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Very cool! Seems like they could be a serious competitor to SpaceX, although they are only aiming for sub-orbital flights at the moment.
by whoisthemachine 12y ago
Very cool! Seems like they could be a serious competitor to SpaceX, although they are only aiming for sub-orbital flights at the moment.
- jccooper 12y agoAt the moment, true, and Blue Origin is not renowned for their development speed, but suborbital is clearly just a stepping stone for them. Their suborbital booster uses liquid hydrogen as a fuel, which is a very good fuel but so obscenely cold that you don't want to use it unless you really have to. So it's mostly reserved for upper stages where efficiency really matters. (For suborbital a much easier, but less powerful, fuel like alcohol would be fine.) And given that they already have a much larger methane engine under development, this suborbital stage seems to be an early revenue-generating version of a future second stage of an EELV (Falcon 9/Atlas V) class launch vehicle. And probably, like SpaceX, they will be targeting VTVL recovery. This is actually really good news for launch prices, because without a real competitor with reusable vehicles (and none of the incumbents seem capable of this in any reasonable time frame) SpaceX will have no reason to drop prices much below expendable costs (other than benevolence). Blue Origin could probably field a Falcon 9-equivalent in a few years, and even if they don't the prospect should keep SpaceX on their toes.
- branchan 11y agoThey are going to be providing ULA with their engines so that we will no longer be reliant on the Russian RD-180s.