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What’s the Bezos one doing though? Aren’t they comparably close give or take a few years.
by texasbigdata 6y ago
What’s the Bezos one doing though? Aren’t they comparably close give or take a few years.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoThey haven't actually put anything in orbit yet. I'd say they're at least a decade behind.
- dmd 6y agoRemind me again how many times Blue Origin has put anything in orbit?
- wongarsu 6y agoI don't think anybody knows how far Blue Origin really is. They are much more secretive and seem to do a lot less testing. New Glenn is somewhat comparable to a Falcon 9 scaled up to the size of Starship and is supposed to happen in 2021, but I don't think there's any good indication how far they are along and whether they will be able to deliver. My gut says that if they don't test they can't deliver, and that Elon's rapid prototyping will keep SpaceX far in the lead for the foreseeable future. But only time will tell.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoPayload-wise New Glenn is better comparable to Falcon Heavy than to Starship. New Glenn actually sits more or less in the middle between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
- fastball 6y agoIf you ignore payload capacity, I'd say New Glenn is much closer to Starship than it is to Falcon 9 in terms of technical development, mostly because of its novel engine, the BE-4. Like the Starship's Raptors, they are powered by a fuel that can be produced in-situ at the intended destination. Though in the case of the Raptors it's Methalox from Martian atmosphere (via Sabatier), whereas BE-4 engines are Hydrolox that they hope to get from ice on the moon.
- philwelch 6y agoBE-4 is methalox. BE-3 and BE-7 are hydrolox.
- fastball 6y agoThanks for the correction, you're right, I was thinking about their Blue Moon lander, which is slated to have BE-7 engines.
- sushibowl 6y agoIs the BE-4 design really that new? The choice of fuel is of course novel. But apart from that, it seems to be an oxygen-rich staged combustion design, which was invented by the soviets... somewhere in the 60's?
- jiofih 6y agoNot even close. SpaceX has been launching commercial payloads for nearly a decade now, is on track to a hundred reusable rocket flights, is on the 11th or so generation, and Starship is far beyond anything BO has in their roadmap - if they manage to launch commercially one day.
- someperson 6y agoFor what it's worth Blue Origin's New Armstrong rocket hasn't yet been revealed (John Sheppard -> John Glenn -> Neil Armstrong) but Jeff Bezos has mentioned it. It's widely assumed to be a Saturn V class Super Heavy Lift vehicle.
- jiofih 6y agoYeah I can draw a 77 thousand ton interstellar transporter on a napkin and “announce” it too.
- valuearb 6y agoBO has never launched anything into orbit. It has plans to someday build a competitor to the 13 year old Falcon 9. Oh and Bezos started BO before SpaceX, and has given it substantially more funding.
- sq_ 6y agoIt's tough to tell what they're doing, as they're way less open about things than SpaceX and some of the other new commercial launchers (e.g. Rocket Lab). Seems to me that they may be trying to pivot away from having orbital rockets being their main product with the sale of BE-4 engines to ULA for Vulcan and all of their work on lunar projects. But that could also be them trying to get more friendly with NASA or get development of the BE-4 paid for or any number of other things. They certainly are lacking in terms of actual hardware being seen.
- jaredmoon 6y agoNo, not even close.