you can see on SpaceX's website should be in another thread, they're not relevant. Slight alterations, like a cargo variant of ITS are not grossly off topic, but novel craft might as well be in their own thread.

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Actually, of the 3 Mars related craft, ALL return to Earth (ITS, tanker, and BFR. Or were you adding Red Dragon?

Er, right. Should have said "one never leaves earth."  

Its not the most efficient or even cost effective architecture, its beauty is in its simplicity. That means, to me, it actually stands a snowball's chance on Eve of ever happening. 

NASA & Friends going to Mars? Snowball getting that rare "low space at the Sun" science.