Blue Origin thread.

[tater]

[Beccab]

14 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

At this point they should just rename New Glenn to New Musk.

20th century most famous US astronauts: Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and Jarvis

[tater]

That's the project name, not the stage.

Maybe they can get their act together and do something.

[RCgothic]

Agreed they need a reusable upper stage, but maybe get New Glenn flying first, eh?

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, RCgothic said:

Agreed they need a reusable upper stage, but maybe get New Glenn flying first, eh?

Honestly, NG is quite a fair bit useless by the time if flies. Less payload than a FH expending its core booster, made to make successful booster landings to day one even if it is impossible, and now according to Ars' sources it won't be profitable until they can make second stage reuse to work, which means more than 5 years from now (likely more). If it isn't much cheaper than the FH expending the core it can't compare with it, and all of this is ignoring the fact that Starship could have flown people to the Moon by then and completed the Starlink constellation

[tater]

NG has a lot of possible use. Cost might be an issue vs SpaceX's aggressive pricing—particularly since their current pricing is low even with virtually no competitors.

NG is supposed to be crew rated out of the gate, and it is 7m in diameter. Both are major pluses vs FH IMO. I think it is a compelling vehicle if they every fly the bloody thing.

I also think that they could leverage their existing relationship with LockMart to position NG as an alternate LV for Orion. Launch Orion to LEO, use distributed launch for an EOR mission architecture for cislunar.

[GuessingEveryDay]

3 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

At this point they should just rename New Glenn to New Musk.

They'll do that when Musk lands on Mars.

[tater]

14 minutes ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

They'll do that when Musk lands on Mars.

Musk will not be the first human to step on Mars. Their proposed "Moon rocket" is thought to be called  "New Armstrong," not "New von Braun" or "New Kennedy," or "New Webb," New Paine," etc.

By their naming convention a Mars rocket would be named after the first American doing the thing.

Edited July 27, 2021 by tater

[tater]

Imagine a scaled up X-37B. It is ~7m in diameter, and completely encloses the NG stage 2.

Obviously the specific flight surface arrangement might have to change to allow launch with no fairing (Dyna Soar style). The capsules in the above diagram are the old BO biconic they used to show, BTW. The horizontal line left of the X-37B is where the NG S2 tank ends (or the fairing bottom begins, anyway). The cargo bay of the reusable upper stage would have to start above that line vs where it is on the X-37B. The vehilce would certainly reduce payload to LEO—but they have a ton of margin.

The Shuttle cargo bay was 4.57m wide, BTW, that scaled up X-37B is huge.

https://www.spacelaunchreport.com/newglenn.html

(ref for ballparking figures)

[tater]

Those spacelaunchreport numbers don't close.

[sevenperforce]

Blue Origin could set itself up as the more conservative alternative to the Starship launch system, by sacrificing the fairing.

Starship is designed to be fully reusable in every extent, but that results in some issues related to payload integration, because it is simply too big.

Blue Origin could redesign its BE-3U upper stage to be partially reusable. It would blow the expendable fairing, complete orbital insertion, release the payload, perform the deorbit burn, drop the PAF, and re-enter like the X-37B.  Glide back down to any runway.  An open expander cycle should give at least 435s of Isp, which is a huge flex.

 

[Beccab]

Blue Origin statement on the GAO rejecting the HLS protest

[StrandedonEarth]

Oh, BO wants it to be a competition? Then maybe they should compete, instead of expecting to get second place just for showing up.

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Oh, BO wants it to be a competition? Then maybe they should compete, instead of expecting to get second place just for showing up.

Exactly. Want to compete? You have to compete with Starship.

[southernplain]

There was a competition. 

BO lost.

This is insanity.

[tater]

There is a place for alternate landers, IMO.

Once Starship was on the table, it changed the math, however. All the competitors knew what they were competing with. A sensible competitor would have substantially changed their bid as we all knew the 3 opening bid vehicles, AND ballpark bid amounts.

They had a choice, pitch their existing designs at a lower price, commensurate with their lower capability and what SpaceX bid, or change their designs to have similar price and capability.

They did neither. More money, less capability.

Different capability is also possibly desirable. Dynetics had some of that (had their design actually been fully formed), but at a ridiculous cost.

You have to figure the ascent stage by LockMart must cost $2B alone—it's Orion plus propulsion, after all.

 

[southernplain]

Sure having a second architecture would be good, all other things being equal.

However, BO's bid was not equal to Starship's capability/$. It wasn't even in the same ballpark.

BO's statement in the CNBC piece includes this gem:

Quote

“The Human Landing System program needs to have competition now instead of later – that’s the best solution for NASA and the best solution for our country.”

This is insanity. There was a competition. BO lost it. Moreover, they lost not just because of the budgetary issues, but also because SpaceX was the better bid for the program (tied in the technical rating and better in the management rating per the HLS source selection statement.)

[tater]

Yeah, while I agree competition now is better than later, it needs to be competitive.

The bidding seems to have been proposed under the entirely reasonable assumption that all bidders would come in with capability at or above the minimum requirement, but not ridiculously above the min requirement.

Once the other bidders all knew all 3 bids, and got their 100s of millions to flesh out their final pitch (100-something to SpaceX, 250-ish for BO, and 500-something for Dynetics if I remember right), they really should have realized this was not an "old school" bidding game. Maybe they just assumed Starship was so totally "out there" it could not possibly win? I know I thought that, I was pretty certain SS would lose as just too awesome for this particular contract—just like it lost the contract to launch those 6 cubesats, lol.

If the government wanted a narrower range of options to choose from, it should have added more specifications. A demand that the vehicles be launch vehicle agnostic from some accepted range of vehicles that already exist (Atlas V, DIVH, F9, FH)—then BO would have complained, so add in Vulcan and NG... then they also need to add SS/SH and we're back to square 1.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

25 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, while I agree competition now is better than later, it needs to be competitive.

The bidding seems to have been proposed under the entirely reasonable assumption that all bidders would come in with capability at or above the minimum requirement, but not ridiculously above the min requirement.

Once the other bidders all knew all 3 bids, and got their 100s of millions to flesh out their final pitch (100-something to SpaceX, 250-ish for BO, and 500-something for Dynetics if I remember right), they really should have realized this was not an "old school" bidding game. Maybe they just assumed Starship was so totally "out there" it could not possibly win? I know I thought that, I was pretty certain SS would lose as just too awesome for this particular contract—just like it lost the contract to launch those 6 cubesats, lol.

If the government wanted a narrower range of options to choose from, it should have added more specifications. A demand that the vehicles be launch vehicle agnostic from some accepted range of vehicles that already exist (Atlas V, DIVH, F9, FH)—then BO would have complained, so add in Vulcan and NG... then they also need to add SS/SH and we're back to square 1.

I think you are really underestimating just how stuck in the old patterns much of aerospace is in the US.  Honeywell bought Allied Signal using Allied Signal's own money and proceeded to stop innovation and just plod along getting its share of the pie via pork 

Bezos hires an old school Honeywell guy and BO just slowed right down 

Edited July 30, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Different capability is also possibly desirable. Dynetics had some of that (had their design actually been fully formed), but at a ridiculous cost.

Hmmm, launch the Dynetics lander on a Starship, then they shouldn’t have mass problems. Cost problems and redundancy problems, sure, but it should solve the mass problem. If not it’s hopeless 

[tater]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

If not it’s hopeless 

Just needs more props. Once Starship works, any other LV will result in many unnecessary trade offs, as they could just give the lander more mass.

A lightweight, expendable upper stage on SH can throw more to TLI than SLS.

[tater]

Sunday at BO in FL (from a flyover):

 

Guess they don't work much on weekends.

Or at night.

 

[wumpus]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

Guess they don't work much on weekends.

Or at night.

Another old space tradition.  Then again, workers who keep working long weekends aren't too likely to become old employees (at the same firm) with the long institutional knowledge.  They'll splat "impressive new space company" on their resume and find a more family friendly company to raise a family.

[tater]

31 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Another old space tradition.  Then again, workers who keep working long weekends aren't too likely to become old employees (at the same firm) with the long institutional knowledge.  They'll splat "impressive new space company" on their resume and find a more family friendly company to raise a family.

True enough. Life vs burnout. People usually get to an age where they realize the life part is the important bit.

I'm not bashing on them, but the difference is stark.

[Jacke]

10 hours ago, wumpus said:

Another old space tradition.  Then again, workers who keep working long weekends aren't too likely to become old employees (at the same firm) with the long institutional knowledge.  They'll splat "impressive new space company" on their resume and find a more family friendly company to raise a family.

What @wumpus and @tater said.  I've read a lot on what I lived through: the Space Race in the 1960's.  What you only get by reading enough is that was built on a lot of budgets and a lot of effort from the staff that broke lives and marriages.

Just because that level of effort now is demanded by many businesses doesn't make it right.