10 ms·

Launch, Land, Repeat

276 points by Aaronn 11y ago

gus_massa 11y ago
Impressive, but one important difference with the SpaceX rockets is that this rocket only goes up to space but it doesn't put satellites in orbit. Form: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ > The reason it's hard to get to orbit isn't that space is high up. It's hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast.
- banku_brougham 11y ago
  I agree with this. But Jeff makes a valid point about judging the rocket by its smaller size. The launch of orbital vehicles is a solved problem, but landing the booster is newly under development. The smaller booster is harder to land vertically, so the technological solutions they are testing may prove to be more robust in adverse conditions.
  - jpgvm 11y ago
    I don't think the smaller booster is harder. It's almost by definition easier. It weighs less, doesn't need to reach orbital velocity and can have an engine that throttles all the way down to hover because the MTOW is not that different from it's dry weight. Not reaching orbital velocity is the main thing here, it's what makes all of this easy in comparison. The solutions they are exploring are many times less complicated and difficult than what SpaceX is doing. Saying otherwise is mischaracterising both of their achievements.
    - Zikes 11y ago
      > And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well. When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance. They're specifically doing smaller rockets to tackle the inverted pendulum problem first, then they will scale up. They see that as the bigger challenge, and may greatly affect the design of larger orbital rockets which have a great deal of research available to draw from for other challenges they run into. In the article they say that one of their major solutions is a gimbaling engine, which I imagine is something you would have to design a larger rocket around, rather than add in after the fact.
      - double0jimb0 11y ago
        >> I imagine is something you would have to design a larger rocket around, rather than add in after the fact. Control authority. That is the measure of margin a system has over a feedback mechanism's (in case of a rocket: ability to accurately apply thrust in correct vector at required frequency) ability to dampen uncontrolled perturbations. I'd bet you that SpaceX has just as thoroughly understood and tested their working margins on their landibg system's control authority as has Blue Origin. For this reason I don't believe Blue Origin has any technical advantage over SpaceX in the manner you imply they do. This might be hubris, but there aren't too many things us humans don't understand about rocket design at this point. The last big one was the waterhammer effect in turbo pumps supplying rocket fuel. Understanding 1st, 2nd, and 3rd harmonic vibrations in mechanical systems is standard practice in rocket and any other airframe design (Boeing airframes, missiles/rockets, etc). It's a solved problem. If Bezos is hanging his hat on this argument, he's reached the limit of his omnipotence.
        Zikes 11y ago
        I'm not implying any advantage, only reiterating that they're starting small and building up. My reply was aimed at "I don't think the smaller booster is harder. It's almost by definition easier." which the article explicitly said the opposite of, which I then quoted. I don't care if SpaceX or Blue Origin wind up on top, I don't own stock in either one, but I'm much more likely to trust the word of an actual certified rocket scientist than an unsourced HN comment.
    - zardo 11y ago
      The dynamics problem of balancing an inverted pendulum gets easier as the distance between the COM and the force input is increased. Of course, its also easier to have very fast gimballing on a smaller engine, and a taller rocket bends more which makes it harder to detect exactly where it's pointed in the first place.
      - NamTaf 11y ago
        A rocket isn't an inverted pendulum. This is a common mistake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy
        gozur88 11y ago
        The pendulum fallacy has to do with the tail of the rocket not naturally following the head during launch. Landing really is an inverted pendulum problem.
        jakub_h 11y ago
        How is even the landing an inverted pendulum problem? There's no instability of an inclined rocket during the landing; there's an instability of a "gimbaled-away" rocket. That's not the same thing.
        gozur88 11y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by that. How is this different, mathematically, from the classic 8th grade textbook picture of a child balancing a yardstick on his nose?
        jakub_h 11y ago
        Easily. The yardstick is unstable in inclination if it isn't vertical. The rocket is unstable in horizontal position if it isn't vertical. But it doesn't start to rotate as long as the thrust vector goes through the CG. The thrust vector has stable orientation relative to the rocket (if you don't gimbal), whereas the force vector doesn't have stable orientation relative to the yardstick.
  - avmich 11y ago
    Landing a booster was done, e.g., in Delta Clipper program, early 1990's.
  - rakoo 11y ago
    > landing the booster is newly under development. They're already one step further though: actually reusing the rocket
forrestthewoods 11y ago
Is Blue Origin landing a booster that SpaceX is letting crash? Would their forces combined result in total re-use? I'm not sure what all the parts and roles are. Sorry for the dumb question.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  SpaceX is going 10x higher than Blue Origin. They can land on the ground, perfectly fine. They just haven't figured out how to do it on a moving barge, yet. Because launching from Houston means burning extra fuel to put the rocket over land. Fuel that could be used for boosting.
  - jpgvm 11y ago
    Not just higher, also faster. Much much much faster, to the tune of probably around 9000km/h faster.
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      Yeah, it's a bit like comparing stopping two cars running max speed into a parking spot with a wall in front: on car being a Bugatti Veyron and the other being a Smart TwoFour. It's certainly impressive to do it in the Smart, but it's rather much a different thing than the Bugatti. Even that isn't a good analogy, because the speed difference between the Veyron and the TwoFour is only about 2.5x. So maybe if the 2nd car were my bicycle, then we'd be able to make a valid analogy.
    - deleted 11y ago
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  - iofj 11y ago
    To be fair, if you look at the video, you will see that they landed on the moving barge just fine. It was standing still on the platform, stable, with engine disabled. Of the locks keeping the landing gear in place, 3 out of 4 succeeded. Whoops. Maybe they should simply switch to 5 or 6 landing gears. After all, they went for 9 engines and can boast multiple launches where one or two engines failed (including this latest one. One of the engines shit itself while the rocket was returning to the barge according to the twitter feed).
hayksaakian 11y ago
I like it -- we're starting a 21st century space race between corporations rather than nations.
- dauoalagio 11y ago
  I like that, too, but this feels like just a cheap shot at SpaceX right now...
yborg 11y ago
Honestly just roll my eyes now at these pissing contest blogposts from Bezos. He does his team a disservice by suggesting that what they are achieving is actually more advanced than what SpaceX has done - it all looks like the approach the Soviets took in trumpeting various "firsts" in space in the 60s as the US methodically built capability far beyond what the Russians could sustain. I am impressed by both companies' ambition, and SpaceX clearly has both the time and money advantage over Blue Origin. Let your accomplishments speak for themselves.
- avmich 11y ago
  Sounds like a rather weak comparison, as USSR did manage to get a set of impressive results in space - at least as American specialists were characterizing them. Not sure if SpaceX really has more money than BlueOrigin - that used to be the other way around. Time advantage is clearly on the side of SpaceX though.
  - hueving 11y ago
    Like what? I'm aware that they were early, but did they accomplish more once the US was landing on the moon?
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      They got several probes onto Mars. That's just off the top of my head, though. The Soviet space program was no joke. Though it may have been a combination of brute force and revisionist history over their failings. I personally suspect there are a lot more human corpses in orbit than anyone knows about.
      - avmich 11y ago
        Well, USSR had a really hard time with Mars landers. AFAIK, they got just one landed - and it stopped working shortly after that. But that one landed before Vikings.
mchahn 11y ago
One would think that using fuel to touch-down slowly is wasting fuel since they could use some kind of capture scheme with a parachute instead. I've read many times that the weight of the fuel is a big problem in spacecraft.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  The problem is that using a parachute means that--assuming your launching from Houston or Cape Canaveral--you're only going to be able to land in the ocean. With just a parachute, can you recover the booster and make it launchable in, say, a day? That's kind of the goal: to make rockets more like cars and less like soda cans, i.e. to reuse vs. recycle.
- mpwoz 11y ago
  http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7718/why-would-spacex-not-use-parachutes-for-the-final-descent-of-the-first-stage http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7718/why-would-spac...
- simonh 11y ago
  I don't know why you're getting down votes, it's a reasonable question. Most capture schemes require the rocket to survive structural forces it isn't designed to handle. Increasing its structural thrength would increase its weight. Spacex tried parachutes on early designs, but gave up on them. A parachute landing on the ground means impact forces, landing in the ocean means salt water corrosion. Also even parachutes have a cost in weight, including structural strengthening. SoaceX and Blue Origin have both looked at the various options, crunched the numbers and opted for propulsive landing.
raldi 11y ago
It sounds like Blue Origin rockets are only capable of sending payloads to space for just an instant, before gravity pulls them back down to earth. They're nowhere near close to capable of putting anything into orbit. Is that correct? If so, what are they good for?
- josephagoss 11y ago
  Space tourism.
- pjscott 11y ago
  They're a smaller-scale test platform for figuring out how to do propulsive landing and re-use, similar to SpaceX's grasshopper rockets. Blue Origin is also developing an orbital rocket, which will hopefully be more impressive.
andrewtbham 11y ago
Here is an animated video that shows what space tourism will be like. You will be in space for a few minutes. the view of the world from space will be amazing. plus you will be weightless. not sure how long you will be up there or the cost but it looks awesome. https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience#youtube-YJhymiZjqc https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience#youtube-YJhy...
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sailfast 11y ago
This looks like a very complicated engineering achievement that undoubtedly will lead to advances in space travel and tourism. That said, I didn't get to watch the launch and join in its success or failure, so I'm finding it difficult to actually care as much as other launches.
sjg007 11y ago
These guys played way too much lunar lander :)
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I think its great that New Shepard is coming along, I don't get how Bezos feels he is helping his cause when he says "people living and working in space." when he doesn't come close reaching orbit. The difference between an orbital mission and a sounding rocket. Now, that he is getting closer to having tourist flights outside the atmosphere than Virgin Galactic? That is pretty cool and a fair comparison. Being able to out execute Burt Rutan? That counts for a lot, but don't try to compare yourself to SpaceX until you're putting things into LEO and getting back the hardware to use again.
molyss 11y ago
Am I the only one finding the last 2 BO videos highly disingenuous ? As mentioned numerous times, there's the whole "reaching space" vs "going into orbit" before landing. More important to me is the fact that SpaceX is streaming its different tries in _live_, taking the risk of crashing the rocket out in the open. How many vehicles did BO lose before achieving a vertical landing ? Oh, and what about the fact that they have total control on the location and time of the launch ? Meaning they basically control weather to an accuracy no one launching anything useful into space has. For example, last failed SpaceX landing was officially linked to fog icing the leg locks. That's not going to happen if you launch on a clear day from the desert. These are more comparable to the Grasshoper tries than to anything SpaceX has done recently : no horizontal speed, full weather control, no reporting on failed attempts, very limited weight. Even the last grasshoper video seemed to have more side winds that had to be countered than this 100k altitude video. Even the format of the video itself screams "vaporware" to me. It looks like a trailer for a bad action movie, where some spacey something goes to space, separates and lands back in 15 seconds. When the grasshoper videos left me in awe, looping over them 5 times in a row, the BO ones just make me feel like they sh/could end with some sexual innuendo over their big rocket
- jessriedel 11y ago
  Why does this have to be a zero-sum competition? Can't folks just be excited about space tourism? SpaceX and Blue Origins are basically different industries right now, with slightly complimentary tech.
  - molyss 11y ago
    you're right, it doesn't have to be a zero sum game. They could be cooperating. Only the propensity of either of the competitors to claim their success without acknowledging the other's advancement makes it look like a winner-takes-all game. As far as space tourism, I feel like it's just that : tourism. Reserved to more and more concentrated elite and pretty short sighted. There's no problem with being excited about it, but it's better to also do something meaningful about it, other than signing a check and posting some cool instagram picture of your 30 seconds vacation. Even if it's just understanding how much effort was put in getting you there.
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igravious 11y ago
Is there a significance for ~100km? Is this, roughly speaking, space -- where the atmosphere is so thin to be almost negligible? Clearly atmosphere thins gradually so how do we define where space starts? Is the significance of ~100km something to do with the effects of gravity at that altitude from the Earth's surface? Does ~100km give you weightlessness? Or is Blue Origin going up to ~100km because it's a nice round number that is roughly (whatever that means) in space. But aren't kilometres completely arbitrary? Also, can people please stop knocking Blue Origin. We get it at this point, okay? I'm a huge fan of SpaceX and Elon Musk but does Blue Origin have to lose for SpaceX to win? No. There's nothing in this post from Bezos bashing SpaceX as far as I can see. There's simply saying, look, we did it again with the same refurbished rocket. Good on them. May they do it again and again. And so may SpaceX. The next space race is on, happy days!
- rory096 11y ago
  100km is the Kármán line, the generally accepted boundary of space. It's the point at which aeronautics become useless, as the atmosphere is too thin to support lift greater than your weight without going faster than orbital velocity. Contrary to popular belief, in Low Earth Orbit you're still very much in reach of the Earth's gravity; it's only about 10% less than the gravity on the surface.[2] The tricky part about orbit is moving sideways fast enough that you miss the ground. So Blue Origin indeed got to space, landed and did it again. But it took a tiny fraction of the energy of the same feat for an orbital rocket (which is why SpaceX can only land its first stage). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line [2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
  - igravious 11y ago
    Why then do astronauts on the ISS appear weightless? Do _not_ make me Google this :) And maybe we shouldn't call them astro- (suggesting star) nauts until they get to Sol and back. I kid! I guess in some sense we are all astronauts, man, on spaceship Earth. Seriously, maybe we should call them orbiternauts?
sandworm101 11y ago
SpaceX = Space launch. Blue Origin = Rollercoaster. I really don't see why these companies are competing. They are in totally different markets. Sure, there is some technological crossover in that they both use rockets, but this is like comparing a prius to a locomotive.
- ericd 11y ago
  Because BO wants to be seen as being in the same league as the much more advanced spacex to raise their profile.
osoti 11y ago
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iamcreasy 11y ago
What I am really looking forward in the bigger rocket from Blue Origin that will be able to achieve orbital velocity.
jcoffland 11y ago
This is awesome. A great compliment to the work SpaceX is doing. To put it in perspective this rocket went about 100x as high as an average international airline flight but would still need to go about 4000x as far to reach the moon. Not sure about the 3 mile per hour impact with the ground on my way home from work. I suppose with a nice soft seat it would be fine but by the time United Airlines gets done with it you'll be packed in like an NYC cross town bus with a seat just as hard. edit: got my facts straight
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  The moon is about 4000 times farther than the Kármán line, and you need to reach escape velocity to get there.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    Right, corrected.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > edit: got my facts straight Well, not quite because > To put it in perspective this rocket went about 100x as high as an average international airline flight but would still need to go about 4000x as far to reach the moon. The height at which airliners fly is about 10 km, and 100 km is only 10 times as high.
vonklaus 11y ago
This is amazing, and a pretty amazing feat that we are taking for granted. Space is super super tough, the complex coordination of manufacturing something like this is being totally written off by many, but I assure you it is non trivial. A popular sentiment in that industry is that rocketry is like writing software composed of many modules and testing each module separately on mac, then deploying the entire build on linux. If it doesn't work, you don't just back out the conversion error or stray quotes you left in, your rocket explodes. The engineering spend alone is massive, as is the damage to the company when a failure is syndicated across youtube. Taking big risks is something we should be promoting. We are in a technological renaissance and it starts with lowering launch costs to achieve realtime LEO satellite blanketing and distributed communication channels to connect to the other fucking 3 billion people without internet. Bezos is accomplishing something great, and we don't need to qualify that statement. He and Musk are definitively the Jobs and Gates of the 21st century if you want to use the obvious cliche. What Gates did. What Jobs accomplished. It was pretty fucking powerful. Musk and Bezos are sort of doing that, except both are working in at least 3 industries at that same scale. I wish Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Firefly and all the other people in new space well. Nano-sats will provide realtime insight to the earth, people will be able to own a satellite in ~5-10 years because of these advancements. this is good for all of us, and the only negative thing to say about it is that for god sakes Jeff, that rocket does look a bit like a stubby penis.
- dba7dba 11y ago
  1. popular sentiment in that industry is that rocketry is like writing software composed of many modules and testing each module separately on mac, then deploying the entire build on linux. Musk always says the passing grade in rocketry is 100%. As there's no way to test a rocket fully except to actually launch it. 2. bit like a stubby penis lol And that stubby thing shoots less powerfully than SpaceX.
dba7dba 11y ago
I wonder SpaceX opening an office in Seattle was just to make it easier to hire away engineers from Bezos?
anjc 11y ago
Article title sounds like somebody's attempt at a new MVP/PMF paradigm
xgbi 11y ago
"Our vision: millions of people working and living in space" When you have only a few seconds above the "official" space altitude on a parabolic trajectory, I wouldn't say" working and living in space", and specially not "millions" at the same time.. Is it me or this is primarily a pitch video ?
- espadrine 11y ago
  Very much so. It is a bit disingenuous to imagine sustained life in space when we can barely live sustainably on the overwhelming majority of the surface of Earth. At least on Earth, we don't encounter the physical limitations that our bodies have when exposed to zero gravity, like loss of bone and muscle.

276 points by Aaronn 11y ago

Impressive, but one important difference with the SpaceX rockets is that this rocket only goes up to space but it doesn't put satellites in orbit. Form: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ > The reason it's hard to get to orbit isn't that space is high up. It's hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast.

banku_brougham 11y ago
I agree with this. But Jeff makes a valid point about judging the rocket by its smaller size. The launch of orbital vehicles is a solved problem, but landing the booster is newly under development. The smaller booster is harder to land vertically, so the technological solutions they are testing may prove to be more robust in adverse conditions.
- jpgvm 11y ago
  I don't think the smaller booster is harder. It's almost by definition easier. It weighs less, doesn't need to reach orbital velocity and can have an engine that throttles all the way down to hover because the MTOW is not that different from it's dry weight. Not reaching orbital velocity is the main thing here, it's what makes all of this easy in comparison. The solutions they are exploring are many times less complicated and difficult than what SpaceX is doing. Saying otherwise is mischaracterising both of their achievements.
  - Zikes 11y ago
    > And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well. When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance. They're specifically doing smaller rockets to tackle the inverted pendulum problem first, then they will scale up. They see that as the bigger challenge, and may greatly affect the design of larger orbital rockets which have a great deal of research available to draw from for other challenges they run into. In the article they say that one of their major solutions is a gimbaling engine, which I imagine is something you would have to design a larger rocket around, rather than add in after the fact.
    - double0jimb0 11y ago
      >> I imagine is something you would have to design a larger rocket around, rather than add in after the fact. Control authority. That is the measure of margin a system has over a feedback mechanism's (in case of a rocket: ability to accurately apply thrust in correct vector at required frequency) ability to dampen uncontrolled perturbations. I'd bet you that SpaceX has just as thoroughly understood and tested their working margins on their landibg system's control authority as has Blue Origin. For this reason I don't believe Blue Origin has any technical advantage over SpaceX in the manner you imply they do. This might be hubris, but there aren't too many things us humans don't understand about rocket design at this point. The last big one was the waterhammer effect in turbo pumps supplying rocket fuel. Understanding 1st, 2nd, and 3rd harmonic vibrations in mechanical systems is standard practice in rocket and any other airframe design (Boeing airframes, missiles/rockets, etc). It's a solved problem. If Bezos is hanging his hat on this argument, he's reached the limit of his omnipotence.
      - Zikes 11y ago
        I'm not implying any advantage, only reiterating that they're starting small and building up. My reply was aimed at "I don't think the smaller booster is harder. It's almost by definition easier." which the article explicitly said the opposite of, which I then quoted. I don't care if SpaceX or Blue Origin wind up on top, I don't own stock in either one, but I'm much more likely to trust the word of an actual certified rocket scientist than an unsourced HN comment.
  - zardo 11y ago
    The dynamics problem of balancing an inverted pendulum gets easier as the distance between the COM and the force input is increased. Of course, its also easier to have very fast gimballing on a smaller engine, and a taller rocket bends more which makes it harder to detect exactly where it's pointed in the first place.
    - NamTaf 11y ago
      A rocket isn't an inverted pendulum. This is a common mistake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy
      - gozur88 11y ago
        The pendulum fallacy has to do with the tail of the rocket not naturally following the head during launch. Landing really is an inverted pendulum problem.
        jakub_h 11y ago
        How is even the landing an inverted pendulum problem? There's no instability of an inclined rocket during the landing; there's an instability of a "gimbaled-away" rocket. That's not the same thing.
        gozur88 11y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by that. How is this different, mathematically, from the classic 8th grade textbook picture of a child balancing a yardstick on his nose?
        jakub_h 11y ago
        Easily. The yardstick is unstable in inclination if it isn't vertical. The rocket is unstable in horizontal position if it isn't vertical. But it doesn't start to rotate as long as the thrust vector goes through the CG. The thrust vector has stable orientation relative to the rocket (if you don't gimbal), whereas the force vector doesn't have stable orientation relative to the yardstick.
- avmich 11y ago
  Landing a booster was done, e.g., in Delta Clipper program, early 1990's.
- rakoo 11y ago
  > landing the booster is newly under development. They're already one step further though: actually reusing the rocket

forrestthewoods 11y ago

Is Blue Origin landing a booster that SpaceX is letting crash? Would their forces combined result in total re-use? I'm not sure what all the parts and roles are. Sorry for the dumb question.

moron4hire 11y ago
SpaceX is going 10x higher than Blue Origin. They can land on the ground, perfectly fine. They just haven't figured out how to do it on a moving barge, yet. Because launching from Houston means burning extra fuel to put the rocket over land. Fuel that could be used for boosting.
- jpgvm 11y ago
  Not just higher, also faster. Much much much faster, to the tune of probably around 9000km/h faster.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Yeah, it's a bit like comparing stopping two cars running max speed into a parking spot with a wall in front: on car being a Bugatti Veyron and the other being a Smart TwoFour. It's certainly impressive to do it in the Smart, but it's rather much a different thing than the Bugatti. Even that isn't a good analogy, because the speed difference between the Veyron and the TwoFour is only about 2.5x. So maybe if the 2nd car were my bicycle, then we'd be able to make a valid analogy.
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- iofj 11y ago
  To be fair, if you look at the video, you will see that they landed on the moving barge just fine. It was standing still on the platform, stable, with engine disabled. Of the locks keeping the landing gear in place, 3 out of 4 succeeded. Whoops. Maybe they should simply switch to 5 or 6 landing gears. After all, they went for 9 engines and can boast multiple launches where one or two engines failed (including this latest one. One of the engines shit itself while the rocket was returning to the barge according to the twitter feed).

hayksaakian 11y ago

I like it -- we're starting a 21st century space race between corporations rather than nations.

dauoalagio 11y ago
I like that, too, but this feels like just a cheap shot at SpaceX right now...

yborg 11y ago

Honestly just roll my eyes now at these pissing contest blogposts from Bezos. He does his team a disservice by suggesting that what they are achieving is actually more advanced than what SpaceX has done - it all looks like the approach the Soviets took in trumpeting various "firsts" in space in the 60s as the US methodically built capability far beyond what the Russians could sustain. I am impressed by both companies' ambition, and SpaceX clearly has both the time and money advantage over Blue Origin. Let your accomplishments speak for themselves.

avmich 11y ago
Sounds like a rather weak comparison, as USSR did manage to get a set of impressive results in space - at least as American specialists were characterizing them. Not sure if SpaceX really has more money than BlueOrigin - that used to be the other way around. Time advantage is clearly on the side of SpaceX though.
- hueving 11y ago
  Like what? I'm aware that they were early, but did they accomplish more once the US was landing on the moon?
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    They got several probes onto Mars. That's just off the top of my head, though. The Soviet space program was no joke. Though it may have been a combination of brute force and revisionist history over their failings. I personally suspect there are a lot more human corpses in orbit than anyone knows about.
    - avmich 11y ago
      Well, USSR had a really hard time with Mars landers. AFAIK, they got just one landed - and it stopped working shortly after that. But that one landed before Vikings.

mchahn 11y ago

One would think that using fuel to touch-down slowly is wasting fuel since they could use some kind of capture scheme with a parachute instead. I've read many times that the weight of the fuel is a big problem in spacecraft.

moron4hire 11y ago
The problem is that using a parachute means that--assuming your launching from Houston or Cape Canaveral--you're only going to be able to land in the ocean. With just a parachute, can you recover the booster and make it launchable in, say, a day? That's kind of the goal: to make rockets more like cars and less like soda cans, i.e. to reuse vs. recycle.
mpwoz 11y ago
http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7718/why-would-spacex-not-use-parachutes-for-the-final-descent-of-the-first-stage http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7718/why-would-spac...
simonh 11y ago
I don't know why you're getting down votes, it's a reasonable question. Most capture schemes require the rocket to survive structural forces it isn't designed to handle. Increasing its structural thrength would increase its weight. Spacex tried parachutes on early designs, but gave up on them. A parachute landing on the ground means impact forces, landing in the ocean means salt water corrosion. Also even parachutes have a cost in weight, including structural strengthening. SoaceX and Blue Origin have both looked at the various options, crunched the numbers and opted for propulsive landing.

raldi 11y ago

It sounds like Blue Origin rockets are only capable of sending payloads to space for just an instant, before gravity pulls them back down to earth. They're nowhere near close to capable of putting anything into orbit. Is that correct? If so, what are they good for?

josephagoss 11y ago
Space tourism.
pjscott 11y ago
They're a smaller-scale test platform for figuring out how to do propulsive landing and re-use, similar to SpaceX's grasshopper rockets. Blue Origin is also developing an orbital rocket, which will hopefully be more impressive.

andrewtbham 11y ago

Here is an animated video that shows what space tourism will be like. You will be in space for a few minutes. the view of the world from space will be amazing. plus you will be weightless. not sure how long you will be up there or the cost but it looks awesome. https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience#youtube-YJhymiZjqc https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience#youtube-YJhy...

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sailfast 11y ago

This looks like a very complicated engineering achievement that undoubtedly will lead to advances in space travel and tourism. That said, I didn't get to watch the launch and join in its success or failure, so I'm finding it difficult to actually care as much as other launches.

sjg007 11y ago

These guys played way too much lunar lander :)

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I think its great that New Shepard is coming along, I don't get how Bezos feels he is helping his cause when he says "people living and working in space." when he doesn't come close reaching orbit. The difference between an orbital mission and a sounding rocket. Now, that he is getting closer to having tourist flights outside the atmosphere than Virgin Galactic? That is pretty cool and a fair comparison. Being able to out execute Burt Rutan? That counts for a lot, but don't try to compare yourself to SpaceX until you're putting things into LEO and getting back the hardware to use again.

molyss 11y ago

Am I the only one finding the last 2 BO videos highly disingenuous ? As mentioned numerous times, there's the whole "reaching space" vs "going into orbit" before landing. More important to me is the fact that SpaceX is streaming its different tries in _live_, taking the risk of crashing the rocket out in the open. How many vehicles did BO lose before achieving a vertical landing ? Oh, and what about the fact that they have total control on the location and time of the launch ? Meaning they basically control weather to an accuracy no one launching anything useful into space has. For example, last failed SpaceX landing was officially linked to fog icing the leg locks. That's not going to happen if you launch on a clear day from the desert. These are more comparable to the Grasshoper tries than to anything SpaceX has done recently : no horizontal speed, full weather control, no reporting on failed attempts, very limited weight. Even the last grasshoper video seemed to have more side winds that had to be countered than this 100k altitude video. Even the format of the video itself screams "vaporware" to me. It looks like a trailer for a bad action movie, where some spacey something goes to space, separates and lands back in 15 seconds. When the grasshoper videos left me in awe, looping over them 5 times in a row, the BO ones just make me feel like they sh/could end with some sexual innuendo over their big rocket

jessriedel 11y ago
Why does this have to be a zero-sum competition? Can't folks just be excited about space tourism? SpaceX and Blue Origins are basically different industries right now, with slightly complimentary tech.
- molyss 11y ago
  you're right, it doesn't have to be a zero sum game. They could be cooperating. Only the propensity of either of the competitors to claim their success without acknowledging the other's advancement makes it look like a winner-takes-all game. As far as space tourism, I feel like it's just that : tourism. Reserved to more and more concentrated elite and pretty short sighted. There's no problem with being excited about it, but it's better to also do something meaningful about it, other than signing a check and posting some cool instagram picture of your 30 seconds vacation. Even if it's just understanding how much effort was put in getting you there.

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igravious 11y ago

Is there a significance for ~100km? Is this, roughly speaking, space -- where the atmosphere is so thin to be almost negligible? Clearly atmosphere thins gradually so how do we define where space starts? Is the significance of ~100km something to do with the effects of gravity at that altitude from the Earth's surface? Does ~100km give you weightlessness? Or is Blue Origin going up to ~100km because it's a nice round number that is roughly (whatever that means) in space. But aren't kilometres completely arbitrary? Also, can people please stop knocking Blue Origin. We get it at this point, okay? I'm a huge fan of SpaceX and Elon Musk but does Blue Origin have to lose for SpaceX to win? No. There's nothing in this post from Bezos bashing SpaceX as far as I can see. There's simply saying, look, we did it again with the same refurbished rocket. Good on them. May they do it again and again. And so may SpaceX. The next space race is on, happy days!

rory096 11y ago
100km is the Kármán line, the generally accepted boundary of space. It's the point at which aeronautics become useless, as the atmosphere is too thin to support lift greater than your weight without going faster than orbital velocity. Contrary to popular belief, in Low Earth Orbit you're still very much in reach of the Earth's gravity; it's only about 10% less than the gravity on the surface.[2] The tricky part about orbit is moving sideways fast enough that you miss the ground. So Blue Origin indeed got to space, landed and did it again. But it took a tiny fraction of the energy of the same feat for an orbital rocket (which is why SpaceX can only land its first stage). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line [2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
- igravious 11y ago
  Why then do astronauts on the ISS appear weightless? Do _not_ make me Google this :) And maybe we shouldn't call them astro- (suggesting star) nauts until they get to Sol and back. I kid! I guess in some sense we are all astronauts, man, on spaceship Earth. Seriously, maybe we should call them orbiternauts?

sandworm101 11y ago

SpaceX = Space launch. Blue Origin = Rollercoaster. I really don't see why these companies are competing. They are in totally different markets. Sure, there is some technological crossover in that they both use rockets, but this is like comparing a prius to a locomotive.

ericd 11y ago
Because BO wants to be seen as being in the same league as the much more advanced spacex to raise their profile.

osoti 11y ago

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iamcreasy 11y ago

What I am really looking forward in the bigger rocket from Blue Origin that will be able to achieve orbital velocity.

jcoffland 11y ago

This is awesome. A great compliment to the work SpaceX is doing. To put it in perspective this rocket went about 100x as high as an average international airline flight but would still need to go about 4000x as far to reach the moon. Not sure about the 3 mile per hour impact with the ground on my way home from work. I suppose with a nice soft seat it would be fine but by the time United Airlines gets done with it you'll be packed in like an NYC cross town bus with a seat just as hard. edit: got my facts straight

CamperBob2 11y ago
The moon is about 4000 times farther than the Kármán line, and you need to reach escape velocity to get there.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  Right, corrected.
jacquesm 11y ago
> edit: got my facts straight Well, not quite because > To put it in perspective this rocket went about 100x as high as an average international airline flight but would still need to go about 4000x as far to reach the moon. The height at which airliners fly is about 10 km, and 100 km is only 10 times as high.

vonklaus 11y ago

This is amazing, and a pretty amazing feat that we are taking for granted. Space is super super tough, the complex coordination of manufacturing something like this is being totally written off by many, but I assure you it is non trivial. A popular sentiment in that industry is that rocketry is like writing software composed of many modules and testing each module separately on mac, then deploying the entire build on linux. If it doesn't work, you don't just back out the conversion error or stray quotes you left in, your rocket explodes. The engineering spend alone is massive, as is the damage to the company when a failure is syndicated across youtube. Taking big risks is something we should be promoting. We are in a technological renaissance and it starts with lowering launch costs to achieve realtime LEO satellite blanketing and distributed communication channels to connect to the other fucking 3 billion people without internet. Bezos is accomplishing something great, and we don't need to qualify that statement. He and Musk are definitively the Jobs and Gates of the 21st century if you want to use the obvious cliche. What Gates did. What Jobs accomplished. It was pretty fucking powerful. Musk and Bezos are sort of doing that, except both are working in at least 3 industries at that same scale. I wish Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Firefly and all the other people in new space well. Nano-sats will provide realtime insight to the earth, people will be able to own a satellite in ~5-10 years because of these advancements. this is good for all of us, and the only negative thing to say about it is that for god sakes Jeff, that rocket does look a bit like a stubby penis.

dba7dba 11y ago
1. popular sentiment in that industry is that rocketry is like writing software composed of many modules and testing each module separately on mac, then deploying the entire build on linux. Musk always says the passing grade in rocketry is 100%. As there's no way to test a rocket fully except to actually launch it. 2. bit like a stubby penis lol And that stubby thing shoots less powerfully than SpaceX.

dba7dba 11y ago

I wonder SpaceX opening an office in Seattle was just to make it easier to hire away engineers from Bezos?

anjc 11y ago

Article title sounds like somebody's attempt at a new MVP/PMF paradigm

xgbi 11y ago

"Our vision: millions of people working and living in space" When you have only a few seconds above the "official" space altitude on a parabolic trajectory, I wouldn't say" working and living in space", and specially not "millions" at the same time.. Is it me or this is primarily a pitch video ?

espadrine 11y ago
Very much so. It is a bit disingenuous to imagine sustained life in space when we can barely live sustainably on the overwhelming majority of the surface of Earth. At least on Earth, we don't encounter the physical limitations that our bodies have when exposed to zero gravity, like loss of bone and muscle.