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Congrats to the Blue Origin team! That's a heck of a milestone (landing it on the second attempt). It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship[1] but i
by ChuckMcM 11mo ago
Congrats to the Blue Origin team! That's a heck of a milestone (landing it on the second attempt). It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship[1] but it certainly could handle all of the current GEO satellite designs. I'm sure that the NRO will appreciate the larger payload volume as well. Really super glad to see they have hardware that has successfully done all the things. The first step to making it as reliable as other launch platforms. And having a choice for launch services is always a good thing for people buying said launch services.
Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on.
[1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.
- stingrae 11mo agoDoesn't ULA use Blue Origin's rocket engines?
- JumpCrisscross 11mo agoYes, for Vulcan [1]. [1] https://spacenews.com/evolution-of-a-plan-ula-execs-spell-out-logic-behind-vulcan-design-choices/ https://spacenews.com/evolution-of-a-plan-ula-execs-spell-ou...
- irjustin 11mo agoYes, which makes it even harder for ULA to compete.
- justapassenger 11mo ago[flagged]
- trhway 11mo ago>Starship is vaporware absolutely. Majestic 6000 tons of glowing hot vapor every launch.
- okay_yes 11mo ago</sarcasm>? If not, why do you think Starship is vaporware?
- justapassenger 11mo agoThere are prototype that are called Starship. There's nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship. It's Duke Nukem Forever.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship If it can get its mass into orbit, it delivers what it sold. I'd currently put my money on a successful orbital launch of Starship before New Glenn re-flies a booster for a paying customer.
- justapassenger 11mo agoUS government didn't pay for getting its mass into orbit. Getting Starship to the orbit means that they have something called Starship in the orbit. It doesn't mean product that they sold isn't vaporware - what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit ...what was it? Are you talking about HLS? Propellant transfer? (The latter is absolutely "getting its mass into orbit.") Which of those has been either officially cancelled or had its delays materially impact the customer's timeline?
- justapassenger 11mo agoNone of them were cancelled. But none of them exist in any form or shape remotely reassembling the product - therefore - vaporware. It's that simple. But also, since you're telling me there had been no material impacts to the customers timelines, sorry, I don't think you're arguing in good faith, so I'm not going to engage here anymore.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> Starship is vaporware Vaporware is "late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled" [1]. Starship is late, so you're pedantically correct. But so is New Glenn, and it started being developed when Falcon 9 made its first trip to the ISS. (2012.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
- justapassenger 11mo agohttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vaporware https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vaporware "a computer-related product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become available" It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available, but only thing it'll share with original announced product is a name. Nowhere close on the cost/features/scale/etc. Only things that were shown so far are prototypes that are many iterations away from being anywhere close to a product. New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available Did you miss Falcon 9 and Heavy? (New Glenn competes with them, not Starship. Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than New Glenn, currently, for cheaper.) > New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps This is literally the first time they've successfully recovered New Glenn. Recovered. No reuse. It's the second time they've every flown the damn thing. It's impressive. But it's not "just going through final validation." I have a background in aerospace engineering, specifically astronautics. It's wild to see armchair engineers shoot shit at major accomplishments like this.
- justapassenger 11mo agoSpaceX is only space company that does hardware rich development. Blue Origin takes much more traditional approach of linear design. Blue Origin may fail (I couldn't care less about them or SpaceX), but yes, they're in final validation steps, as that's just how they develop things. Starship is at the stage of putting random ideas on the rocket and seeing if it explodes.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- computerdork 11mo agowow, given the recent starship milestones that were reached, this is a really strange comment (well, they are behind schedule, but that's Elon Musk way of working).
- GMoromisato 11mo agoI agree on ULA. It will be hard for them to compete on price. And if the US military has two reliable launch-providers, there won't be room for a third heavy-lift vehicle. But it will probably take a while for the "steamroller" to get going. For the next year or two it will seem to ULA as if everything is fine. And then they'll get flattened.
- originate9 11mo agoAmazon and SpaceX--now the two biggest defense contractors... Silicon Valley is sure returning to its military roots.
- ethbr1 11mo agoThe fact that SV was divorced from military spending for so long (80s-20s?) was really the anomaly. Which is to say that instead of leveraging SV, military funding went through the primes. The Steve Blank piece from Tuesday had a good summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45887699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45887699 tl;dr: a strategic military recognition that relying exclusively on full-custom, military-spec weapon systems is unaffordable (on either a dollar or time-to-develop basis), when your competitor is a vertically-integrated Chinese civilian+military procurement system
- exomonk 11mo agoNew Glenn Falcon 9 Height 96m 70m Payload 45 tons 22.8 tons Fairing 7m 5m New Glenn significantly increases the capacity to Low Earth Orbit, which is what this first phase of the space race has always been about (for Golden Dome, and to a lesser extent commercial internet constellations). All eyes on Starship now.
- wat10000 11mo agoFalcon Heavy does up to ~64 tons to LEO and has been available for a while. New Glenn isn't bringing any new capabilities to the table. It is still a very welcome alternative.
- exomonk 11mo ago64 tons is if Falcon Heavy is fully expended (nothing recovered) configuration. Even with smaller payload, the center core is generally a lost cause. Falcony Heavy is extremely difficult to launch as I learned when I worked at SpaceX. It turned out that slapping a bunch of Falcons together was not structurally reasonable design choice.
- Cucco 11mo agoAlso falcon heavy use the same fairing as falcon 9 which limits payload size for heavy
- terminalshort 11mo ago> Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change What do you mean here? I was under the impression that it was increasing each new version. Is that incorrect?
- wffurr 11mo agoThe heat shield is rumored to be much heavier than was originally planned. I read that buried in the middle of an article on moon landing mission architecture: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/what-would-a-simplified-starship-plan-for-the-moon-actually-look-like/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/what-would-a-simplifie...
- dgrin91 11mo agoStarship v3 is slightly smaller than previous versions (not much).
- cubefox 11mo agoFalse, it's larger.
- dgrin91 11mo agoSorry, I meant to say smaller in terms of payload capacity, larger in terms of overall size
- cubefox 11mo agoPerhaps in payload volume, though the difference is likely not large. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1960812698037518540/photo/1 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1960812698037518540/photo/1
- ChuckMcM 11mo agoThe "production" lift capacity included some assumptions apparently about how much they could get out of Raptor and what they expected the assembly to weigh. Engineering constraints requiring more structure, the heat shield being inadequate, and the inability to raise the chamber pressure on Raptor to get the promised ISP have all impacted what the "expected" lift to LEO/GEO will actually be. Don't misunderstand, I am impressed as heck with SpaceX's engineering team and they are definitely getting closer to the point where they will have the design space fully mapped out and can make better estimates. The NASA documents are a better source of news on how Starship is going (as it's slated to be part of the Artemis program) than SpaceX marketing (one is engineering based, one is sales based). AND New Glenn isn't "fully" re-usable, its another 'upper stage gets consumed' platform (like Falcon). That is definitely an advantage with Starship if they make that work. For history, the shuttle has a similar history of shooting high and then finding that the engineering doesn't work.
- Zigurd 11mo agoFalcon Heavy has been successfully flown 11 times. Falcon Heavy can lift 67 tons to orbit. Starship has only lifted a fraction of that. SpaceX claims the price per kilogram to orbit for Falcon Heavy is even less than Falcon 9. Every attempt at building products that are better faster cheaper more capable than your own existing successful products is extremely difficult.