New Armstrong speculation thread

[NSEP]

Apparently, Blue Origin is working on a new rocket, called the New Armstrong.

Absolutely nothing is know about this thing, expect for the name.

So what do you think it will be?

Edited March 20, 2018 by NSEP

[YNM]

A Strong, New Arm ?

 

I didn't thought Blue Origin was into medical enhancement...

[Streetwind]

Since Blue Origin is following a distinct naming scheme, it stands to reason that New Armstrong will be designed for launches into cislunar space, including all the way to the surface of the Moon. This will probably make it a fairly large rocket. In fact, I believe that "it is larger than New Glenn" is one of the extremely few things Blue Origin has actually, officially said about it, apart from the name.

I'm personally convinced that it will be at least partially reusable. Whether or not it will be fully reusable is anyone's guess, because that's a whole new can of worms.

Especially since the lines get blurry between payload and launch system. New Armstrong could be merely a lifter, and then "fully reusable" would imply returning the two or more stages it consists of, either from Earth orbit, or from a lunar transfer orbit (if sending the payload there is part of the lifter's duties). Precedent for this model: Saturn V (although that one was not reusable at all). Or, New Armstrong could be the entire system, from the thing that ignites its engines on the pad all the way to the thing that lands on the Moon, takes off again and returns home. Precedent for this model: BFR (although I'm relatively sure that "Big Falcon Rocket" will end up being the name of the booster only, with the spacecraft getting its own designation later in the development process).

Which of those it will be has such a profound impact on the difficulty of achieving full reusability, and indeed informs the design of the whole system to such an enormous degree, that I don't really feel confident in speculating about it at all until more information is available. So I selected "other" in the poll.

[PB666]

3 hours ago, NSEP said:

Apparently, Blue Origin is working on a new rocket, called the New Armstrong.

Absolutely nothing is know about this thing, expect for the name.

So what do you think it will be?

Its going to be shaped like a big trumpet. . . .designed to blast SpaceX out of space.

If you go by gossip, Blue Origin is already building it and SpaceX is lagging behind in their ITS.
But is seems ITS is not more, BFS is a thing, SpaceX is building stuff for it and New Armstrong is pretty much the same rumor spread about 2 years ago.

[ment18]

I think that is will be a methalox rocket similar in scale to the ITS (so 300t to orbit), but optimized for lunar operations rather than mars.  It will have a much lower designed payload fraction than ITS/BFR, since the deltaV budget for the Moon is much worse then Mars.  It might have an over-sized methane tank, so that it can do partial ISRU, and oxygen takes up over 70% of the propellant mass anyway.  Also a Be5 engine that is ffsc, probably slightly lower efficiency than Raptor since BO likes to take a less stressful engine design philosophy.  Definitely Methalox so that space travel has a common propellant, they are already using lng.  Probably a much more lift oriented design than ITS, larger wings on ship that actually serve major role, and some on the booster.

Edited March 20, 2018 by ment18

[tater]

I think this is nothing at all until they actually gain some experience with NG. Any design ahead of that is pointless, as the operational lessons learned will matter.

[Canopus]

26 minutes ago, ment18 said:

I think that is will be a methalox rocket similar in scale to the ITS (so 300t to orbit), but optimized for lunar operations rather than mars.  It will have a much lower designed payload fraction than ITS/BFR, since the deltaV budget for the Moon is much worse then Mars.  It might have an over-sized methane tank, so that it can do partial ISRU, and oxygen takes up over 70% of the propellant mass anyway.  Also a Be5 engine that is ffsc, probably slightly lower efficiency than Raptor since BO likes to take a less stressful engine design philosophy.  Definitely Methalox so that space travel has a common propellant, they are already using lng.  Probably a much more lift oriented design than ITS, larger wings on ship that actually serve major role, and some on the booster.

I think BO thinks of Hydrolox as their actual in space propellant. They have stated that they expect BE-3 based engines to still be flying in 50 years. And the three stage New Glenn is already supposed to use it in the final stage. It would also fit with their plans to industrialize the moon.

[tater]

I think it will be interesting to see if BO comes up with an alternate strategy to SX. @Canopus hints at it, above. I could see them heading towards something that is more of a transportation system than just a big Fing rocket. I think stage 2 reusability is pretty critical in the long term, but one way to reuse stages is to leave them in space, and create meaningful refilling architectures. The only real trick is S2 reuse, honestly. If that requires something akin to BFS, then that's really the only way forward.

[Nibb31]

4 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Since Blue Origin is following a distinct naming scheme

You know this from exactly one data point.

[tater]

25 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

You know this from exactly one data point.

3 data points.

Goddard

New Shepard

New Glenn

 

EDIT this tweet is from 2016:

 

Edited March 20, 2018 by tater

[DAL59]

5 hours ago, YNM said:

A Strong, New Arm ?

 

I didn't thought Blue Origin was into medical enhancement...

Well, if one of their astronauts is injured, they can rebuild him stronger.

[Gaarst]

It's nothing until it flies 5 times.

[YNM]

19 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

It's nothing until it flies 5 times.

Well, the house never flew, let alone 5 times...

 

But back to reality, both "competitors" haven't test-fired or endurance-test-fired their new engines. We also haven't see the metal sausages.

Edited March 20, 2018 by YNM

[sevenperforce]

They already have a pretty good hydrolox engine, so I anticipate that being their workhorse for cislunar space. Their ignition system currently uses consumable solids, I believe, but that can be changed to use spark ignition.

The BE-4 will use autogenous pressurization. Does the BE-3 also use autogenous pressurization? If so, then they should be able to set up propellant transfer pretty darn effectively.

Hydrolox can conceivably perform EOI burns, allowing orbital refueling reuse without aerocapture.

[ment18]

2 hours ago, Canopus said:

I think BO thinks of Hydrolox as their actual in space propellant. They have stated that they expect BE-3 based engines to still be flying in 50 years. And the three stage New Glenn is already supposed to use it in the final stage. It would also fit with their plans to industrialize the moon.

Yeah, your right.  Since one can actually ISRU oxygen from the moon pretty easily (energy expensive, but rocks have lots of oxygen in them), hydrolox is >80% oxygen, so if you carry hydrogen for your entire trip and fill up oxygen on the moon, you can get a pretty good payload fraction.

https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm

Edited March 20, 2018 by ment18

[Canopus]

29 minutes ago, ment18 said:

Yeah, your right.  Since one can actually ISRU oxygen from the moon pretty easily (energy expensive, but rocks have lots of oxygen in them), hydrolox is >80% oxygen, so if you carry hydrogen for your entire trip and fill up oxygen on the moon, you can get a pretty good payload fraction.

https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lnews/lnmar97/oxygen.htm

Also there is the possibily of using the Water ice of the moon.

[sevenperforce]

New Glenn is already a seven-meter monster. The BFR will be nine meters. How much bigger will New Armstrong need to be? Are we talking about another N-1?

[NSEP]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

New Glenn is already a seven-meter monster. The BFR will be nine meters. How much bigger will New Armstrong need to be? Are we talking about another N-1?

Did anyone here think or say New Armstrong will be bigger than the BFR or something?

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Did anyone here think or say New Armstrong will be bigger than the BFR or something?

New Armstrong will presumably be bigger than New Glenn. Not a lot of space between NG's seven meters and BFR's nine.

[NSEP]

17 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

New Armstrong will presumably be bigger than New Glenn. Not a lot of space between NG's seven meters and BFR's nine.

But scaling up to say 12 meters still doesn't mean it has the same hazards the hasty Soviets had almost 50 years ago. 

Jeffy has the time to do his plumbing right, unlike the Soviets.

Edited March 20, 2018 by NSEP

[sevenperforce]

14 minutes ago, NSEP said:

But scaling up to say 12 meters still doesn't mean it has the same hazards the hasty Soviets had almost 50 years ago. 

Jeffy has the time to do his plumbing right, unlike the Soviets.

No, nothing like that. I'm more saying, are we going to see a megacluster rocket with even more BE-4s?

[NSEP]

37 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

No, nothing like that. I'm more saying, are we going to see a megacluster rocket with even more BE-4s?

New Glenn only has 7, something i wouldn't call a Megacluster. But i think NA will be a Megacluster monster, just speculation though.

[sh1pman]

I’d love to see NA fly one day. BFR needs to have a competition.

[sevenperforce]

22 minutes ago, NSEP said:

New Glenn only has 7, something i wouldn't call a Megacluster. But i think NA will be a Megacluster monster, just speculation though.

No, I wouldn't call NG a megacluster. BFR's 31 engines definitely qualifies it as a single-stick megacluster, though. Obviously the N-1 was the original megacluster single-stick rocket, which is why I referred to it before.

For NA, Blue Origin can either bundle a few dozen BE-4s or they could build an even bigger engine altogether. I'm leaning toward the former as well.

Speaking of the N-1, the new 5-meter parts finally allow a pretty-looking stock N-1.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

No, nothing like that. I'm more saying, are we going to see a megacluster rocket with even more BE-4s?

BFR is already this, at least the booster is...

31 engines. More than N-1.