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Does anyone know what's up with Blue origin? Bezos pumps a solid billion into them every year but it doesn't seem like they're anywhere?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
BO has a more traditional approach to design than SpaceX's iterative process. They spend more time on simulation and analysis than on real world testing. Right now it appears that the SpaceX approach returns better results though they do have to deal with the peanut gallery using tests that end in explosions as an opportunity to attack the company instead of acknowledging that it's part of the process. If Blue Origin has a rocket explode, that's a much bigger blow to them as RUDs are not a significant part of their process. It also means their process is far less observable to outsiders, so a year or two from how, they might have New Glenn rockets in regular operation and for most, that will seemingly come out from nowhere.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  SpaceX also does a lot of simulation. They are known to have really good simulation team. And were very early on doing simulation on GPUs and such. And that was 10 years ago. By now they are likely far further along. > so a year or two from how, they might have New Glenn rockets in regular operation and for most, that will seemingly come out from nowhere. They will be lucky to have launched their rocket more then once in the next 2 years.
- chasd00 4y ago
  I don't think SpaceX's iterative approach would work without extremely efficient production lines and know-how. In software everyone can take an iterative approach because you're just typing on a keyboard, you don't have to produce a physical laptop at the end of every sprint. IMO SpaceX brought a lot of the production lessons learned from Tesla and applied it to rocket and engine production. That knowledge and wisdom from making Tesla production lines work isn't available at Blue Origin so I don't think a SpaceX rapid dev approach could work there.
panick21_ 4y ago
By now Bezos is spending more then 1 billion per year. BlueOrigin is a huge company already, and the basically make no money what so ever. 1 billion might cover labor cost. But given the infrastructure they are building and the actual rockets and so on, it has to be significantly more then 1 billion. Well they are making slow progress on a hugely complex rocket, New Glenn. The might fly it in the next 2 years.
antoniuschan99 4y ago
BE-4 engine delay. It delayed New Glenn and also ULA Vulcan. Vulcan is slated to start launching Amazon Kuiper Sats. And Rocketlabs Peter Beck is saying these constellations are slated to start going up en masse starting ~2026
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Vulcan is not slated for Amazon launches. Amazon bought the rest of the Atlas 5 launches.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

BO has a more traditional approach to design than SpaceX's iterative process. They spend more time on simulation and analysis than on real world testing. Right now it appears that the SpaceX approach returns better results though they do have to deal with the peanut gallery using tests that end in explosions as an opportunity to attack the company instead of acknowledging that it's part of the process. If Blue Origin has a rocket explode, that's a much bigger blow to them as RUDs are not a significant part of their process. It also means their process is far less observable to outsiders, so a year or two from how, they might have New Glenn rockets in regular operation and for most, that will seemingly come out from nowhere.

panick21_ 4y ago
SpaceX also does a lot of simulation. They are known to have really good simulation team. And were very early on doing simulation on GPUs and such. And that was 10 years ago. By now they are likely far further along. > so a year or two from how, they might have New Glenn rockets in regular operation and for most, that will seemingly come out from nowhere. They will be lucky to have launched their rocket more then once in the next 2 years.
chasd00 4y ago
I don't think SpaceX's iterative approach would work without extremely efficient production lines and know-how. In software everyone can take an iterative approach because you're just typing on a keyboard, you don't have to produce a physical laptop at the end of every sprint. IMO SpaceX brought a lot of the production lessons learned from Tesla and applied it to rocket and engine production. That knowledge and wisdom from making Tesla production lines work isn't available at Blue Origin so I don't think a SpaceX rapid dev approach could work there.

panick21_ 4y ago

By now Bezos is spending more then 1 billion per year. BlueOrigin is a huge company already, and the basically make no money what so ever. 1 billion might cover labor cost. But given the infrastructure they are building and the actual rockets and so on, it has to be significantly more then 1 billion. Well they are making slow progress on a hugely complex rocket, New Glenn. The might fly it in the next 2 years.

antoniuschan99 4y ago

BE-4 engine delay. It delayed New Glenn and also ULA Vulcan. Vulcan is slated to start launching Amazon Kuiper Sats. And Rocketlabs Peter Beck is saying these constellations are slated to start going up en masse starting ~2026

panick21_ 4y ago
Vulcan is not slated for Amazon launches. Amazon bought the rest of the Atlas 5 launches.