Blue Origin thread.

[GuessingEveryDay]

It's been 20 years since Blue Origin started, and they only have a tiny rocket, and some plans for a bigger rocket that still won't be able to touch the BFR, the only impressive thing is it's BE-4 engine which is on the same level as the Raptor Engine, but more TWR.

[Deddly]

Commenting as a regular user rather than a moderator:

Do we really want to do the "us vs them" thing here? Why can't we celebrate every step forward in this exceedingly difficult industry that features some of the best minds in the world finally moving space flight forward in the direction most of us would like to see? 

I don't see any benefit in trash talking any one of the many organisations involved. "Made on earth by humans." This is about humans and what they can accomplish when they put their minds to it. I'll happily cheer along anyone who plays a part in that. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Competition is good, and BO’s overall strategy of “make haste slowly” is also quite complementary to SpaceX’s “test hard, fail hard, test again.” Both approaches have their merits. As @tater once amusingly said, BO’s secrecy sometimes makes it hard to be a fanboy, for all we know they could have a backlog of completed rockets in the back of the factory just waiting on the launch complex to be finished, but New Glenn will be a danged impressive rocket to see. 

Let’s save the “us vs them” for the proper target: Boeing. 

[cubinator]

I agree. Rockets are hard to make (I've learned this firsthand), and rockets are cool, so in my view anyone who's making a rocket that can fly at all is doing something pretty cool. New Shepard is pretty cool and would be pretty neat to fly on if the price comes down at least twentyfold from what it's likely to be initially. New Glenn is also cool, and reusable like Falcon 9! And it can do moon stuff! 

[mikegarrison]

30 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Let’s save the “us vs them” for the proper target: Boeing. 

Um.....

[Clamp-o-Tron]

37 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

 Let’s save the “us vs them” for the proper target: Boeing. 

I know you're joking, but can we just take a moment to appreciate ACES  and Starliner? I know this is the Blue Origin thread, but whatever. Actually, let's extend it to Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit and Northrop/Orbital ATK and Bigelow and Sierra Nevada and every tiny aerospace company with space ambitions. We appreciate you  .

EDIT: also NASA and Roscosmos and China and JAXA and ESA and everyone else

Edited May 29, 2020 by Clamp-o-Tron

[tater]

Have to disagree with @CatastrophicFailure, the "them" we should be against is a guy with the same last name as the guy on the right in this pic (not Steve McQueen):

[tater]

Edited June 1, 2020 by tater

[wumpus]

On 5/29/2020 at 6:30 PM, tater said:

Have to disagree with @CatastrophicFailure, the "them" we should be against is a guy with the same last name as the guy on the right in this pic (not Steve McQueen):

True, but having a powerful senator consistently funneling money to rocket scientists is vastly superior to this late enemy of all things spaceflight (or even scientific):

(considering it has been 30 years since he was a Senator I hope this isn't considered terribly political).  If you've been wondering why old sci-fi mentions him so often, now you know.

[Space Nerd]

On 5/30/2020 at 6:30 AM, tater said:

Have to disagree with @CatastrophicFailure, the "them" we should be against is a guy with the same last name as the guy on the right in this pic (not Steve McQueen):

I think I'm too young to know that guy, but I guess his last name is Shelby? (I don't dislike him though)

[tater]

2 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

I think I'm too young to know that guy, but I guess his last name is Shelby? (I don't dislike him though)

Anyone really interested in moving past LEO should be not fond of him.

He said (in language inappropriate for this forum) that he never wanted to see anything involving propellant transfer/depots get funded, for example. The "old space" players (ULA, for example, which includes Boeing, obviously) had come up with ways to do many things that involved stuff that was already around, plus refilling stages. ACES, etc. A whole cislunar architecture that they could talk about, but no one at NASA could unless they wanted their project buried.

A striking aspect of the current Artemis program is the explicit mention of ISRU and stage reuse at the Moon, something Shelby squashed for years.

[Space Nerd]

I don't like him nor dislike him.

1 hour ago, tater said:

He said (in language inappropriate for this forum) that he never wanted to see anything involving propellant transfer/depots get funded, for example.

Oh, didn't know that.

Besides, I think it is better to finish both SLS and starship.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Space Nerd

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Anyone really interested in moving past LEO should be not fond of him.

He said (in language inappropriate for this forum) that he never wanted to see anything involving propellant transfer/depots get funded, for example. The "old space" players (ULA, for example, which includes Boeing, obviously) had come up with ways to do many things that involved stuff that was already around, plus refilling stages. ACES, etc. A whole cislunar architecture that they could talk about, but no one at NASA could unless they wanted their project buried.

A striking aspect of the current Artemis program is the explicit mention of ISRU and stage reuse at the Moon, something Shelby squashed for years.

Why no propellant transfer? And yes with disposable rockets its have questionable value over just docking stages, but for the  blue origin model it makes perfect sense to refuel it and the transfer module as they are expensive 
Starship on the other hand is an hard tilt. its the transistor in spaceflight. 

[tater]

57 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Why no propellant transfer? And yes with disposable rockets its have questionable value over just docking stages, but for the  blue origin model it makes perfect sense to refuel it and the transfer module as they are expensive 

He saw it as obviating SLS.

[insert_name]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Why no propellant transfer? And yes with disposable rockets its have questionable value over just docking stages, but for the  blue origin model it makes perfect sense to refuel it and the transfer module as they are expensive 
Starship on the other hand is an hard tilt. its the transistor in spaceflight. 

no propelant transfer means that we have to use bigger stages meaning more engines or more expensive engines, and more money for areojet and his constituents

[tater]

47 minutes ago, insert_name said:

no propelant transfer means that we have to use bigger stages meaning more engines or more expensive engines, and more money for areojet and his constituents

Course the engines used by the ULA cislunar plans are in fact AJR engines—except the RD-180s on Atlas.

 

[tater]

 

[wumpus]

On 6/3/2020 at 3:26 PM, insert_name said:

no propelant transfer means that we have to use bigger stages meaning more engines or more expensive engines, and more money for areojet and his constituents

Remember that you only need high TWR for liftoff, and even less once in orbit.  I'd assume that you could launch full stages to be delivered to what ever point you needed and light (and stage them) once docked.

Using entire stages will require shipping an engine with each stage, but again they are low TWR and shouldn't take up too much mass.  In return, this system should considerably reduce complexity and require less testing in orbit.

[tater]

 

[cubinator]

So Blue Origin plans to turn the Moon around by 2024, I think that is unrealistic.

In any case, that crew cabin looks better than the old design, now it seems like you'd actually be able to stand up in it.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, cubinator said:

In any case, that crew cabin looks better than the old design, now it seems like you'd actually be able to stand up in it.

That's about all, it looks tiny.

 

[mikegarrison]

4 minutes ago, cubinator said:

So Blue Origin plans to turn the Moon around by 2024, I think that is unrealistic.

In any case, that crew cabin looks better than the old design, now it seems like you'd actually be able to stand up in it.

I also think that is very unrealistic. It will take at least until 2030 to rotate the moon like that.

[RCgothic]

16 minutes ago, cubinator said:

So Blue Origin plans to turn the Moon around by 2024, I think that is unrealistic.

In any case, that crew cabin looks better than the old design, now it seems like you'd actually be able to stand up in it.

That does look better! Less like a garden gas tank.

[mikegarrison]

16 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

That does look better! Less like a garden gas tank.

Eh. Makes me think of the competition that selected the F-35. Word had it that the Air Force thought the X-32 was simply too ugly for a US fighter, so they went with the X-35 instead. (Which we all know has turned out to be such a successful program....)

[tater]

Altair had 2 variants we used to see:

and this one:

Looks like they've gone from the second to the first. Not seen in that first Altair pic is the fact that there's an airlock that stays with the descent element.