Blue Origin vs SpaceX. Blue Origin trying to steal the credit from SpaceX?

[Kryten]

2 hours ago, Duski said:

Saw what you linked, and he did say some thing he shouldn't have but I guess he is defensive of his grasshopper rocket doing 6 sub-orbital flights whereas New Shephard only doing 4 (According to Wikipedia). At my perspective it looks like a popularity contest.

Grasshopper hasn't made any suborbital flights, it hasn't even been close to beating the DC-X flight record. Masten has been making more frequent flights to higher altitude for years, so by your methodology we can assume Musk is just being defensive about them...

[Elrond Cupboard]

10 minutes ago, Kryten said:

Grasshopper hasn't made any suborbital flights,

All of its flights were sub-orbital. I'll grant you it never climbed above the Karman line though.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, Elrond Cupboard said:

All of its flights were sub-orbital. I'll grant you it never climbed above the Karman line though.

 

3 hours ago, Duski said:

Saw what you linked, and he did say some thing he shouldn't have but I guess he is defensive of his grasshopper rocket doing 6 sub-orbital flights whereas New Shephard only doing 4 (According to Wikipedia). At my perspective it looks like a popularity contest.

That's using a very generous interpretation of suborbital. By that definition I went suborbital and landed safely when I jumped over a puddle this morning. Suborbital is usually defined as reaching space but not orbit (i.e. exceeding 100km altitude but not reaching orbital velocity).

[Duski]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

 

That's using a very generous interpretation of suborbital. By that definition I went suborbital and landed safely when I jumped over a puddle this morning. Suborbital is usually defined as reaching space but not orbit (i.e. exceeding 100km altitude but not reaching orbital velocity).

Yea that's what I think of the sub-orbital definition. But did the grasshopper even pass the karman line?

[Red Iron Crown]

2 minutes ago, Duski said:

Yea that's what I think of the sub-orbital definition. But did the grasshopper even pass the karman line?

No, not even close. That's not what is was designed for, it was a test bed for the final phase of landing a spend booster.

[Kryten]

Grasshopper didn't even pass the 1km mark, and F9R-dev barely did.

[Duski]

Just now, Red Iron Crown said:

No, not even close. That's not what is was designed for, it was a test bed for the final phase of landing a spend booster.

Oh. So did a basically perform a sub-orbital flight in the atmosphere? Well I did read something about the grasshopper somewhere.

[Kryten]

1 minute ago, Duski said:

Oh. So did a basically perform a sub-orbital flight in the atmosphere? Well I did read something about the grasshopper somewhere.

By posting on this forum you've clearly demonstrated you've got access to the internet, so why are you asking such basic questions? Google and the wiki are quicker and easier. Heck, the wiki article on grasshopper would've answered all your question thusfar.

[Red Iron Crown]

7 minutes ago, Duski said:

Oh. So did a basically perform a sub-orbital flight in the atmosphere? Well I did read something about the grasshopper somewhere.

It's really a stretch to call it suborbital, as by most definitions that involves crossing the Karman line. By the stretched definition, I personally made and repeatedly launched a fully reusable suborbital rocket in the mid '80s, and others did so long before that.

[Duski]

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

It's really a stretch to call it suborbital, as by most definitions that involves crossing the Karman line. By the stretched definition I personally made and repeatedly launched a fully reusable suborbital rocket in the mid '80s, and others did so long before that.

That'd be pretty neat to have a reusable suborbital rocket of your own, even if it's a small one. Wish I had a rocket just to launch as a pastime.

[Red Iron Crown]

3 minutes ago, Duski said:

That'd be pretty neat to have a reusable suborbital rocket of your own, even if it's a small one. Wish I had a rocket just to launch as a pastime.

That's just it, though. I wouldn't call it suborbital because it doesn't go to space. 

[Duski]

2 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

That's just it, though. I wouldn't call it suborbital because it doesn't go to space. 

Ah well, still be pretty fun to do.  

[Elrond Cupboard]

Thing is though, orbital vs sub-orbital looks like an either or; what DO you call a flight, it's under propulsion, so definitely a "flight", that isn't orbital and doesn't pass the Karman line?

[YNM]

BO and SpaceX are pursuing slightly different things. No need to compare them.

 

 

... BUT if they themselves wanted to then let's be honest - SpaceX won in this comparison. Not just reaching an altitude, it also goes sideways considerably, and making some really precise landings. Maybe a scaled-up New Shepard can do it as well, but so far there isn't any yet.

Reusing is just a matter of repairing - more important question is how much is reused every time. But don't compare fixing a jetliner with fixing a GA aircraft.

Edited August 6, 2016 by YNM

[Duski]

4 minutes ago, YNM said:

BO and SpaceX are pursuing slightly different things. No need to compare them.

 

 

... BUT if they themselves wanted to then let's be honest - SpaceX won in this comparison. Not just reaching an altitude, it also goes sideways considerably, and making some really precise landings. Maybe a scaled-up New Shepard can do it as well, but so far there isn't any yet.

Reusing is just a matter of repairing - more important question is how much is reused every time. But don't compare fixing a jetliner with fixing a GA aircraft.

Yes, they do make some precise landings, but not all of them go to plan. As a booster has too much horizontal velocity and tipped over. However, the landings are still great accomplishments for a rocket that size. Whereas New Shephard rocket, it would be much easier to land as it is only 16 metre rocket. But in one of the videos, it seemed a bit wonky as the gimbal on the engine was turning it for landing.

[razark]

14 minutes ago, YNM said:

more important question is how much is reused every time.

Good point.

SpaceX recovers and reuses (well, someday, I guess?) only part of their vehicle.  Blue Origin recovers and reuses all of theirs.
Another point to BO.

[Duski]

9 hours ago, razark said:

Good point.

SpaceX recovers and reuses (well, someday, I guess?) only part of their vehicle.  Blue Origin recovers and reuses all of theirs.
Another point to BO.

Yes but its payload is only an observation capsule. So of course it's going to be reused. And as for the Falcon 9, it brings back down the dragon capsule, but i'm not sure about reusing the capsule itself.

[YNM]

On 8/6/2016 at 7:09 AM, Duski said:

Yes, they do make some precise landings, but not all of them go to plan. As a booster has too much horizontal velocity and tipped over. However, the landings are still great accomplishments for a rocket that size. Whereas New Shephard rocket, it would be much easier to land as it is only 16 metre rocket. But in one of the videos, it seemed a bit wonky as the gimbal on the engine was turning it for landing.

"Not going to plan" is pretty common in experimental tech, and can exist in generally everything. Not everything can be precisely calculated or simulated, you know. Even the old, reliable Soyuz can sometimes be erroneous.

On 8/6/2016 at 7:16 AM, razark said:

SpaceX recovers and reuses (well, someday, I guess?) only part of their vehicle.  Blue Origin recovers and reuses all of theirs.

Another point to BO.

... And then there's the different scale of stresses. We're not living in the magic world (yet, hopefully) where space tether material is a thing of the past, today or even the immediate tomorrow.

DISCLAIMER : Yes I'm kind of a fan for the falcon. But just for the fanfare, really, and the realization that "you can't easily calculate the trajectories for them". Maybe when New Shepard carry people I'd be happy for them too.

Edited August 7, 2016 by YNM

[razark]

45 minutes ago, YNM said:

... And then there's the different scale of stresses. We're not living in the magic world (yet, hopefully) where space tether material is a thing of the past, today or even the immediate tomorrow.

That's true.

 

Another truth:
On 22 December 2015, SpaceX launched a rocket.  It crossed the Karman line, then returned to a soft landing via engine propulsion.
On 23 November 2015, Blue Origin launched a rocket.  It crossed the Karman line, then returned to a soft landing via engine propulsion.

Argue the merits and differences all you want, but when it comes down to it, November is still before December.

[Gaarst]

18 minutes ago, razark said:

That's true.

 

Another truth:
On 22 December 2015, SpaceX launched a rocket.  It crossed the Karman line, then returned to a soft landing via engine propulsion.
On 23 November 2015, Blue Origin launched a rocket.  It crossed the Karman line, then returned to a soft landing via engine propulsion.

Argue the merits and differences all you want, but when it comes down to it, November is still before December.

On millions of years BC, a man (or whatever was around at the time), jumped off the ground for a time and then landed softly.
On 17 December 1903, the Wright brothers used a plane to jump off the ground for a time and then landed softly.

Might be a little extreme for an example but I hope you get what I mean: you might want to care about these "little" details when talking about stuff that could change the entire space industry.
More truth: recovering a flight from an orbital launch is nothing like recovering a flight from a vertical launch.

 

I believe SpaceX's approach of first recovering, then reusing, in real flight conditions is more prone to eventual success than BO's approach of recovering + reusing in vertical flights with a test launcher and then switching to a totally different launcher with totally different launch parameters and hoping stuff works the same way.

[Kryten]

37 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

I believe SpaceX's approach of first recovering, then reusing, in real flight conditions is more prone to eventual success than BO's approach of recovering + reusing in vertical flights with a test launcher and then switching to a totally different launcher with totally different launch parameters and hoping stuff works the same way.

That doesn't make a lick of sense. SpaceX also started with vertical flights with a very different launcher, Grasshopper; do you think they'd be doing better now if they hadn't done those flights? 

[Gaarst]

26 minutes ago, Kryten said:

That doesn't make a lick of sense. SpaceX also started with vertical flights with a very different launcher, Grasshopper; do you think they'd be doing better now if they hadn't done those flights? 

SpaceX is recovering launchers from orbital flights but not reusing them. BO is recovering and reusing launchers from vertical flights.

The fact SpaceX started with Grasshopper and is now recovering its Falcons shows that SpaceX is more advanced than BO. Learning to recover on smaller launchers is fine, but BO has yet to prove that its multiple recovery "tests" will be useful for orbital missions.
Learning to reuse a smaller launcher doesn't make any sense because even though you can get some general procedures by testing, the hardware is simply different. Once again, BO has to prove that its reuses will be applicable to their larger launcher. SpaceX is not reusing anything but is getting more and more experience on their Falcons, giving reasonable hope that they will eventually reuse them. (Before than BO which hasn't even built its orbital launcher, let alone test it)

[razark]

Perhaps it's not clear, so let me lay it out:

I don't give a damn who did a better job, or how much more impressive SpaceX is.
When the final accounting is done, Blue Origin put a rocket into space and recovered it propulsively a month before SpaceX did.

Do we get it now?  It's not about who's better, it's about who did it first, and the history books will forever show that Elon Musk and SpaceX got caught with their pants down.

 

Furthermore, I've been making dumb arguments on the side of Blue Origin simply because Elon Musk got his panties firmly wadded over it, and the fanboys can't help but do the same.  In the long run, it doesn't matter, but SpaceX fans can't stand that their guy lost this one.  BO went to space and recovered first, and SX fans want to shift the damn goalposts to the other side of the field.  BO won the first medal in the game, and SX fans are complaining that BO doesn't count since they won the 100 meter dash instead of the 200 meters.  BO still won the first medal.

Edited August 8, 2016 by razark
Removed quote. I do not wish to give the impression that this is directed at any specific person. It's for the lot of y'all.

[Firemetal]

As much as I love SpaceX, I must agree with @razark. BO did it first. However, that doesn't mean that SpaceX didn't get the idea first. Sure BO landed their booster first but spacex had a bigger rocket and a much greater goal than  BO and that took longer to prepare.

[AlphaKerman]

Those two size aren't even close. In fact, the entire New Shepard could fit inside Falcon 9's first stage oxidizer tank