Re:Blue Origin – First Flight
by TimSAstro on Friday May 01, 2015 @10:18AM
(#9471427)
tl;dr: A competitor to Virgin Galactic (space tourism) using what appears to be a more traditional booster rocket / parachute pod arrangement - except that the booster rocket self-lands after separation. Interesting to see another competitor in the space industry!
Re:Blue Origin – First Flight
by jccooper on Monday May 04, 2015 @12:49PM
(#9487322)
It was intended to on this test, but it failed. Hydraulic issues (just like SpaceX!). No video, presumably because they thought a nice video of part of they system exploding would be bad press.
Re:Blue Origin – First Flight
by jccooper on Friday May 01, 2015 @11:59AM
(#9472324)
At the moment, true, and Blue Origin is not renowned for their development speed, but suborbital is clearly just a stepping stone for them. Their suborbital booster uses liquid hydrogen as a fuel, which is a very good fuel but so obscenely cold that you don't want to use it unless you really have to. So it's mostly reserved for upper stages where efficiency really matters. (For suborbital a much easier, but less powerful, fuel like alcohol would be fine.)
And given that they already have a much larger methane engine under development, this suborbital stage seems to be an early revenue-generating version of a future second stage of an EELV (Falcon 9/Atlas V) class launch vehicle. And probably, like SpaceX, they will be targeting VTVL recovery.
This is actually really good news for launch prices, because without a real competitor with reusable vehicles (and none of the incumbents seem capable of this in any reasonable time frame) SpaceX will have no reason to drop prices much below expendable costs (other than benevolence). Blue Origin could probably field a Falcon 9-equivalent in a few years, and even if they don't the prospect should keep SpaceX on their toes.
Re:Blue Origin – First Flight
by jccooper on Friday May 01, 2015 @12:09PM
(#9472416)
And all of a sudden Blue Origin looks to be in the lead in the (very long) race to suborbital passenger flights. Scaled/Virgin seemed to be a lock in the beginning, but have been squandering their lead. Until yesterday, I'd have thought underfunded but competent XCOR might beat out VG.
They plan the first stage to self-land, though.
And given that they already have a much larger methane engine under development, this suborbital stage seems to be an early revenue-generating version of a future second stage of an EELV (Falcon 9/Atlas V) class launch vehicle. And probably, like SpaceX, they will be targeting VTVL recovery.
This is actually really good news for launch prices, because without a real competitor with reusable vehicles (and none of the incumbents seem capable of this in any reasonable time frame) SpaceX will have no reason to drop prices much below expendable costs (other than benevolence). Blue Origin could probably field a Falcon 9-equivalent in a few years, and even if they don't the prospect should keep SpaceX on their toes.