10 ms·

Why Bezos’ rocket is unprecedented–and worth taking seriously

83 points by ghosh 10y ago

banku_brougham 10y ago
i really enjoy space movies, and i like the nasa missions of history and this excellent Blue Origin project. I wish i had studied orbital physics or something, and work at Blue Origin or the JPL. But, imagining the galactic history books of the future, I'm also at peace with the idea that the earth is the first and only home of humanity.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's never too late to get started with Kerbal and dork around with orbital mechanics.
- JorgeGT 10y ago
  “Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.” ~ Carl Sagan. Bonus: with music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0
  - tobtoh 10y ago
    I do like that quote ... but it did get me thinking about my own circumstances. As someone who believes that we probably evolved/migrated out of Africa, I feel no unity or connection to that continent. I only really feel a connection for my home town (in Australia) where I was born (I've moved to a different state since then). So I suspect, in the far future when we colonise many worlds, there won't actually be much of a connection.
    - zdkl 10y ago
      I think this quote takes it sense when you consider it from a deeper perspective. "This is the place your *{great}-grandpa came from"
      - saiya-jin 10y ago
        which... you can say about Africa too, just add enough "great-" words before
- mabbo 10y ago
  Go play Kerbal Space Program for a few hours/days/years. You'd be surprised at how intuitive orbital mechanics actually is, once you get used to it.
GoToRO 10y ago
I really like this rocket because you can see with the naked eye that it is really stable. They designed powerful enough engines, good enough software to keep it very stable. When you watch a SpaceX landing it's like watching a sports event: you wish more than you are certain.
- shepardrtc 10y ago
  Your comparison isn't a proper one. The SpaceX landings that you're talking about are very, very different from the Blue Origin landings. Once Bezos starts putting things into orbit, then we can start comparing properly.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    Agreed. From the article, this highlights what kind of shift Blue Origin needs to make it from their current rocket to one on the SpaceX scale: "Put another way, Blue Origin wants to go from a small, suborbital rocket to one that stands four times as tall and possesses 35 times the thrust. That is quite a leap."
  - daedalus_j 10y ago
    It's amazing to me that people don't understand this. Lumping all rocketry together is a rather grave mistake. Yes, it's all hard, yes they all can explode, but the current Blue Origin landings are the equivalent of tossing a dart and hitting a bullseye across the room, while the current SpaceX landings are tossing a dart, hitting a bullseye in the next room, where the board is strapped to a dog standing on a skateboard, and in the meantime having your dart deploy a second smaller dart that has it's own bullseye to hit. They're just not comparable at all. I'm a fan of any company that wants to get people off this rock cheaply and safely, but Blue Origin has a long way to go to achieve what SpaceX is doing. I can't wait to see that thing fly though. :-D
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- hughes 10y ago
  Somewhat counter intuitively, the New Shepard is so stable because it's less powerful. You'll never see a hover + correction maneuver in a SpaceX landing because even the single engine used for landing is too strong to allow hovering when the fuel tanks are almost empty.
jsprogrammer 10y ago
An electromagnetic launcher seems to be the way to go. Why is everyone spending time on rockets?
- Symmetry 10y ago
  In theory you need to apply 7.8 km/s of deltaV to an object to put it into orbit. In practice, you also need to use more to overcome to factors. There's gravity drag, the action of gravity on your rocket while it's speeding up to orbital velocity. There's also atmospheric drag, the resistance of the atmosphere to your rocket when it's traveling up to space. The faster you accelerate the less gravity drag but the more atmospheric drag you experience since you spend less time accelerating but are traveling faster lower in the atmosphere, and drag is proportional to the square of the velocity. As you can see, using an electromagnetic cannon where you are at full speed leaving the barrel of the gun, you will have zero gravity drag but an immense amount of atmospheric drag. This means both that you will have to apply much more deltaV and that the heating caused by the passage of your capsule through the atmosphere will be enough to destroy any known material. Finally, if you launch at full velocity from the surface of the Earth then the rules of orbital mechanics mean that, if you are going into an elliptical orbit, your orbit will intersect the launch point eventually and your capsule will lithobrake on the ground, also destroying it. Neither of these problems apply to launching from the Moon back to Earth, for the record. The moon has no atmosphere to apply drag and heating. And if you're leaving the Moon's orbit for Earth you're on a hyperbolic orbit rather than an elliptical one and won't be coming back around in any case. So for getting off of airless Moons into orbit around their primary electromagnetic launchers are an excellent idea.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Because it's easier to build a reusable rocket than a reusable railgun, especially a reusable railgun that's hundreds of kilometers long.
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    Easier solutions aren't necessarily good. Rockets are extremely dangerous and expensive. The ~200km required is daunting, but imminently possible.
ufmace 10y ago
Makes me think of this other Ars story: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/we-love-spacex-and-we-hope-it-reaches-mars-but-we-spacex-to-focus/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/we-love-spacex-and-we... I'm glad these guys are making waves in getting stuff to space, but maybe they should focus on getting one or two people to LEO, which none of them have even tried to do yet, before they start thinking about colonizing other planets.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  It's pretty obvious that both companies are focused on doing exactly this. Nothing wrong with thinking, so long as it's rigorous and backed by action.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Yeah, it's a bit odd to criticize both companies in this fashion when both have already developed capsules -- one capable of orbiting and re-entry, the other sub-orbital.
- Kadin 10y ago
  > but maybe they should focus on getting one or two people to LEO That seems to be exactly what they're working on. The fact that they may have ambitions beyond that doesn't mean that they're not working on the immediate problems. They are not conflicting objectives. Although if I was a private space-launch company, I don't know if I would really be working on man-rated spacecraft at all. It seems like too much risk. You can blow up a lot of unmanned payloads and nobody (other than your insurance carrier) will bat an eye; blow up a couple of astronauts and you're probably out of business. I'd want to stay in the cargo delivery business as long as possible, and leave the man-rated stuff to deep-pocketed governments, so that I could continue developing new propulsion systems without the necessary conservatism that a man-rated system requires.
  - jddjdbdbd3 10y ago
    The sabre engine is going to eviscerate these companies.
hourislate 10y ago
I only wish Bezos success in this endeavor. I had a chance to visit Johnson Space Center last summer and it was like a space lovers pilgrimage to witness the miracles of science and man. The Saturn V is on display and it was so amazing taking it all in. It is massive. It is hard to imagine it can even leave the ground. I took a few pictures (potato quality) http://imgur.com/a/hsr00 http://imgur.com/a/hsr00
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  I grew up around JSC in the 90s and 2000s and driving by the Saturn was routine. It wasn't til 2 years ago that I actually bought a ticket, went in, and browsed the site with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo rockets. (I know a tad bit about the space program, which is mountains more than most of the tourists there).
garyclarke27 10y ago
Interesting that Bezos new rocket will be using Liquified Natural Gas, LNG. Cheap and I suspect inherently safer and eaiser to handle than Kerosene or Hydrogen, though slightly less energy dense. Safer because is same temp as Liquid Oxygen, SpaceX may I think have caused reliability problems for themselves using super cooled Oxygen.
- perseusprime11 10y ago
  In this context, I like this article from NASA that talks about Liquid Hydrogen as the fuel of choice for space exploration: http://www.nasa.gov/content/liquid-hydrogen-the-fuel-of-choice-for-space-exploration http://www.nasa.gov/content/liquid-hydrogen-the-fuel-of-choi...
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    Yeah, reading that you would be surprised to learn that the lower stage of every launcher flying or in development doesn't use liquid hydrogen[1]. (1: OK Ariane 5/6 but most of the thrust is from solids)
    - ashamedpedant 10y ago
      >flying or in development You've forgotten about ULA's Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy, NASA's SLS, and JAXA's H-IIA and H-IIB. Delta IV Heavy is currently the most capable rocket in the world and uses liquid hydrogen throughout (no solid boosters).
- dasmoth 10y ago
  >>> SpaceX may I think have caused reliability problems for themselves using super cooled Oxygen. I was worried about that while watching the first couple of "full thrust" launch campaigns, but they quickly fell into a rhythm, and I see little evidence that it's holding things up. I suppose my opinion might change once we know what caused the Amos-6 pad failure. But don't think there's anything that singles out the sub-cooled LOX as a particular concern at the moment.
- 10y ago
paulsutter 10y ago
Bezos' ambition is space manufacturing/mining, contrasted with Elon's dream of Mars colonization. It will be interesting to see how that affects the way things play out. Elon's greatest contribution is to raise the bar for everyone else. I hope Bezos accomplishes great things in space too.
- spyspy 10y ago
  Manufacturing/mining is going to be a large part of Mars colonization.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's highly probable that if the space mining operation succeeds they will be an invaluable supplier for the Mars colonization project. It's much cheaper to transport materials from space to Mars than from Earth to Mars.
  - coolspot 10y ago
    BTW I have ordered 100,000 tons of iron on prime.amazon.com.mars and it still in status "pending", they even didn't charge my SolarPay account.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      I've heard they're having drone delivery problems because of unusual solar flare activity and probable sabotage from the AI running Uber Shuttle as protest against stricter limits on the sorts of cargo that service can carry. Apparently the solar system government is damage that needs to be routed around.

83 points by ghosh 10y ago

i really enjoy space movies, and i like the nasa missions of history and this excellent Blue Origin project. I wish i had studied orbital physics or something, and work at Blue Origin or the JPL. But, imagining the galactic history books of the future, I'm also at peace with the idea that the earth is the first and only home of humanity.

astrodust 10y ago
It's never too late to get started with Kerbal and dork around with orbital mechanics.
JorgeGT 10y ago
“Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.” ~ Carl Sagan. Bonus: with music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0
- tobtoh 10y ago
  I do like that quote ... but it did get me thinking about my own circumstances. As someone who believes that we probably evolved/migrated out of Africa, I feel no unity or connection to that continent. I only really feel a connection for my home town (in Australia) where I was born (I've moved to a different state since then). So I suspect, in the far future when we colonise many worlds, there won't actually be much of a connection.
  - zdkl 10y ago
    I think this quote takes it sense when you consider it from a deeper perspective. "This is the place your *{great}-grandpa came from"
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      which... you can say about Africa too, just add enough "great-" words before
mabbo 10y ago
Go play Kerbal Space Program for a few hours/days/years. You'd be surprised at how intuitive orbital mechanics actually is, once you get used to it.

GoToRO 10y ago

I really like this rocket because you can see with the naked eye that it is really stable. They designed powerful enough engines, good enough software to keep it very stable. When you watch a SpaceX landing it's like watching a sports event: you wish more than you are certain.

shepardrtc 10y ago
Your comparison isn't a proper one. The SpaceX landings that you're talking about are very, very different from the Blue Origin landings. Once Bezos starts putting things into orbit, then we can start comparing properly.
- daveguy 10y ago
  Agreed. From the article, this highlights what kind of shift Blue Origin needs to make it from their current rocket to one on the SpaceX scale: "Put another way, Blue Origin wants to go from a small, suborbital rocket to one that stands four times as tall and possesses 35 times the thrust. That is quite a leap."
- daedalus_j 10y ago
  It's amazing to me that people don't understand this. Lumping all rocketry together is a rather grave mistake. Yes, it's all hard, yes they all can explode, but the current Blue Origin landings are the equivalent of tossing a dart and hitting a bullseye across the room, while the current SpaceX landings are tossing a dart, hitting a bullseye in the next room, where the board is strapped to a dog standing on a skateboard, and in the meantime having your dart deploy a second smaller dart that has it's own bullseye to hit. They're just not comparable at all. I'm a fan of any company that wants to get people off this rock cheaply and safely, but Blue Origin has a long way to go to achieve what SpaceX is doing. I can't wait to see that thing fly though. :-D
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hughes 10y ago
Somewhat counter intuitively, the New Shepard is so stable because it's less powerful. You'll never see a hover + correction maneuver in a SpaceX landing because even the single engine used for landing is too strong to allow hovering when the fuel tanks are almost empty.

jsprogrammer 10y ago

An electromagnetic launcher seems to be the way to go. Why is everyone spending time on rockets?

Symmetry 10y ago
In theory you need to apply 7.8 km/s of deltaV to an object to put it into orbit. In practice, you also need to use more to overcome to factors. There's gravity drag, the action of gravity on your rocket while it's speeding up to orbital velocity. There's also atmospheric drag, the resistance of the atmosphere to your rocket when it's traveling up to space. The faster you accelerate the less gravity drag but the more atmospheric drag you experience since you spend less time accelerating but are traveling faster lower in the atmosphere, and drag is proportional to the square of the velocity. As you can see, using an electromagnetic cannon where you are at full speed leaving the barrel of the gun, you will have zero gravity drag but an immense amount of atmospheric drag. This means both that you will have to apply much more deltaV and that the heating caused by the passage of your capsule through the atmosphere will be enough to destroy any known material. Finally, if you launch at full velocity from the surface of the Earth then the rules of orbital mechanics mean that, if you are going into an elliptical orbit, your orbit will intersect the launch point eventually and your capsule will lithobrake on the ground, also destroying it. Neither of these problems apply to launching from the Moon back to Earth, for the record. The moon has no atmosphere to apply drag and heating. And if you're leaving the Moon's orbit for Earth you're on a hyperbolic orbit rather than an elliptical one and won't be coming back around in any case. So for getting off of airless Moons into orbit around their primary electromagnetic launchers are an excellent idea.
throwanem 10y ago
Because it's easier to build a reusable rocket than a reusable railgun, especially a reusable railgun that's hundreds of kilometers long.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Easier solutions aren't necessarily good. Rockets are extremely dangerous and expensive. The ~200km required is daunting, but imminently possible.

ufmace 10y ago

Makes me think of this other Ars story: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/we-love-spacex-and-we-hope-it-reaches-mars-but-we-spacex-to-focus/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/we-love-spacex-and-we... I'm glad these guys are making waves in getting stuff to space, but maybe they should focus on getting one or two people to LEO, which none of them have even tried to do yet, before they start thinking about colonizing other planets.

stcredzero 10y ago
It's pretty obvious that both companies are focused on doing exactly this. Nothing wrong with thinking, so long as it's rigorous and backed by action.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Yeah, it's a bit odd to criticize both companies in this fashion when both have already developed capsules -- one capable of orbiting and re-entry, the other sub-orbital.
Kadin 10y ago
> but maybe they should focus on getting one or two people to LEO That seems to be exactly what they're working on. The fact that they may have ambitions beyond that doesn't mean that they're not working on the immediate problems. They are not conflicting objectives. Although if I was a private space-launch company, I don't know if I would really be working on man-rated spacecraft at all. It seems like too much risk. You can blow up a lot of unmanned payloads and nobody (other than your insurance carrier) will bat an eye; blow up a couple of astronauts and you're probably out of business. I'd want to stay in the cargo delivery business as long as possible, and leave the man-rated stuff to deep-pocketed governments, so that I could continue developing new propulsion systems without the necessary conservatism that a man-rated system requires.
- jddjdbdbd3 10y ago
  The sabre engine is going to eviscerate these companies.

hourislate 10y ago

I only wish Bezos success in this endeavor. I had a chance to visit Johnson Space Center last summer and it was like a space lovers pilgrimage to witness the miracles of science and man. The Saturn V is on display and it was so amazing taking it all in. It is massive. It is hard to imagine it can even leave the ground. I took a few pictures (potato quality) http://imgur.com/a/hsr00 http://imgur.com/a/hsr00

unethical_ban 10y ago
I grew up around JSC in the 90s and 2000s and driving by the Saturn was routine. It wasn't til 2 years ago that I actually bought a ticket, went in, and browsed the site with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo rockets. (I know a tad bit about the space program, which is mountains more than most of the tourists there).

garyclarke27 10y ago

Interesting that Bezos new rocket will be using Liquified Natural Gas, LNG. Cheap and I suspect inherently safer and eaiser to handle than Kerosene or Hydrogen, though slightly less energy dense. Safer because is same temp as Liquid Oxygen, SpaceX may I think have caused reliability problems for themselves using super cooled Oxygen.

perseusprime11 10y ago
In this context, I like this article from NASA that talks about Liquid Hydrogen as the fuel of choice for space exploration: http://www.nasa.gov/content/liquid-hydrogen-the-fuel-of-choice-for-space-exploration http://www.nasa.gov/content/liquid-hydrogen-the-fuel-of-choi...
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Yeah, reading that you would be surprised to learn that the lower stage of every launcher flying or in development doesn't use liquid hydrogen[1]. (1: OK Ariane 5/6 but most of the thrust is from solids)
  - ashamedpedant 10y ago
    >flying or in development You've forgotten about ULA's Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy, NASA's SLS, and JAXA's H-IIA and H-IIB. Delta IV Heavy is currently the most capable rocket in the world and uses liquid hydrogen throughout (no solid boosters).
dasmoth 10y ago
>>> SpaceX may I think have caused reliability problems for themselves using super cooled Oxygen. I was worried about that while watching the first couple of "full thrust" launch campaigns, but they quickly fell into a rhythm, and I see little evidence that it's holding things up. I suppose my opinion might change once we know what caused the Amos-6 pad failure. But don't think there's anything that singles out the sub-cooled LOX as a particular concern at the moment.
10y ago

paulsutter 10y ago

Bezos' ambition is space manufacturing/mining, contrasted with Elon's dream of Mars colonization. It will be interesting to see how that affects the way things play out. Elon's greatest contribution is to raise the bar for everyone else. I hope Bezos accomplishes great things in space too.

spyspy 10y ago
Manufacturing/mining is going to be a large part of Mars colonization.
astrodust 10y ago
It's highly probable that if the space mining operation succeeds they will be an invaluable supplier for the Mars colonization project. It's much cheaper to transport materials from space to Mars than from Earth to Mars.
- coolspot 10y ago
  BTW I have ordered 100,000 tons of iron on prime.amazon.com.mars and it still in status "pending", they even didn't charge my SolarPay account.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    I've heard they're having drone delivery problems because of unusual solar flare activity and probable sabotage from the AI running Uber Shuttle as protest against stricter limits on the sorts of cargo that service can carry. Apparently the solar system government is damage that needs to be routed around.