I read that Blue Origin (specifically Bezos) has a lot more funding to throw at this problem than SpaceX did/does (IIRC Bezos has something like 6x the net worth of Musk. That alone might not say much, but it's obvious that if push comes to shove, Bezos can throw more money at the problem). And if you look at some of the numbers (not sure if they are completely "confirmed" yet), New Glenn still won't quite have the lifting power of Falcon Heavy (despite it's larger size).
Also, if you look at the timeline of Falcon 9 (Funded in 2006, first launched in 2010), Blue Origin's looks very similar, so it's not exactly impossible.
To me it just looks like they are going in a different direction. SpaceX wanted to get to reusability with an orbital rocket first, then scale up. Blue Origin is nailing down the extreme reusability in sub-orbital land for now, and will apply that to an orbital rocket. And the simpler design (one massive booster VS 3 separate stage-1 boosters) seems like a simpler plan (i'm not trying to imply in any way that any of this is easy, it's still rocket science!)
It's looking like we are going to have another space race in the next decade. And I can't wait!
They also make money via manufacturing for other companies. IIRC the engine for New Glenn is going to be used in an upcoming ULA rocket.
It's very early for them, and it's clear that SpaceX has a good decade or so on them, but it's exciting to have the possibility of real competition in this area again.
How realistic is this hope? Do they have an assembly line for a fleet of them and are these anywhere close to being certified for travel by the general public?
IIRC it's more of something for millionaires that want to be "among the first" to get into "space".
Again, i'm not sure how viable it is, but that's been their public message. They even have a few videos on youtube advertising it
If that's true then perhaps they are going the route outlined in The Rocket Company -- Fuel is cheap, so make a really freakin huge rocket that holds a freakin huge amount of fuel and go ahead and send up a relatively small payload, so long as they have true re-usability.
That's what i'd bet they are going for. Every launch (even GTO launches) will be RTLS. Plenty of fuel on board to avoid the suicide-burns that SpaceX is doing, lots left over to give some wiggle room in case corrections are needed.
If they can maintain the same level of reusability that New Shepard is expected/hoped to have (basically rivaling that of airplanes), then the additional cost of the rocket itself can be amortized over many many launches.
No, you pay with weight. Just using more fuel means your efficiency may(!) go down, with an ultimately worse outcome. But I'm lacking info on the design vs. other designs, so that general rule might be couterbalanced by other gains.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation
So from that perspective, very reusable.
But that's also a sub-orbital rocket. It's only a little bigger than SpaceX's landing legs without a payload[0]. So it might not be the most accurate comparison. Also, they have yet to launch anything else. So it's clearly still early for them as a company.
New Shepard is shown in this image in between Delta IV Heavy and New Glenn near the middle.
There are probably two orders of magnitude in complexity between making a reusable sub-orbital, and a reusable orbital rocket.
> There are probably two orders of magnitude in complexity between making a reusable sub-orbital, and a reusable orbital rocket.
Hardly. They've already built all of the necessary control systems, and had multiple successful test flights. Now they just need to scale them up. Admittedly this is not trivial, and I'd put SpaceX as far ahead for this reason alone, but it's definitely not an order of magnitude more difficult, probably just around twice as difficult. And nowhere close to two orders of magnitude!
You're going from having a top speed of Mach 3 to a speed of Mach 27 (Stage separation and max Q at Mach 6 and 5). You're shaving every conceivable weight-adder. You're dealing with a rocket the size of a skyscraper, which crumples in on itself when not filled with fuel.
This isn't AWS, where you scale your app by spinning up a couple new nodes. The difference from a suborbital hop to orbit is increasing your delta-v budget nine-fold.
But remember their current rocket uses hydrolox. That isn't an easy fuel mix to work with! Russians for example, still haven't managed it.
Nobody is saying that they will make a bigger New Shepard with no changes and call it a day. But the knowledge they are learning through the suborbital rockets is going to be useful going forward. And they have a lot of time to learn and experiment here, they are looking at a first launch in the next 4 years (no mention of landing), and they have been developing the engine for this new rocket for a few years already.
Also Bezos has more cash and less dependent on external funding or public opinion - if several of his rockets blow up in a row it won't stop him, and he can proceed quicker.
Also, New Shepard uses hydrolox. That is harder than Falcon's kerolox. Not to say New Shepard is more comples than Falcon 1 - they are very different vehicles hard to directly compare - but it's definitely not a toy.
I suspect however its also worked like a testbed for engine, plumbing and electronics trials for the bigger plans brewing behind closed doors.
I'm intrigued that they plan to go from New Shepard straight to a rocket that's bigger than Falcon 9 (3.85m pounds thrust for New Shepard vs. latest Full Thrust version of Falcon 9 at 1.71m pounds). I was under the impression that New Shepard wasn't as serious as Falcon 1 (.e.g not capable of reaching orbit) and that SpaceX spent quite a number of years moving from pre-Falcon 1 to the regular launch successes of Falcon 9.
Maybe someone who knows more about this can explain - are the technical challenges involved less associated with pure size and more to do with design/fabrication processes etc.?