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New Glenn Update
- toss1 1y agoInteresting that "...additional vehicle upgrades include a reusable fairing..." I wonder how they'll be implementing that since SpaceX gave up on recapturing fairings (seemingly too soon, but only from the POV of someone with no internal info).
- kanisae 1y agoThey still recover the fairings. They gave up on trying to catch them out of the air and now just let them land in the water and pick them up.
- ceejayoz 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_fairing_recovery_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_fairing_recovery_progra... > SpaceX performs some amount of cleaning and refurbishing before using the previously flown fairings on a subsequent flight. SpaceX has reflown fairing halves more than 300 times, with one being reflown for 34 times. They gave up on catching them in nets, because it turns out they're fine splashing directly into the water.
- toss1 1y agoThanks for the updated info!
- NetMageSCW 1y agoThey actually redesigned them to be able to handle the splash down.
- SilverElfin 1y agoFor those who aren’t aware, the next flight is to lunar orbit, with a planned landing on the moon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1
- sanex 1y agoThat seems like a big jump between flights. I'm used to the spend and explode fast incremental iterations of SpaceX.
- dylan604 1y agoSeems BO is taking the NASA approach of not being so cavalier with testing. You can tell people you expect the thing to fail, but repeatedly seeing them fail is still seen as a negative.
- ceejayoz 1y agoIt worked pretty well for F9.
- BoredPositron 1y agoMostly because the whole landing thing was pretty novel.
- WorkerBee28474 1y agoNASA still had much smaller jumps in capability between flights. Check out the Smarter Every Day NASA talk.
- dylan604 1y agoSure, we went through Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo 1-7 before humans orbited the moon. However, we started from blank sheet of paper back then. BO has the knowledge learned from Gemini, Mercury, and all of Apollo to start. I don't need a YT influencer to know my NASA history. I'm old enough it was taught in school while young enough to not have lived through any of it.
- stevenjgarner 1y agoI am so old I lived through it! - 13 years old staying up all night to watch Neil take his little stroll. Genuine question, how DO they teach it in school? Do they get into the physics of any of it (orbital mechanics, rocketry etc)? Do they get into the cold war geopolitics of it? Do they teach the amazing accomplishments of the Soviet Union as well as NASA?
- gangstead 1y agoThe incremental improvements to the engine thrust is par for the course. The exciting thing in this announcement is the new 9x4 configuration (9 and 4 engines in the first and second stages vs the current 7x2). They don't mention whether the tanks will get stretched to allow for more fuel, or if this just burns the fuel faster. Starship generations keep getting both more engines and longer.
- zaphoyd 1y agoBased on the photo posted by the Blue Origin CEO the tanks are definitely getting stretched (also looks like a slightly different fin, landing leg, and fairing config)
- DennisP 1y agoYep, 70 tons to LEO is more than the Falcon Heavy.
- testing22321 1y agoThing that doesn’t exist yet will have better specs than thing that’s been in use for over 7 years! News at 10
- somenameforme 1y ago> Thing that doesn’t exist yet will, ideally, have 6% better specs than thing that’s been in use for over 7 years! FYP as it's rather worse than you framed. I'm happy to see more competition in space, because I think it's the single most important domain for humanity. And Blue Origin is making some rapid improvements, but people are dramatically overstating both this and their history/role in space quite significantly. Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX, back in 2000, and only managed to send a rocket into orbit this year, 25 years later. They remain a complete nonplayer that exists only through the good fortune of endless and clearly unconditional Bezos bucks. Now if they can keep putting out some good results, ideally start producing some hardware that can compete in terms of price and capability, and generally scaling things up - then I'll be the first to sing their praises. But we're still quite a ways away from that point for now.
- decimalenough 1y agoPresumably this was written by somebody from aerospace, who's unaware of the nuances of what "An update on New Glenn" usually means in Silicon Valley.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> the nuances of what "An update on New Glenn" usually means in Silicon Valley What does it mean?
- righthand 1y agoUsually it’s how a closing down business announcement is titled in the startup world. It’s not typically used to give a real update on a project.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThis is also good news for SpaceX. Satellite and payload designers generally design to common fairing sizes so they have a choice in launch providers. The 8.7m 9x4 fairing is similar to the 9m Starship fairing so more designers will now be designing payloads that use the full Starship capacity.
- Laremere 1y agoI agree, though I think the real winner here is the customers. The New Glenn 9x4 has a higher targeted payload capacity that an expended Falcon Heavy. Mission design takes years, and payload mass is the most important constraining factor. So it'd now be fairly reasonable approach to start building now for 9x4's constraints, and then fly on it or Starship depending on readiness and price. If customers start doing this now, that also means a quicker pickup on using the increased launch capability. On a funnier note, the 9 in Falcon 9 is the number of engines. So blue origin is somewhat picking up on their naming scheme. Or, by BO's scheme, it'd be the Falcon 9x1, or the Starship 33x6.
- nine_k 1y ago> Falcon 9x1, or the Starship 33x6. ...and we'd be back to steam engine wheel formulas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyte_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyte_notation
- dotancohen 1y agoThough not identical, more commonly well known are the 4x2 and 4x4 designations for vehicle drive wheel specification.
- exomonk 1y agoSuch standardization will set a design envelope for the Golden Dome weapons..
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- irjustin 1y agoI REALLY wish they would stop displaying ft, mi, lbs. It actually angers me.
- sitharus 1y agoWait until you find the places people use non-SI but still metric units, it's super fun.
- cuckmaxxed 1y ago[flagged]
- satiric 1y agoWelcome to Earth. Some countries use different unit systems. (Some even use a hodge podge of multiple systems!) Please enjoy your stay.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nutjob2 1y agoBy "some countries" you mean United States, Liberia, and Myanmar
- andrewxdiamond 1y agoand also by ‘some countries’ they mean about 4% of the earth’s population, or 1 in 25 people.
- SirHumphrey 1y agoBut 26.3% of the world’s GDP.
- riffraff 1y agoFwiw, Myanmar has been transitioning to metric since 2013 but, well, they had other worries. Likewise, Liberia set up a transition program in 2018. AFAIU both still use a bunch of traditional non US units too, like the UK.
- nine_k 1y ago> These enhancements will immediately benefit customers already manifested on New Glenn to fly to destinations including low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and beyond. It sounds as if they already have a long line of customers which have booked flights to all these destinations. (If they actually do, splendid!)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nakamoto_damacy 1y agoJeff Bezos is not a net positive to humanity. If we ignored people like him, the world would be a better place...
- glemmaPaul 1y agoHey dont tell these neo-technofeuds that their north star example of "success" is anything but souplesse..!!!
- jmyeet 1y agoI think Blue Origin's biggest problem is they don't currently have a planned or real Falcon 9 competitor. These expected and incremental updates (to a years late system that still needs to be proven) are putting the payload capacity in the Falcon Heavy range and there's roughly 1 Falcon Heavy launch per year. There are over 100 Falcon 9 launches per year. Yes a bunch are Starlink so you can exclude those when estimating demand from external customers but the point remains that there isn't currently a commercial demand for bigger payloads and/or higher orbits than what Falcon 9 can do. SpaceX has the same problem: Starship is a superheavy lifter where Falcon Heavy has little demand and Starship is even bigger. At least SpaceX has Starlink as induced demand. Blue Origin doesn't. Defenders will argue the greater volume and payload weights will create new possibilities because payloads can only be designed for available launch systems but satellites don't really seem to be getting any bigger and there are only so many geosynchronous military payloadcs and interplanetary probes that need to be launched.
- fooblaster 1y agoNot terribly familiar with the details, but Amazon kuiper has a contract with blue origin and other providers.
- hvb2 1y agoSure, but Kuiper is launching on other rockets to meet an fcc deadline for using enough of their spectrum. They even launch on falcon 9. If other providers had the capacity to launch all of them, I'm sure falcon wouldn't be in the mix there.
- NetMageSCW 1y agoFalcon wasn’t in the mix until Amazon faced a shareholder lawsuit for not contracting with the cheapest provider. I’m not sure if that is true given the volume limitations of F9, but the only hope Amazon has of getting to the FCC halfway point is a lot more F9 launches. No one else can launch fast enough.
- notahacker 1y ago
- clever-nero 1y ago[dead]
- kopirgan 1y agoThese two entrepreneurs have changed so much.. Musk and Bezos... To think that at one point USA had to rely on Russian engines!