4 ms·
Apples and oranges. Sierra is making a reuseable orbiter which needs a launcher and is pretty agnostic which one. Blue is making an orbital launcher but doesn'
by imglorp 2y ago
Apples and oranges. Sierra is making a reuseable orbiter which needs a launcher and is pretty agnostic which one. Blue is making an orbital launcher but doesn't have a orbital spacecraft.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoOK, but surely NASA would like multiple suppliers for all components, and the launcher is the hard part, so Blue Origin seem closer to being a (single vendor) alternative to SpaceX. They were also tendering for the Artemis moon landing vehicle.
- imtringued 2y agoI'm not sure the launcher is the hard part. Heat shield tiles and re-entry seem to be much harder problems. Boeing Starliner had no trouble launching, returning on the other hand was risky. SLS worked flawlessly, but the returning Orion capsule's heat shield was severely damaged and the heat shield does not appear to be safe enough for crewed missions. Starship's super heavy booster landed as planned, but the upper stage got damaged during re-entry and just barely managed to perform a landing. STS/The space shuttle disaster was caused by damage from the launch, but arrived safely in LEO. The catastrophic loss occured during re-entry.
- bell-cot 2y agoPretty much. With both more time and vastly more money than Sierra, BO has yet to reach orbit with anything. Medium lift rockets are not particularly scarce...vs. there's only one decent non-Russian, non-Chinese manned orbital vehicle. And it took even SpaceX almost a decade to go from Cargo Dragon to Crew Dragon.