Blue Origin first human flight

Re:Blue Origin first human flight by themgt on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @10:00AM (#27893815)

Falcon 1 put a payload into orbit though, so it's really not the same. Falcon 9's first flight was less than 2 years after Falcon 1 made it to orbit.

For myriad reasons Blue can't just "scale up quickly" in any meaningful way from NS to New Glenn, hence why it's going to take them 8+ years between the first NS and first NG launches. Being realistic about this is not cynical and negative.

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Re:Blue Origin first human flight by chasd00 on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @10:20AM (#27894043)

that's a good point, i think orbit was the minimum planned for Falcon1. I don't believe SpaceX every just went to the karman line and back. I think all of their flights have been either crashes or fully orbital.

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Re:Blue Origin first human flight by chippiewill on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @12:37PM (#27895979)

> Think all of their flights have been either crashes or fully orbital.

Certainly applies to the operational launches of all their rocket vehicles, however they've also done suborbital test flights with with Grasshopper, F9R, Starhopper, Starship (and maybe Super Heavy soon as well depending on if they do a sub-orbital with that first).

The important difference is that SpaceX has never considered the Karman line as a target in its own right (somewhat rightly, its only value is for "whelming" space tourism).

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