6 ms·

although, they were doing it with a more complicated vehicle than the falcon 9, so the delay is "somewhat" understandable. And only "somewhat," because new gle

although, they were doing it with a more complicated vehicle than the falcon 9, so the delay is "somewhat" understandable. And only "somewhat," because new glenn seemed to take forever compared to starship. It does go to show, maybe the highly iterative approach that spacex takes really is faster (or, it could just be spacex has more highly skilled engineers, but I for one can't tell what the reasons are).

syncsynchalt 11mo ago
It's not about the delay, they can take as long as they want to build what they want to build. I object to their attempt to use patents to block competitors for decades when they didn't even have a product yet. Fortunately it was challenged and the USPTO invalidated patent 8,678,321: https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-08-27-Termination-request-for-adverse-judgment-after-institutio....pdf https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-08-...
- computerdork 11mo ago
  ah, yeah, patent trolling is pretty horrible (and Bezos is known for this - one click)... ... although, just to play a little devil's advocate, Bezos doesn't get enough credit for jump starting private spaceflight companies. Blue Origin was started 2 years before SpaceX. Am sure Blue Origin racked up a ton of patents.
  - amarant 11mo ago
    Your devils advocate paragraph seems to contradict itself. Unless you mean to say spaceX somehow benefited from the patents blue origin filed previously. I don't see how that would be the case though.
    - computerdork 11mo ago
      yeah, didn't state it clearly. only meant that Blue Origin has actually been at it longer than SpaceX, and probably has around the same amount of patents as them because of it. Yeah, Blue Origin doesn't get as much credit for commercial space flight as spacex, and rightful so, but seems like they still did contribute a great deal (in fact, Blue Origin was the first to complete a vertical takeoff and landing, although it was with a suborbital vehicle).
      - avmich 11mo ago
        Do you know about Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Challenge and Delta Clipper?
        computerdork 11mo ago
        True, a lot of rockets have done vert take off and landing.
  - avmich 11mo ago
    Do you know about XCOR and Andrew Beal?
imglorp 11mo ago
I wonder if they are comparable. Spacex tends to "build rocket factories" instead of building one rocket. So they can launch and reuse hundreds a year. They're repeating this with starship. It's hard to know what BO is doing because they're so quiet all the time, but to what degree is this scaling true for them also?
- computerdork 11mo ago
  Was talking with someone else, yeah, focusing on a rocket factory instead of just building a couple of rockets does seem like a good idea. Allows you to build a lot of test articles during development, even ones that you'll launch like Space X, and during real flights, you'll have a lot of rockets available for real launches.
- audunw 11mo ago
  Going by the Tim Todds interview with Jeff Bezos it seems like BOs approach is very similar in this area. It looked to me that the machines they had there to build NG is set up to produce rockets in large quantities. He talked about their goals with the second stage, and that they’re looking at making a reusable version but that in parallel they’re also doing cost optimisations that may make it so cheap that reuse doesn’t make sense.
adastra22 11mo ago
Blue Origin has seen significant internal and cultural restructuring. That’s why we are finally seeing progress.
- computerdork 11mo ago
  Yeah, Bezos has been putting most of his attention there for the past few years. And why not? What's more interesting, running a online marketplace (which still actually seems pretty interesting), or building rockets to fly into space:)
  - rootusrootus 11mo ago
    For a small but reasonable sum, I'd be happy to take over running the online marketplace for him. I have a number of improvements I'm ready to make...
    - computerdork 11mo ago
      We should talk to him given his lack of interest, it'd be win-win for you both:)
      - DennisP 11mo ago
        Sadly, Bezos already turned over the job to a new CEO.
        computerdork 11mo ago
        His loss :)
      - rootusrootus 11mo ago
        It'd be a win for me, probably not for him. Or investors, sadly, at least not in the short term. I would turn off the non-Amazon sales platform. It might be feasible to save the brand, but of course the immediate effect would be a loss of that revenue stream from all the random Chinese "brands" that flood it with cheap garbage and counterfeits. Or at least make a persistent toggle switch in the UI where you can say "I never want to see a single product that is not shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon." And end commingling with any product that Amazon itself sells, if that is occurring. That's why they don't let morons like me run big business :). I care about things that only matter when you are a small business apparently.
manquer 11mo ago
Iterations are faster than modelling, no different for software where testing in prod with actual users ends up being quicker than in a testing environment. Iterations in hardware businesses are far more expensive, particularly for early stage (by revenue not age) companies like Blue Origin. Outside of the Vulcan engine sales, joy rides and NASA grants they don't have much inflow and depend on equity infusion. SpaceX also would find it tough without Starlink revenue to fund iterations for Starship. Similarly the early customer revenue ( plus the generous NASA grants) contributed to iterate on F9 be it Block V or for landing etc. Beyond money, it also requires the ability to convince customers to be okay with the trade-offs and risks of constantly changing configurations, designs. It is not that people do not know iterative testing with real artifacts is quicker, but most are limited in their ability to fund it or cannot convince customers, regulators to allow them.
- computerdork 11mo ago
  Yeah, it does seem like iterative development with hardware is an extremely cash intensive way of development. And yes, what a genius move to fund a lot of this development with Starlink - it's amazing this seemingly off the cuff idea is such a cash cow, and it seemed at least like they got it up and running relatively quickly. Yeah, regardless how someone feels about Elon these days, Starlink has got to be up there for one of the most brilliant moves by an entrepreneur of all time. And to come back to you point, yeah, I do see, you need the funds first to be able to support such a cash hungry way of development - which, on a tangent, kind of disappointed me (and a few others online) when Stoke Space decide to build their own 1st stage instead of just focusing on their unique 2nd stage. Like many in the past have mentioned, it seems like they'd be getting to space a lot quicker if they had just designed their 2nd stage to fit on a Falcon 9.
  - ethbr1 11mo ago
    Starlink was not that amazing as a business decision. If one expects to generate orders of magnitude more supply of a good (launch capacity), then one needs to expect the existing (conservative, long lead-time) market will have insufficient demand. So one needs to generate additional demand. So one needs to find a profit-generating business that's limited by mass in space / launches, where each component is inexpensive enough that its loss doesn't bankrupt the company. Space-based telecommunications falls out pretty obviously from those requirements, given the pre-Starlink landscape (limited, exquisite assets serving the market at high premiums). In small irony, it's also the exact same possibility space optimization that led to Amazon starting with books: Bezos didn't give a shit about books specifically, but he did like that they were long-tail, indefinitely warehouse-able, and shaped for efficient shipping. In novel logistics spaces, it's better to find the business that matches capabilities than the other way around, because the company's core competency and value is their novel logistics solution.
jojobas 11mo ago
The jury is still out on Starship, it has all chances take even more time from development start to orbit.
- DennisP 11mo ago
  Yes, but it's also a harder problem, aiming to reuse everything instead of just the first stage. And they have at least reached orbital velocity on several occasions, so they could have physically orbited. They just purposely chose a trajectory that wasn't an actual orbit.
  - computerdork 11mo ago
    Agreed. And even if they don't ever fully reuse the second stage, they still could use this gigantic working rocket as a (probably still) very cost effective to transport things into space.
ubercore 11mo ago
Hard to draw super hard conclusions. Could also be that the bets made on Falcon turned out to be particularly good, vs a more methodical approach Blue Origin took. The highly iterative approach _may_ be faster, but I don't see any evidence yet that it will _always_ be faster. Just depends on how good your bets are and how much in-flight testing you happen to have to do based on a design. Would be interesting to see more detailed information like specific engineering issues being resolved one way vs another. Falcon beat New Glenn to the punch, but New Glenn is probably more capable overall, so it's not an apples to oranges comparison. Completion of Starship would really help the iterative approach case though (ignoring the junk it leaves scatter around the world when it goes boom)
- m_fayer 11mo ago
  Rocket Lab is also taking a more methodical and less iterative approach with Neutron, which should be ready some time next year. If they make that work well, that will be another point in favor of a methodical approach.
- computerdork 11mo ago
  There should be an in depth academic study on their two approaches, it seems like it'd be valuable. To me at least, given the (probably) positive affects iterative dev has (overall) had on software development, my personal feeling is it'd be useful for most other types of engineering. But (as someone else also pointed out) iterative is much more expensive in hardware fields, given the high cost of materials, and you need to have a lot more funds to build hardware this way.
- panick21_ 11mo ago
  People need to remember that New Glenn is completely artificial in market terms. Blue Origin had literally infinite money, and if not sponsored by the richest man on the planet it could never exists. And New Glenn even if its 'better' then Falcon 9 (yet to be demonstrated) will likely never make back its development cost. I think people just don't understand what an absurd amount of cash burn Blue had for the last 10+ years. So when it comes to iterative vs methodical, this is a perfectly clear case. SpaceX did it faster and for an amount of money that is so much less then Blue that its hard to even compare the numbers. Go back and just look at how many people worked at Blue, and then do the math on what their cash burn rate was just for people.

syncsynchalt 11mo ago

It's not about the delay, they can take as long as they want to build what they want to build. I object to their attempt to use patents to block competitors for decades when they didn't even have a product yet. Fortunately it was challenged and the USPTO invalidated patent 8,678,321: https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-08-27-Termination-request-for-adverse-judgment-after-institutio....pdf https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-08-...

computerdork 11mo ago
ah, yeah, patent trolling is pretty horrible (and Bezos is known for this - one click)... ... although, just to play a little devil's advocate, Bezos doesn't get enough credit for jump starting private spaceflight companies. Blue Origin was started 2 years before SpaceX. Am sure Blue Origin racked up a ton of patents.
- amarant 11mo ago
  Your devils advocate paragraph seems to contradict itself. Unless you mean to say spaceX somehow benefited from the patents blue origin filed previously. I don't see how that would be the case though.
  - computerdork 11mo ago
    yeah, didn't state it clearly. only meant that Blue Origin has actually been at it longer than SpaceX, and probably has around the same amount of patents as them because of it. Yeah, Blue Origin doesn't get as much credit for commercial space flight as spacex, and rightful so, but seems like they still did contribute a great deal (in fact, Blue Origin was the first to complete a vertical takeoff and landing, although it was with a suborbital vehicle).
    - avmich 11mo ago
      Do you know about Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Challenge and Delta Clipper?
      - computerdork 11mo ago
        True, a lot of rockets have done vert take off and landing.
- avmich 11mo ago
  Do you know about XCOR and Andrew Beal?

imglorp 11mo ago

I wonder if they are comparable. Spacex tends to "build rocket factories" instead of building one rocket. So they can launch and reuse hundreds a year. They're repeating this with starship. It's hard to know what BO is doing because they're so quiet all the time, but to what degree is this scaling true for them also?

computerdork 11mo ago
Was talking with someone else, yeah, focusing on a rocket factory instead of just building a couple of rockets does seem like a good idea. Allows you to build a lot of test articles during development, even ones that you'll launch like Space X, and during real flights, you'll have a lot of rockets available for real launches.
audunw 11mo ago
Going by the Tim Todds interview with Jeff Bezos it seems like BOs approach is very similar in this area. It looked to me that the machines they had there to build NG is set up to produce rockets in large quantities. He talked about their goals with the second stage, and that they’re looking at making a reusable version but that in parallel they’re also doing cost optimisations that may make it so cheap that reuse doesn’t make sense.

adastra22 11mo ago

Blue Origin has seen significant internal and cultural restructuring. That’s why we are finally seeing progress.

computerdork 11mo ago
Yeah, Bezos has been putting most of his attention there for the past few years. And why not? What's more interesting, running a online marketplace (which still actually seems pretty interesting), or building rockets to fly into space:)
- rootusrootus 11mo ago
  For a small but reasonable sum, I'd be happy to take over running the online marketplace for him. I have a number of improvements I'm ready to make...
  - computerdork 11mo ago
    We should talk to him given his lack of interest, it'd be win-win for you both:)
    - DennisP 11mo ago
      Sadly, Bezos already turned over the job to a new CEO.
      - computerdork 11mo ago
        His loss :)
    - rootusrootus 11mo ago
      It'd be a win for me, probably not for him. Or investors, sadly, at least not in the short term. I would turn off the non-Amazon sales platform. It might be feasible to save the brand, but of course the immediate effect would be a loss of that revenue stream from all the random Chinese "brands" that flood it with cheap garbage and counterfeits. Or at least make a persistent toggle switch in the UI where you can say "I never want to see a single product that is not shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon." And end commingling with any product that Amazon itself sells, if that is occurring. That's why they don't let morons like me run big business :). I care about things that only matter when you are a small business apparently.

manquer 11mo ago

Iterations are faster than modelling, no different for software where testing in prod with actual users ends up being quicker than in a testing environment. Iterations in hardware businesses are far more expensive, particularly for early stage (by revenue not age) companies like Blue Origin. Outside of the Vulcan engine sales, joy rides and NASA grants they don't have much inflow and depend on equity infusion. SpaceX also would find it tough without Starlink revenue to fund iterations for Starship. Similarly the early customer revenue ( plus the generous NASA grants) contributed to iterate on F9 be it Block V or for landing etc. Beyond money, it also requires the ability to convince customers to be okay with the trade-offs and risks of constantly changing configurations, designs. It is not that people do not know iterative testing with real artifacts is quicker, but most are limited in their ability to fund it or cannot convince customers, regulators to allow them.

computerdork 11mo ago
Yeah, it does seem like iterative development with hardware is an extremely cash intensive way of development. And yes, what a genius move to fund a lot of this development with Starlink - it's amazing this seemingly off the cuff idea is such a cash cow, and it seemed at least like they got it up and running relatively quickly. Yeah, regardless how someone feels about Elon these days, Starlink has got to be up there for one of the most brilliant moves by an entrepreneur of all time. And to come back to you point, yeah, I do see, you need the funds first to be able to support such a cash hungry way of development - which, on a tangent, kind of disappointed me (and a few others online) when Stoke Space decide to build their own 1st stage instead of just focusing on their unique 2nd stage. Like many in the past have mentioned, it seems like they'd be getting to space a lot quicker if they had just designed their 2nd stage to fit on a Falcon 9.
- ethbr1 11mo ago
  Starlink was not that amazing as a business decision. If one expects to generate orders of magnitude more supply of a good (launch capacity), then one needs to expect the existing (conservative, long lead-time) market will have insufficient demand. So one needs to generate additional demand. So one needs to find a profit-generating business that's limited by mass in space / launches, where each component is inexpensive enough that its loss doesn't bankrupt the company. Space-based telecommunications falls out pretty obviously from those requirements, given the pre-Starlink landscape (limited, exquisite assets serving the market at high premiums). In small irony, it's also the exact same possibility space optimization that led to Amazon starting with books: Bezos didn't give a shit about books specifically, but he did like that they were long-tail, indefinitely warehouse-able, and shaped for efficient shipping. In novel logistics spaces, it's better to find the business that matches capabilities than the other way around, because the company's core competency and value is their novel logistics solution.

jojobas 11mo ago

The jury is still out on Starship, it has all chances take even more time from development start to orbit.

DennisP 11mo ago
Yes, but it's also a harder problem, aiming to reuse everything instead of just the first stage. And they have at least reached orbital velocity on several occasions, so they could have physically orbited. They just purposely chose a trajectory that wasn't an actual orbit.
- computerdork 11mo ago
  Agreed. And even if they don't ever fully reuse the second stage, they still could use this gigantic working rocket as a (probably still) very cost effective to transport things into space.

ubercore 11mo ago

Hard to draw super hard conclusions. Could also be that the bets made on Falcon turned out to be particularly good, vs a more methodical approach Blue Origin took. The highly iterative approach _may_ be faster, but I don't see any evidence yet that it will _always_ be faster. Just depends on how good your bets are and how much in-flight testing you happen to have to do based on a design. Would be interesting to see more detailed information like specific engineering issues being resolved one way vs another. Falcon beat New Glenn to the punch, but New Glenn is probably more capable overall, so it's not an apples to oranges comparison. Completion of Starship would really help the iterative approach case though (ignoring the junk it leaves scatter around the world when it goes boom)

m_fayer 11mo ago
Rocket Lab is also taking a more methodical and less iterative approach with Neutron, which should be ready some time next year. If they make that work well, that will be another point in favor of a methodical approach.
computerdork 11mo ago
There should be an in depth academic study on their two approaches, it seems like it'd be valuable. To me at least, given the (probably) positive affects iterative dev has (overall) had on software development, my personal feeling is it'd be useful for most other types of engineering. But (as someone else also pointed out) iterative is much more expensive in hardware fields, given the high cost of materials, and you need to have a lot more funds to build hardware this way.
panick21_ 11mo ago
People need to remember that New Glenn is completely artificial in market terms. Blue Origin had literally infinite money, and if not sponsored by the richest man on the planet it could never exists. And New Glenn even if its 'better' then Falcon 9 (yet to be demonstrated) will likely never make back its development cost. I think people just don't understand what an absurd amount of cash burn Blue had for the last 10+ years. So when it comes to iterative vs methodical, this is a perfectly clear case. SpaceX did it faster and for an amount of money that is so much less then Blue that its hard to even compare the numbers. Go back and just look at how many people worked at Blue, and then do the math on what their cash burn rate was just for people.