CatastrophicFailure Posted February 25, 2021 Share Posted February 25, 2021 I wonder how much, if any of this, is related to Bezos’ pending retirement from Amazon to spend more time on Blue? Perhaps he plans a little less graditam, a little more ferociter? The longer the delay to their debut after Starship and Vulcan become operational, the tougher their business case seems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 25, 2021 Share Posted February 25, 2021 8 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said: I wonder how much, if any of this, is related to Bezos’ pending retirement from Amazon to spend more time on Blue? Perhaps he plans a little less graditam, a little more ferociter? The longer the delay to their debut after Starship and Vulcan become operational, the tougher their business case seems. Like SpaceX, the goal of BO is not to make money as the primary goal. Their goal is "millions of people living and working in space." Making money while doing so offsets cost to Bezos, and maybe speeds things up. The entire point of reusable rockets is to bring cost to LEO—halfway to anywhere—down by orders of magnitude, so launch as a revenue stream in the long term (from the perspective of BO and SpaceX) requires vastly more launches. There is no real market for vastly more launches, unless someone creates one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elthy Posted February 25, 2021 Share Posted February 25, 2021 Those videos are awesome, they clearly show the impressive scale of New Glenn and its infrastructure. I hope there is more of that stuff comming, obviously they need some more stuff to show. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 Not well focused, but: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 7 minutes ago, tater said: Not well focused, but: Spoiler There were obviously going to be comparisons. It looks like NG has a dedicated actuated-fin section independent of the interstage? Seems like extra weight. Falcon 9 uses grid fins, which require less torque to operate and are useable at a broader range of regimes and thus can be stuffed inside the ordinary interstage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 I assumed that was the interstage. This is a pathfinder, I'm not sure we can trust what is part of the airframe, and what is jig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 That is one honking big missile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 Better image: Looks like it's the fins and interstage. The 2 Be-3U engines are arranged diagonally to the fins, presumably for fin hardware room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 BO has said they have fired the Be-4 for thousands of seconds (11k or 16k, can't recall). Wonder if/when they fire them at least in pairs? Seems like a sensible test since Vulcan uses 2, and NG uses 7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 1 hour ago, tater said: BO has said they have fired the Be-4 for thousands of seconds (11k or 16k, can't recall). Wonder if/when they fire them at least in pairs? Seems like a sensible test since Vulcan uses 2, and NG uses 7. What would you be trying to test with such a test? The fuel system? Vibration? I'm not sure I see many ways that firing one engine is different than firing two engines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 (edited) 25 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: What would you be trying to test with such a test? The fuel system? Vibration? I'm not sure I see many ways that firing one engine is different than firing two engines. Well, for Vulcan it is slightly less important, but a few issues come to mind. Thermal loading is one, but probably well characterized from a design standpoint. Then there is gimbal range, vibration, etc. SpaceX clearly had some issues with the latter (dinged bell) on Raptor. Static fire was done on FH as well. NG will be ~17 MN, FH is 22 MN at liftoff, and SpaceX had loads of experience with 9 at a time, but there was still some question about how 27 would act in close proximity. SSMEs have been fired many times singly and in triplets, and the uprated SLS versions have been as well as singletons—but they are still doing Green Run testing to see how all 4 function together. Edited February 26, 2021 by tater Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Codraroll Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 1 hour ago, mikegarrison said: What would you be trying to test with such a test? The fuel system? Vibration? I'm not sure I see many ways that firing one engine is different than firing two engines. Surely that must be many separate tests of many separate engines, rather than keeping one engine going for 3-5 hours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 19 minutes ago, Codraroll said: Surely that must be many separate tests of many separate engines, rather than keeping one engine going for 3-5 hours. Yes, I believe so -- 11k seconds wouldn't mean continuous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 26, 2021 Share Posted February 26, 2021 Yeah, MANY tests combined. I saw those 2 numbers someplace, but the poster might have added a zero, frankly, 1600 and 1100 would still be a lot of testing when 100 seconds is a really long test. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted March 1, 2021 Share Posted March 1, 2021 https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/03/so-what-really-happened-with-blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 NS is apparently flying Wednesday morning. If I have nothing better to do I might watch. A point of NS (according to who?) was to learn to fly a rocket operationally. Rapid reuse, etc. This NS flew January 14, so it will have been 3 months. They need to substantially beat 27 days to even be interesting here (the the F9 that turned around in 27 days had a substantially harder flight regime). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 (edited) 43 minutes ago, tater said: NS is apparently flying Wednesday morning. If I have nothing better to do I might watch. A point of NS (according to who?) was to learn to fly a rocket operationally. Rapid reuse, etc. This NS flew January 14, so it will have been 3 months. They need to substantially beat 27 days to even be interesting here (the the F9 that turned around in 27 days had a substantially harder flight regime). NS2 launched and landed five times in a year -- before the end of 2016. Falcon 9 has beaten that with a of couple boosters at 6+ launches in a year, but not until 2021. We have no idea what the actual turn time is for either booster (except that it can't be longer than the observed relaunch times), but comparing them in this manner seems pretty silly. The two companies clearly have different goals and desires and methodologies. I don't complain about F9 boosters because they don't have the usage rate and turn times of 737s. I don't understand why many SpaceX fans feel the need to try to berate everyone else for the crime of not being SpaceX and not doing exactly what SpaceX is doing. Edited April 12, 2021 by mikegarrison Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 (edited) 21 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: NS2 launched and landed five times in a year -- before the end of 2016. Falcon 9 has beaten that with a couple boosters at 6+ launches in a year, but not until 2021. Blue said (a few years ago) that a primary point of NS was operational experience. Bezos has been throwing a billion a year at it for a while, and they have had the rockets since 2015... yet their flight cadence is abysmal—for a rocket they have stated largely exists for flight experience. They have delayed crew flights in favor of more test flights—which is fine—but they could get however many flights they need under their belts in less time than several years I think. Operationally, it costs under 1.5M$ per flight, since that's what seat revenues are supposed to presumably look like (about the same as Virgin, 250k/seat). Presumably less. They could fly that a lot more, even empty, just for the experience and it's not a meaningful % of the BO budget. A million a flight? Slightly more? Fly it once a month until a launch campaign runs like a watch. Quote We have no idea what the actual turn time is for either booster (except that it can't be longer than the observed relaunch times), but comparing them in this manner seems pretty silly. The two companies clearly have different goals and desires and methodologies. I agree, it's not like they are crawling over F9 for 27 days, either—both rockets get some number of man-hours labor on them, that for their teams equal whatever they are. Quote I don't complain about F9 boosters because they don't have the usage rate and turn times of 737s. I don't understand why many SpaceX fans feel the need to try to berate everyone else for the crime of not being SpaceX and not doing exactly what SpaceX is doing. I've been following Blue since before I paid much attention to SpaceX (because they didn't exist yet, honestly). A friend (who used to write space for ars, actually) was closely following them and kept me up to date. He used to joke that when China landed people on the Moon, Jeff would already be there with take out available for them... we've both changed our tune since then, and not because CNSA is going super fast. I don't berate everyone else, in this case I do berate BO for being so bloody slow for no apparent reason. They have an operational rocket sitting there in Van Horn, that has demonstrated it can fly and refly, and I have to imagine they have staff at Van Horn all the time, they do engine tests there. Why not keep the launch crew trained by launching? BTW, NS1 was lost the first flight. NS2 was taken out of service after the abort test (even though it landed apparently unharmed). NS3 flew 7 times and is just hanging out now. NS4 is the new one, just flown in January. It's not like they had issues with NS4 and the capsule and made new ones, they've just been waiting (I can't believe it takes the whole Van Horn crew 3 months to ready it for flight). Edited April 12, 2021 by tater Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuessingEveryDay Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 46 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: I don't understand why many SpaceX fans feel the need to try to berate everyone else for the crime of not being SpaceX and not doing exactly what SpaceX is doing. If they try to claim they're better than SpaceX, they must be looking at something different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 24 minutes ago, GuessingEveryDay said: If they try to claim they're better than SpaceX, they must be looking at something different. Well, yeah, there is that whole "welcome to the club" incident. I desperately want to be a BO fanboi. I want NG flying, and way better than F9/FH—and cheaper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman.Spiff Posted April 13, 2021 Share Posted April 13, 2021 It's unsurprising to me that the military will be the first to have NTRs. Hopefully NASA can get some surplus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 13, 2021 Share Posted April 13, 2021 Just now, Spaceman.Spiff said: It's unsurprising to me that the military will be the first to have NTRs. Hopefully NASA can get some surplus. This news from the other thread, posted by @Dfthu: https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2021-04-12 NASA actually has really good NTP people at Marshall, and they could fly something pretty quickly I am told. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 13, 2021 Share Posted April 13, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 13, 2021 Share Posted April 13, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted April 14, 2021 Share Posted April 14, 2021 So I turned it on after a friend texted me about it. They started late, and after the intro for BO, the clock is T-58 minutes or thereabouts. Yeah, it's a dress rehearsal for humans, but an HOUR of their coverage of that? The first time they put people in it, maybe I'd watch an hour... actually, maybe I would have it running, and I would click that window every 15 minutes or so to see where they were, but watch for an hour for an 11 minute round trip flight? Actually, I suppose this makes sense. NS is a thrill ride. Last time we were at Disneyland, we were in line 10X the length of the Indiana Jones ride (like a 2-3-something minute ride, and over a half hour in line). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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