Blue Origin thread.

[sevenperforce]

11 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

15 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Weren't there at least some EVA transfers during Skylab and during the construction of the ISS?

I don’t believe so, certainly not with Skylab and pretty sure on the ISS. Wasn’t much need, since they all had crew tunnels, and seems very high risk. 

Just looked it up -- there were plenty of spacewalks to assemble ISS, but the first that would have allowed an EVA between vehicles was STS-104 when the Quest airlock was actually installed. Although there were three spacewalks during this mission, two from the Atlantis airlock and one from the Quest airlock, nobody ever left one airlock and entered through another.

Maybe it has never happened!

12 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I'm not as familiar with the construction of the ISS so I don't know whether there were EVA transfers or not. But really what I was referring to was EVA transfers as an integral part of the mission profile, not related to construction or emergencies.

Apollo 15 required an EVA to retrieve a recording device from the Apollo service module, but this was after the lunar module had been detached. 

For Skylab 2 (the first crewed mission to Skylab) the crew had to EVA, climb onto Skylab, and manually disassemble part of the Skylab docking ring in order to get the ring to function for hard capture, so this was at least a transfer between vehicles, even if they didn't enter Skylab via EVA. But yeah, more interesting to see instances where EVA transfer was planned and integral, like in the N1 lunar lander.

12 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

15 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Probably talking about the early Soyuz-derived lunar flyby using the Soyuz-A-B-V design, where two crewed Soyuz capsules would go up to meet a Soyuz-based tug that would have already been refueled by several subsequent R-7 missions. The two capsules would have had some EVA transfers while assembling the whole circumlunar stack.

No, I'm talking about the 1L/Vostok-7 spacecraft (not to be confused with the cancelled Vostok-7 mission, the Vostok-7 I refer to is of the same category of designations as the Vostok-3KA, the official name of the original Vostok).

Wow, cool! I love how I'm continually learning new stuff here.

14 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The Vostok is only for getting the cosmonaut to the 1L in Earth orbit. It returns to Earth before TLI.

The spherical descent apparatus was only capable of a ballistic reentry, so if they tried to use it for a lunar return, the cosmonaut would either be severely injured or killed.

Very Kerbal.  But that begs the question, why not just launch in the 1L? Not the first time the Soviets launched with no abort ability…

They may have had no concerns about launch abort, but the mission profile called for sequential crew-guided assembly of the propulsion modules with the circumlunar crew vehicle attached last:

The IL vehicle was added last, so a separate crew vehicle was required.

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[RCgothic]

Interesting trajectory for a first launch. I'm presuming a smallsat payload isn't something NASA cares about too deeply.

Edited November 21, 2023 by RCgothic

[Spaceception]

Aiming for big things here. Hoping the launch is a success, but it's crazy that this is going to be Blue Origin's first ever orbital launch. I wonder if they're attempting recovery.

[tater]

44 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Aiming for big things here. Hoping the launch is a success, but it's crazy that this is going to be Blue Origin's first ever orbital launch. I wonder if they're attempting recovery.

No, they can't, they have no ship.

To secure permission to RTLS they would have to show the ability to hit a target area first I assume.

[Spaceception]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

No, they can't, they have no ship.

To secure permission to RTLS they would have to show the ability to hit a target area first I assume.

Soft ocean landing then?

[tater]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Soft ocean landing then?

You'd think. Demonstrate they can hit geo coords, and hover.

[tater]

 

[Flavio hc16]

40 minutes ago, tater said:

 

Imagine being so unknown and a joke that you have to write the name of the rocket, ON the rocket itself, imagine having a F9 with gigantic FALCON 9 written on its side, or a shuttle with written SPACE SHUTTLE, and  then also writing it in an orientation that will make it awkward to read when you rocket is doing work.

Or maybe this is the correct orientation because it's never going vertical...the jokes writes themselves. 

[Spaceception]

I think this is the best look we've gotten from New Glenn's first stage unless I'm mistaken (even if it isn't complete). It looks pretty good though, I hope it's flight hardware.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Spaceception

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Flavio hc16 said:

Imagine being so unknown and a joke that you have to write the name of the rocket, ON the rocket itself, imagine having a F9 with gigantic FALCON 9 written on its side, or a shuttle with written SPACE SHUTTLE, and  then also writing it in an orientation that will make it awkward to read when you rocket is doing work.

 

 

 

Falcon 9s pretty much all said "Falcon 9" on the side until block 5.

I agree about the orientation though.

[grawl]

3 hours ago, tater said:

[...]

I agree about the orientation though.

The PR they need now needs to be readable as well. And we get to see this part while it's moving horizontally. We'll probably never see it again as it will probably get crushed in pressure tests or something of that sort.

==> Hence the left-to-right horizontality. It totally makes sense.

 

The flag remains a mystery to me, though. I guess they paint it first, then realize the orientation PR thing.
Or maybe it's the result of a dreadful conflict in the way PR should be done in the space business ! Show-as-launched folks vs Grunts-must-read team. One team got to sneak in and paint the flag the(ir) right way 

C'mon I'm trying to get creative here

Edited November 27, 2023 by grawl
typo

[tater]

1 hour ago, grawl said:

The flag remains a mystery to me, though. I guess they paint it first, then realize the orientation PR thing.

Flags on rockets generally read as if they were flying next to it on the pad, when technically it should probably be Union forward in the direction of movement.

They need to have a doc like the famous NASA worm graphics design rules.

(which NASA now violates all the time)

[CatastrophicFailure]

11 hours ago, tater said:

[BO flight hardware]

[tater]

Have not listened yet, but a scrub shows images/video of BO stuff.

[tater]

Return to flight Monday

[tater]

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, tater said:

 

If this was being done by a couple of kids from Wisconsin with a sounding rocket - that payload sounds cool. 

[Ultimate Steve]

I think the postcards are cool regardless of who does them. I think it's an excellent outreach program. Like a couple levels above the send your name to space thing.

Granted I am somewhat biased, as I do have a space postcard of my own hanging up in my bedroom.

[tater]

https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1736746883849093155

 

 

[tater]

In case you want to see the oddly shaped rocket fly.

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, tater said:

In case you want to see the oddly shaped rocket fly.

G A T E W A Y   T O   E A R T H

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by darthgently

[tater]

Well played.

 

[Minmus Taster]

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

G A T E W A Y   T O   E A R T H

 

They are called Blue Origin after all