Blue Origin thread.

[MaverickSawyer]

5 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Why did they skip BE-5 and -6? Possibility of more secret unannounced engines in the works?

Or engines that were being designed and were no longer needed, and thus cancelled.

[tater]

32 minutes ago, Racescort666 said:

Many months back when we were speculating NG performance, I was strongly convinced that BO is sandbagging their performance numbers. Me being wrong isn't out of the question but it definitely looks like they have significant margin to make up 400 m/s.

Yeah, I was talking the 2-stage version using published numbers, and the crew version of the lander.

There is always the option of expending the booster.Maybe the 25th flight...

Maybe serially they let BE-3U and Be-4U be the missing numbers (5, 6).

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, MaverickSawyer said:

Or engines that were being designed and were no longer needed, and thus cancelled.

Probably, you have XF and XB planes who are given run numbers like XB-70 who was prototype only, others was never build.
Seems probably that they was part in trials and did not measure up or priorities changed like the 3 stage version as I understand is on hold. 
Also future stuff like second stage reuse who is pretty much an project at this stage. 

[cubinator]

2 hours ago, Aegolius13 said:

I haven't had a chance to watch the full webcast yet, but was there any info on the ascent engine for the human version?  From the rendering it looks like it could be another BE-7, but hard to say.  Seems a little surprising they would not go with hypergolics for that one, but obviously they feel pretty comfortable with hyrdolox at this point.

You can mine hydrolox in some parts of the Moon. That seems like an advantage.

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by cubinator
yaay double post whoopee

[Canopus]

47 minutes ago, cubinator said:

You can mine hydrolox in some parts of the Moon. That seems like an advantage.

 

By the time they can refuel from the moon i doubt the ascender would still be a separate stage from the Lander. You could probably just mount a cabin on the Landing stage as cargo.

[magnemoe]

46 minutes ago, cubinator said:

You can mine hydrolox in some parts of the Moon. That seems like an advantage.

 

Yes, but not at all locations and require infrastructure. Down line you want an reusable lander. 
And yes I like Bezos vision way more than Musk's one. Yes down the line we teraform Mars. That is far future as in K1, then we do Venus who is just 100 times harder. 
Let get to K1 first and do some cool stuff while leveling up. 
Obviously at K1 your heavy industry have to be in space, not because of co2 but the because of the heat i generates.

[RCgothic]

That BE-7 engine looks ridiculously simple. Presume the render is missing out a whole host of control gubbins.

[tater]

 

[tater]

If the crew version is around 11 tonnes dry (6.5t wet ascent vehicle, 4.5t dry descent stage), then a 30t wet vehicle has 4457 m/s. Pretty much the same as the small version.

What if NG launched the small version as a tug, no cargo, and used it to give the larger vehicle a push?

The small vehicle would be able to give the stack 1071 m/s, at which point the vehicle has 4457 to play with to get to Gateway, then the lunar surface, (assume the ascent vehicle can get back to Gateway).

If you make the larger version of the descent stage a tug, it adds almost enough dv to do TLI for the stack from LEO. Bottom line is that the crew version can make Gateway with NG as the LV using distributed launch. The trick is boiloff, so the launches have to happen close together.

[sh1pman]

3 hours ago, tater said:

The trick is boiloff, so the launches have to happen close together.

They’re planning to have some sort of IVF-like system for these landers, right? 

[tater]

12 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

They’re planning to have some sort of IVF-like system for these landers, right? 

For generating power (hydrogen to an APU), but 2.5 kW is not enough for active refrigeration I think.

[tater]

So Blue is involved with the Gateway PPE.

They are getting money to work on: One descent element study, one transfer vehicle study, and one transfer vehicle prototype.

So paper studies of things they are already working on, plus a prototype of a tug.

I've seen people working out the dv of NG who say that they think BO is sandbagging their specs. We also know that they were given money to study a biconic crew capsule back in the day, and we already know they have a crew capsule that is capable of being in space, it simply lacks appropriate TPS for orbital reentry. They have BE-3, BE-3U, BE-4, and now BE-7 engines. BE-5/6... who knows.

Seems to me they might go from little suborbital hops to having the components of a lunar program faster than one might think (once NG actually flies).

[tater]

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Hm, interesting...

 

[Codraroll]

In completely unrelated news, might it be time to take the bit in brackets out of this thread title? It's not like the thread is that new anymore (two years and a month) and nobody would confuse it for the old thread anyway since that one seems to be lost.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Codraroll

[tater]

1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

In completely unrelated news, might it be time to take the bit in brackets out of this thread title? It's not like the thread is that new anymore (two years and a month) and nobody would confuse it for the old thread anyway since that one seems to be lost.

My thread? Yeah, it was lost when a mod was trying to merge stuff and blew up a bunch of threads.

[Ultimate Steve]

 

The bottom plume is a water cooling system, the green is the ignition system, and the engine exhaust is clear because it's hydrolox, according to a longer Instagram post.

[CatastrophicFailure]

22 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

the green is the ignition system

So, TEA/TEB, then? Kinda surprising given how many times it’ll need to be restarted on a mission...

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So, TEA/TEB, then? Kinda surprising given how many times it’ll need to be restarted on a mission...

Wouldn't a lunar landing engine only need to be started once, if that's all it does? I suppose maybe a few times if it's also the de-orbit engine.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Wouldn't a lunar landing engine only need to be started once, if that's all it does? I suppose maybe a few times if it's also the de-orbit engine.

Think you do multiple burns, it also depend on how deep trottel your engine is. Now as they use H2 / O2 they could use an spark plug. Its some chance they use TEA/TEB during initial testing 

[Nightside]

Didn’t see this posted yet, Kessler Kuiper Systems (Owned by Amazon) has laid claim to a few thousand orbits

 

Edited July 13, 2019 by Nightside

[tater]

 (none of these tweets are showing properly to me)

[tater]

They really need to move faster. If their goal is operational reuse, they should fly these few more flights back to back, as quickly as they can turn NS around.

[CatastrophicFailure]

“A few?” 

I thought it was “any day now.” Or always the “next” one. What more could they possibly have to test at this point? If it’s “a few,” no way they fly  people this year, unless they really step it up like @tater says. 

[Ultimate Steve]

9 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

“A few?” 

I thought it was “any day now.” Or always the “next” one. What more could they possibly have to test at this point? If it’s “a few,” no way they fly  people this year, unless they really step it up like @tater says. 

I think I heard two more before they fly people. They do have to speed up to make this year, though. Their past three flights took a year, and now they have to double cadence... Which shouldn't be that difficult considering how slow their cadence is.