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We're at 12 years of design and 5 years behind the originally announced first launch of 2020 now. Space is hard, rocketry is harder and I wish them luck, but Bl

We're at 12 years of design and 5 years behind the originally announced first launch of 2020 now. Space is hard, rocketry is harder and I wish them luck, but Blue Origin has an awfully long way to go if they want to catch up to SpaceX: this was meant to be the Falcon 9 killer, but odds are Starship will be fully operational before New Glenn completes testing.

yeknoda 2y ago
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ternnoburn 2y ago
Starship will serve a different mission profile. People seem convinced Starship will just "solve" space, but if it works, there's still going to be demand for other mission profiles that it won't make sense to send on Starship. But if your point wasn't to say that it will be obsoleted by Starship, and just to say instead it's slower development than Starship, yeah, that's true. I suspect the head start in infrastructure spacex has is pretty valuable in developing new programs. Space is hard. I hope Blue Origin succeeds.
- zizee 2y ago
  Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?
  - Retric 2y ago
    10t to LEO in an unusual orbit. Being smaller than Starship while still huge isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Starship should be able to put 10t into LEO significantly cheaper than New Glenn can. Why would anybody pay more?
      - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
        I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Musk says Starship launches will get down to $10m each. But... that seems like an "asperational statement." He also said Full Self Driving Mode would be available in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025. Not trying to take away from the absolutely cool stuff his companies have done, but it seems like it will be a while before it costs $10m to launch a Starship. This link from 2 years ago estimates a New Glenn launch costing $68m. I have no idea how accurate that number is. But if we're going to use Musk's "asperational" cost estimate for Starship launches in the distant future, we should let BO use an "asperational" figure as well. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal-with-blue-origin-arianespace-ula-for-project-kuiper-internet-satellites.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal...
        OhMeadhbh 2y ago
        Dudes. You don't have to down-vote me 'cause I'm just asking for where you got your numbers. I'm not saying you're a horrible person and that SpaceX sucks. I'm saying I have numbers that don't match yours. Let's compare numbers / sources and see what the most likely values would be near-term and long-term.
        zizee 2y ago
        Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which will cut costs considerably.
        Retric 2y ago
  - ternnoburn 2y ago
    Smaller launch to a specific orbit. As an analogy, freight trains are one of the most efficient, cheapest ways to move freight. But moving my laundry to the laundromat is better served by another vehicle.
    - zizee 2y ago
      This changes if SpaceX can get full reusability working, which they have been making very steady progress towards.
      - avmich 2y ago
        Yeah, that's the main proposition Starship has for the market. Going to analogy with laundromat, you need to include the cost of single-use laundry cart and remember that your laundromat is on another end of the same asphalted road which the truck nearby can easily drive on. Not sure at all if costs - and hassles, of course - of buying a cart are less than some change for the costs of the fuel - the truck is autonomous, of course.
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    Starship is heavy lift / heavy expense. If you want to put 1 small-sat in orbit, you don't use Starship, you use a Rocket Lab Electron. It's MUCH cheaper. Or you wait until you find 600 other small sat users who want to launch into the same / similar orbit. The talk I heard was that New Glenn was supposed to be BO's answer to Starship (or more likely Falcon Heavy) that could launch a bunch of Project Kuiper satellites into LEO so Amazon could compete with Starlink and feed Amazon's Ground Station as a Service offering. If we are to believe the published numbers, New Glenn can lift 50 imperial tons to LEO, Starship Block III will hoist 200 tons and Falcon Heavy will lift 50-60 depending on how re-usable you want your launch to be. I'm not a heavy lift sales-person, but I've been in the room when they discussed what they thought they could sell to govt / mil / commercial customers. So take this with a little bit of salt... Seems to me BO was targeting a slightly smaller launch vehicle than SpaceX was going with so they could decouple schedule with Amazon's Kuiper Project. You don't want to have that cool new rocket you developed dependent on a satellite constellation that gets delayed. So you have a rocket that would be easier to fill with a number of small to medium sized satellites to LEO or (fewer) to GEO. And like other people on the thread have commented, it seems BO is a decade behind SpaceX, so... yeah... a big rocket that competes with Starship is pretty risky for BO. And yes, I understand that BO is independent from Amazon, but from what I've seen this is just so they can execute on a schedule that isn't determined by AMZN's board of directors. They seem pretty closely related, just from talking with Kuiper, GSaaS and BO engineers. I don't work for any of the above mentioned companies and have no insider information. YMMV. Just my guesses from watching some of the personalities involved for the last 30 years.
    - starik36 2y ago
      I am going out on a limb and say that Project Kuiper satellites themselves are nowhere near ready. Amazon is supposed to launch 50% of the constellation of ~6000 into orbit by July 2026 or risk losing frequencies. So you would think there would be some urgency. Amazon purchased pretty much all remaining Atlas 5 launches from ULA. This is a proven rocket and ready to fly. Why aren't the satellites being launched? The only thing I can think of is that they are not ready yet.
      - 2y ago
  - DrBazza 2y ago
    Non-orbital. But it can do that as well. Just sacrifice the rocket and use the landing fuel for more delta-v.
- avmich 2y ago
  I hope Blue Origin succeeds too, but I'm not sure which mission profiles wouldn't be served best by the Starship in comparison to other launchers. There could be some ultra-light ones, where the cost for the whole launch is less than refueling the Starship, but...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - imtringued 2y ago
    Obviously any mission that goes beyond LEO that does not aeorbrake at the destination, because that means you're expending an upper stage with aerodynamic surfaces for no reason. Also anything that does a direct TLI or TMI, because you will have to stop for in-orbit refuelling.
    - quotemstr 2y ago
      Huh? If Starship can cheaply lift 150T to LEO, you can allocate some of that 150T to a propulsion system.
      - basementcat 2y ago
        That means the customer has to buy an additional propulsion stage (plus time for integration testing and insurance in case it damages the launch vehicle, in case it becomes reusable). Also, it is not yet clear what the LEO payload capability of the vehicle is.
        quotemstr 2y ago
        The cost of an expendable third stage is surely more than made up for the brute force cost savings of being able to launch 150T to LEO for the cost of fuel and a car wash.
        basementcat 2y ago
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  > but if it works, there's still going to be demand for other mission profiles that it won't make sense to send on Starship I'm rooting for any and all US launch providers to succeed, but I don't think this is true. Starship at full reusability will be better than any other launcher for every single mission profile imaginable.
  - ternnoburn 2y ago
    There's simply no way one vehicle will be the best option in every case. If you have a small satellite you need placed somewhere unique, firing up a huge launch vehicle makes no sense.
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      It does if it's still cheaper than any other rocket.
      - timewizard 2y ago
        Your launch price may somehow be cheaper; although, that's incredibly unlikely. Anyways as your insurance underwriter I'm going to jack up the rate on you so high for that launch it will no longer be cheaper.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        Starship’s launch price is highly likely to be cheaper if New Glenn’s second stage isn’t reusable.
        OhMeadhbh 2y ago
        It's also a bit of a straw-man to assume people will only fly on the cheapest lift option. Virgin Orbit lasted as long as it did only because there was one (maybe two) customers who were willing to pay a premium for being guinea pigs for a new technology. Their reasoning was something like "if this pans out, it'll be very cool long term" so they were willing to put their small-sats on a largely untested platform. The same could be said about some of the entrenched players in earth observation. They're willing to pay a bit of a premium for a reasonable amount of time to ensure there's not a monopoly player (which definitely looks like it will be SpaceX.) How much of a premium they're willing to pay and for how long seems like anyone's guess.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Is Starship really not following the exact step of N-1 && VentureStar?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Computers and materials came a long way since the N1, as Starship’s successful tests can attest to.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      But they're still losing roughly as many engines as Russians did in N1, so that sounds like a dubious claim. What about the latter? Are they really not tracing the footsteps of the X-33 program?
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        What? Flight five didn’t lose any engines. N1 kept blowing up. X-33 never got to a test flight, let alone a successful one.
        numpad0 2y ago
        N-1 only flew 4 times. Flight 5 of N-1 was supposed to use upgraded NK-33 engines. X-33 never got to test flight because the engineer minded NASA director kept pushing an unrealistic technical goal. Besides, SS still hasn't gotten its payload system working. Are those that dissimilar to how SS program is going?
        kataklasm 2y ago
        Yes, they are. Starship has proven multiple novel engineering approaches and technologies. Examples: 1. catching the booster in the air to save on landing gear weight and complexity 2. firing 33 engines simultaneously in a tight cluster 3. the only large scale production and use of CH4-fuelled engines (all other CH4 engines have only been fired a handful of times at most)
- sebazzz 2y ago
  Starships model seems to hinge on being able to catch the booster every time and the second stage most of the time. I’m not sure if this is a Tesla Model 3, or a Cybertruck.
  - trollied 2y ago
    People had doubts about Falcon 9 landing on a barge every time...
    - bamboozled 2y ago
      I think they’re asking the question: “Is there really value in the product” or is it a gimmick like the cyber truck.
- baq 2y ago
  I’m not sure which profiles don’t make sense unless they can’t figure out payload doors. Stage 2 reuse means you can put up 50 tons or so of stage 3 in LEO for approximately free in current payload pricing terms, it’s a crazy number. (Advertised capacity of 100-150 tons is probably pointless and/or volume-limited anyway for a third stage.)
  - DrBazza 2y ago
    Not all profiles end up in orbit. At this point in time, reusuability sacrifices delta-v for fuel. If you want to launch scientific missions you want to escape Earth orbit. If we're going to land on Mars, we're going to need a lot of stuff sent there first.
    - baq 2y ago
      But it doesn’t matter if you can launch 10x the mass for the same price to LEO and light your stage 3 to get anywhere you’d like to be. Stage 3 will have enough delta v and starship’s doesn’t matter as long as it gets you to the parking orbit.
reitzensteinm 2y ago
Do you have some references of New Glenn being positioned as a Falcon 9 killer by any industry professionals, commentators or press with credibility (at the risk of no true Scotsman)? This was certainly thrown around with Tesla, but it's not something I've personally come across with SpaceX. Regardless, if semiconductors have taught us anything over the last decade, strong competition is essential for a healthy market. It's hard to imagine a true (haha) fan of space exploration that isn't cheering on Rocket Lab and Blue Origin (as you are), even if they're destined to forever be runners up. Even if you believe Musk will operate SpaceX entirely selflessly, he won't be in control of it forever.
- wombatpm 2y ago
  Boeing will probably buy one of the also rams to improve their offerings
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Can an also ran buy another also ran? Does that even make sense?
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    The moment SpaceX is sold to Boeing is the moment Musk doesn't get to go to Mars. And while he may never be able to have the martian colony he seems to covet, he still seems to believe he can do it, so there's zero motivation to sell. Also... Boeing? They've been having some issues lately.
    - wombatpm 2y ago
      I was thinking that Blue Origin was a more likely target.
Retric 2y ago
It’s got more than twice the payload capacity of Falcon 9 to LEO and a 7m payload fairing vs 9m for Starship. The real question is if there’s going to be enough demand to justify these systems. With enough reusability it might make sense to fly these things 2/3 empty, but that’s only going to be so profitable.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  New Glenn's main customer will be Kuiper, Amazon's answer to Starlink.
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    But also whatever Amazon's equivalent of NanoRacks is 'cause Amazon also wants to feed their GSaaS (Ground-Station as a Service) play. I think long-term Kuiper is going to be BO's main customer, but selling lift capacity to a NanoRacks-alike could reduce the impact of a Kuiper schedule slip.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Starlink already scaled to 1M US households using Falcon 9 launches and this is twice as large. I think it’s reasonable to question just how many launches a competitor would support.
WWLink 2y ago
> Blue Origin has an awfully long way to go if they want to catch up to SpaceX Maybe we should just give the whole space industry to SpaceX because obviously nobody can touch them. /s
- foobarian 2y ago
  They seem perfectly good at doing that all on their own
imtringued 2y ago
>odds are Starship will be fully operational before New Glenn completes testing. What does this even mean? Fully operational? Starship has three versions and they are still testing the first one which isn't supposed to reach orbit in the next flight nor is it supposed to carry any payload, not even a mass simulator. When you ask people why the booster hasn't been reflown, you get this confusing answer that the booster is "already obsolete" even though they have planned to launch three more "obsolete" boosters after the first successful catch. Everyone is bragging how fast SpaceX is, but they are starting to drag their feet. It's like those people who build a demo that looks like the product is almost finished, but it turns out those were the easy and visible 80% that you can show off, now you're left with the hard and time consuming 20% and you're going to run into delays like everyone else. And then there is the fact that New Glenn is going to launch on 5th of January and attempt landing on the first flight. Barring an explosion on the way to orbit, New Glenn will be flying at least half a dozen missions carrying payloads throughout 2025 including a moon landing of Blue Moon MK1. Your comment comes across as pessimistically predicting the failure of the first launch or being ignorant that it will launch in four days.
- grecy 2y ago
  > New Glenn will be flying at least half a dozen missions carrying payloads throughout 2025 12 missions is their upper limit of capacity, so it’s “at most 12”. https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1835610703174255074?mx=2 https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1835610703174255074?mx=2
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  "the easy and visible 80% that you can show off" There was nothing easy about the Raptor engine, for one. It is absolutely the best rocket engine in the world by far, and the only methane-based engine that ever reached space. AFAIK the only "real" problem that SpaceX is now having with Starship is the heat shield vs. rapid reusability. It is an important problem, but it also means that many other complicated problems (such as precise exercise of the belly flop) are fully solved.
  - minetest2048 2y ago

yeknoda 2y ago

[flagged]

ternnoburn 2y ago

Starship will serve a different mission profile. People seem convinced Starship will just "solve" space, but if it works, there's still going to be demand for other mission profiles that it won't make sense to send on Starship. But if your point wasn't to say that it will be obsoleted by Starship, and just to say instead it's slower development than Starship, yeah, that's true. I suspect the head start in infrastructure spacex has is pretty valuable in developing new programs. Space is hard. I hope Blue Origin succeeds.

zizee 2y ago
Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?
- Retric 2y ago
  10t to LEO in an unusual orbit. Being smaller than Starship while still huge isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Starship should be able to put 10t into LEO significantly cheaper than New Glenn can. Why would anybody pay more?
    - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
      I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Musk says Starship launches will get down to $10m each. But... that seems like an "asperational statement." He also said Full Self Driving Mode would be available in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025. Not trying to take away from the absolutely cool stuff his companies have done, but it seems like it will be a while before it costs $10m to launch a Starship. This link from 2 years ago estimates a New Glenn launch costing $68m. I have no idea how accurate that number is. But if we're going to use Musk's "asperational" cost estimate for Starship launches in the distant future, we should let BO use an "asperational" figure as well. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal-with-blue-origin-arianespace-ula-for-project-kuiper-internet-satellites.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal...
      - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
        Dudes. You don't have to down-vote me 'cause I'm just asking for where you got your numbers. I'm not saying you're a horrible person and that SpaceX sucks. I'm saying I have numbers that don't match yours. Let's compare numbers / sources and see what the most likely values would be near-term and long-term.
      - zizee 2y ago
        Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which will cut costs considerably.
        Retric 2y ago
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  Smaller launch to a specific orbit. As an analogy, freight trains are one of the most efficient, cheapest ways to move freight. But moving my laundry to the laundromat is better served by another vehicle.
  - zizee 2y ago
    This changes if SpaceX can get full reusability working, which they have been making very steady progress towards.
    - avmich 2y ago
      Yeah, that's the main proposition Starship has for the market. Going to analogy with laundromat, you need to include the cost of single-use laundry cart and remember that your laundromat is on another end of the same asphalted road which the truck nearby can easily drive on. Not sure at all if costs - and hassles, of course - of buying a cart are less than some change for the costs of the fuel - the truck is autonomous, of course.
- OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  Starship is heavy lift / heavy expense. If you want to put 1 small-sat in orbit, you don't use Starship, you use a Rocket Lab Electron. It's MUCH cheaper. Or you wait until you find 600 other small sat users who want to launch into the same / similar orbit. The talk I heard was that New Glenn was supposed to be BO's answer to Starship (or more likely Falcon Heavy) that could launch a bunch of Project Kuiper satellites into LEO so Amazon could compete with Starlink and feed Amazon's Ground Station as a Service offering. If we are to believe the published numbers, New Glenn can lift 50 imperial tons to LEO, Starship Block III will hoist 200 tons and Falcon Heavy will lift 50-60 depending on how re-usable you want your launch to be. I'm not a heavy lift sales-person, but I've been in the room when they discussed what they thought they could sell to govt / mil / commercial customers. So take this with a little bit of salt... Seems to me BO was targeting a slightly smaller launch vehicle than SpaceX was going with so they could decouple schedule with Amazon's Kuiper Project. You don't want to have that cool new rocket you developed dependent on a satellite constellation that gets delayed. So you have a rocket that would be easier to fill with a number of small to medium sized satellites to LEO or (fewer) to GEO. And like other people on the thread have commented, it seems BO is a decade behind SpaceX, so... yeah... a big rocket that competes with Starship is pretty risky for BO. And yes, I understand that BO is independent from Amazon, but from what I've seen this is just so they can execute on a schedule that isn't determined by AMZN's board of directors. They seem pretty closely related, just from talking with Kuiper, GSaaS and BO engineers. I don't work for any of the above mentioned companies and have no insider information. YMMV. Just my guesses from watching some of the personalities involved for the last 30 years.
  - starik36 2y ago
    I am going out on a limb and say that Project Kuiper satellites themselves are nowhere near ready. Amazon is supposed to launch 50% of the constellation of ~6000 into orbit by July 2026 or risk losing frequencies. So you would think there would be some urgency. Amazon purchased pretty much all remaining Atlas 5 launches from ULA. This is a proven rocket and ready to fly. Why aren't the satellites being launched? The only thing I can think of is that they are not ready yet.
    - 2y ago
- DrBazza 2y ago
  Non-orbital. But it can do that as well. Just sacrifice the rocket and use the landing fuel for more delta-v.
avmich 2y ago
I hope Blue Origin succeeds too, but I'm not sure which mission profiles wouldn't be served best by the Starship in comparison to other launchers. There could be some ultra-light ones, where the cost for the whole launch is less than refueling the Starship, but...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 2y ago
  Obviously any mission that goes beyond LEO that does not aeorbrake at the destination, because that means you're expending an upper stage with aerodynamic surfaces for no reason. Also anything that does a direct TLI or TMI, because you will have to stop for in-orbit refuelling.
  - quotemstr 2y ago
    Huh? If Starship can cheaply lift 150T to LEO, you can allocate some of that 150T to a propulsion system.
    - basementcat 2y ago
      That means the customer has to buy an additional propulsion stage (plus time for integration testing and insurance in case it damages the launch vehicle, in case it becomes reusable). Also, it is not yet clear what the LEO payload capability of the vehicle is.
      - quotemstr 2y ago
        The cost of an expendable third stage is surely more than made up for the brute force cost savings of being able to launch 150T to LEO for the cost of fuel and a car wash.
        basementcat 2y ago
bpodgursky 2y ago
> but if it works, there's still going to be demand for other mission profiles that it won't make sense to send on Starship I'm rooting for any and all US launch providers to succeed, but I don't think this is true. Starship at full reusability will be better than any other launcher for every single mission profile imaginable.
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  There's simply no way one vehicle will be the best option in every case. If you have a small satellite you need placed somewhere unique, firing up a huge launch vehicle makes no sense.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    It does if it's still cheaper than any other rocket.
    - timewizard 2y ago
      Your launch price may somehow be cheaper; although, that's incredibly unlikely. Anyways as your insurance underwriter I'm going to jack up the rate on you so high for that launch it will no longer be cheaper.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        Starship’s launch price is highly likely to be cheaper if New Glenn’s second stage isn’t reusable.
      - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
        It's also a bit of a straw-man to assume people will only fly on the cheapest lift option. Virgin Orbit lasted as long as it did only because there was one (maybe two) customers who were willing to pay a premium for being guinea pigs for a new technology. Their reasoning was something like "if this pans out, it'll be very cool long term" so they were willing to put their small-sats on a largely untested platform. The same could be said about some of the entrenched players in earth observation. They're willing to pay a bit of a premium for a reasonable amount of time to ensure there's not a monopoly player (which definitely looks like it will be SpaceX.) How much of a premium they're willing to pay and for how long seems like anyone's guess.
numpad0 2y ago
Is Starship really not following the exact step of N-1 && VentureStar?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Computers and materials came a long way since the N1, as Starship’s successful tests can attest to.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    But they're still losing roughly as many engines as Russians did in N1, so that sounds like a dubious claim. What about the latter? Are they really not tracing the footsteps of the X-33 program?
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      What? Flight five didn’t lose any engines. N1 kept blowing up. X-33 never got to a test flight, let alone a successful one.
      - numpad0 2y ago
        N-1 only flew 4 times. Flight 5 of N-1 was supposed to use upgraded NK-33 engines. X-33 never got to test flight because the engineer minded NASA director kept pushing an unrealistic technical goal. Besides, SS still hasn't gotten its payload system working. Are those that dissimilar to how SS program is going?
        kataklasm 2y ago
        Yes, they are. Starship has proven multiple novel engineering approaches and technologies. Examples: 1. catching the booster in the air to save on landing gear weight and complexity 2. firing 33 engines simultaneously in a tight cluster 3. the only large scale production and use of CH4-fuelled engines (all other CH4 engines have only been fired a handful of times at most)
sebazzz 2y ago
Starships model seems to hinge on being able to catch the booster every time and the second stage most of the time. I’m not sure if this is a Tesla Model 3, or a Cybertruck.
- trollied 2y ago
  People had doubts about Falcon 9 landing on a barge every time...
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    I think they’re asking the question: “Is there really value in the product” or is it a gimmick like the cyber truck.
baq 2y ago
I’m not sure which profiles don’t make sense unless they can’t figure out payload doors. Stage 2 reuse means you can put up 50 tons or so of stage 3 in LEO for approximately free in current payload pricing terms, it’s a crazy number. (Advertised capacity of 100-150 tons is probably pointless and/or volume-limited anyway for a third stage.)
- DrBazza 2y ago
  Not all profiles end up in orbit. At this point in time, reusuability sacrifices delta-v for fuel. If you want to launch scientific missions you want to escape Earth orbit. If we're going to land on Mars, we're going to need a lot of stuff sent there first.
  - baq 2y ago
    But it doesn’t matter if you can launch 10x the mass for the same price to LEO and light your stage 3 to get anywhere you’d like to be. Stage 3 will have enough delta v and starship’s doesn’t matter as long as it gets you to the parking orbit.

reitzensteinm 2y ago

Do you have some references of New Glenn being positioned as a Falcon 9 killer by any industry professionals, commentators or press with credibility (at the risk of no true Scotsman)? This was certainly thrown around with Tesla, but it's not something I've personally come across with SpaceX. Regardless, if semiconductors have taught us anything over the last decade, strong competition is essential for a healthy market. It's hard to imagine a true (haha) fan of space exploration that isn't cheering on Rocket Lab and Blue Origin (as you are), even if they're destined to forever be runners up. Even if you believe Musk will operate SpaceX entirely selflessly, he won't be in control of it forever.

wombatpm 2y ago
Boeing will probably buy one of the also rams to improve their offerings
- dylan604 2y ago
  Can an also ran buy another also ran? Does that even make sense?
- OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  The moment SpaceX is sold to Boeing is the moment Musk doesn't get to go to Mars. And while he may never be able to have the martian colony he seems to covet, he still seems to believe he can do it, so there's zero motivation to sell. Also... Boeing? They've been having some issues lately.
  - wombatpm 2y ago
    I was thinking that Blue Origin was a more likely target.

Retric 2y ago

It’s got more than twice the payload capacity of Falcon 9 to LEO and a 7m payload fairing vs 9m for Starship. The real question is if there’s going to be enough demand to justify these systems. With enough reusability it might make sense to fly these things 2/3 empty, but that’s only going to be so profitable.

teractiveodular 2y ago
New Glenn's main customer will be Kuiper, Amazon's answer to Starlink.
- OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  But also whatever Amazon's equivalent of NanoRacks is 'cause Amazon also wants to feed their GSaaS (Ground-Station as a Service) play. I think long-term Kuiper is going to be BO's main customer, but selling lift capacity to a NanoRacks-alike could reduce the impact of a Kuiper schedule slip.
- Retric 2y ago
  Starlink already scaled to 1M US households using Falcon 9 launches and this is twice as large. I think it’s reasonable to question just how many launches a competitor would support.

WWLink 2y ago

> Blue Origin has an awfully long way to go if they want to catch up to SpaceX Maybe we should just give the whole space industry to SpaceX because obviously nobody can touch them. /s

foobarian 2y ago
They seem perfectly good at doing that all on their own

imtringued 2y ago

>odds are Starship will be fully operational before New Glenn completes testing. What does this even mean? Fully operational? Starship has three versions and they are still testing the first one which isn't supposed to reach orbit in the next flight nor is it supposed to carry any payload, not even a mass simulator. When you ask people why the booster hasn't been reflown, you get this confusing answer that the booster is "already obsolete" even though they have planned to launch three more "obsolete" boosters after the first successful catch. Everyone is bragging how fast SpaceX is, but they are starting to drag their feet. It's like those people who build a demo that looks like the product is almost finished, but it turns out those were the easy and visible 80% that you can show off, now you're left with the hard and time consuming 20% and you're going to run into delays like everyone else. And then there is the fact that New Glenn is going to launch on 5th of January and attempt landing on the first flight. Barring an explosion on the way to orbit, New Glenn will be flying at least half a dozen missions carrying payloads throughout 2025 including a moon landing of Blue Moon MK1. Your comment comes across as pessimistically predicting the failure of the first launch or being ignorant that it will launch in four days.

grecy 2y ago
> New Glenn will be flying at least half a dozen missions carrying payloads throughout 2025 12 missions is their upper limit of capacity, so it’s “at most 12”. https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1835610703174255074?mx=2 https://x.com/jeff_foust/status/1835610703174255074?mx=2
inglor_cz 2y ago
"the easy and visible 80% that you can show off" There was nothing easy about the Raptor engine, for one. It is absolutely the best rocket engine in the world by far, and the only methane-based engine that ever reached space. AFAIK the only "real" problem that SpaceX is now having with Starship is the heat shield vs. rapid reusability. It is an important problem, but it also means that many other complicated problems (such as precise exercise of the belly flop) are fully solved.
- minetest2048 2y ago