Blue Origin Successfully Launches and Lands Key Crew Capsule Test in First Mission of 2021 (techcrunch.com) 60
Blue Origin launched its first mission of 2021, flying its New Shepard rocket in West Texas to a medium height of just over 350,000 feet. From a report: This is the first flight for this particular booster, and for the capsule it carried, which was equipped with a range of new passenger safety, control and comfort systems that Blue Origin was testing during flight for the first time. Also on board was a life-sized test dummy called 'Mannequin Skywalker' that recorded information during the flight and landing that the Blue Origin will now review. Based on the video stream and commentary from the company, this looks like a very successful test, including a takeoff, booster separation, controlled landing burn and touchdown -- and a parachute-aided landing back on terra firma for the crew capsule. The mission didn't carry any real passengers, although there were 50,000 postcards on board from school kids globally that have now officially been to space (past the Karman line) which will be returned to those students via Blue Origin's non-profit 'Club for the Future.'
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
Now that the space venture is finally getting off the ground, Amazon is exploring a name change to "Buy n Large".
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Now that the space venture is finally getting off the ground, Amazon is exploring a name change to "Buy n Large".
Are they going to start making Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth (aka "WALL-E") -class robots to clean up all the piles and piles of junk that they ship?
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Haha, that was awesome.
Still only going up it seems (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting to space isn't just about getting high, but going fast, and this so far only seems to be doing the easy part.
Still, the more competition the better, so I hope they keep improving.
Re:Still only going up it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
Space is a dead end, there's nothing there for us.
Congratulations, that's the dumbest statement that I've seen on SlashDot this week, and I browse at -1. Impressive in its own way.
Ninety nine point infinite-nines percent of all resources in the universe are **out there**. If you're content with humans inevitably going the way of the Neanderthal then fine, stay here on Earth and be just another failed evolutionary experiment. Once off the surface of this single planet the possibilities are quite literally infinite.
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Well then you'd damn well better do your job right, no?
Know what else humans are not well adapted to do? Drive two ton vehicles across land at 150 kph. Or 100 ton vehicles at 1000 kph through the air. Or assemble a turbofan engine with micrometer accuracy. If we only did the things that we were physically adapted to do then we'd have gone extinct before ever leaving the East African plains, the same as the Australopithicus species. The combination of technology, communications, curiosity, and mental fl
That's "107 km" you you ... social science student (Score:5, Informative)
UNITS UNITS UNITS !
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Use real man units (Score:4, Informative)
The New Shepard reached 5260 chains in height and uses 1560 bushels of fuel and oxidizer.
That took an unreasonably long time to figure out - I was surprised at how little fuel New Shepard has on board (well it is a sub-orbital spacecraft with "only" 110k lbf).
Good launch but none of SpaceX's Fervor & Pass (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched the launch and it is quite impressive - but it's not like I haven't seen this before.
What I don't see is SpaceX's drive to move into orbit (and beyond). I was surprised to find out that Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 while Musk started SpaceX in 2002 and look at where the two companies are:
- SpaceX has a thriving and highly competitive (manned) launch to orbit capability and is pushing for going to the moon, Mars and beyond (three test fires of Starship SN9 yesterday).
- Blue Origin is sending a dummy on repeated sub-orbital hops - I know that the BE4 is going to be used for other companies' launchers but it hasn't flown yet.
I just don't see Blue Origin competing with SpaceX until they (mixed metaphor) light a fire under themselves and move the ball 'way downfield. To use a quote from Bart Simpson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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What are the chances that BO (sic) are developing something secretly ?
I don't think they can be doing test launches without making them public ( in the US at least ), but could they be getting an enormous booster ready in some massive facility somewhere ?
Re:Good launch but none of SpaceX's Fervor & P (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty unlikely. They are publicly developing New Glenn (a very large rocket) and the BE4 engine, and these are big enough projects in themselves.
BE4 appears to be progressing well, and New Glenn construction has started already. If they can get this working they will have a very good rocket system ready in a couple of years time. Much of the development time for the rocket is the engines, and they have been working on BE4 for a long time. The rest of the rocket does not appear that novel and shouldn't be difficult to develop. It will probably take them a few attempts to get the landing from high speeds working, though the work with New Shepard should help with this.
The main problem they have is that New Glenn's second stage is not reusable. Once they get it flying, which seems reasonably likely within a couple of years, they will only have a system comparable to what SpaceX have now. If in the meantime SpaceX can make progress with Starship, then New Glenn will effectively be outdated. However the New Glenn booster/engine system seems like a reasonable platform for them to develop their own reusable upper stage, so all is not lost. If they are doing anything in secret, I'd imagine it is looking into options for building a reusable upper stage.
It does seem like spending time on this tourist system is a bit of a waste of money/effort though. With the rate at which things are progressing, it would seem much better to just get their orbital system going. But then again, Bezos has a lot of money, so perhaps the interns are working on New Shepard and the real effort is going into getting New Glenn onto a launch pad.
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They are publicly developing New Glenn (a very large rocket)
Not really. Other than volume, New Glenn is fairly small. And compared to Starship, a funded SLS, and a fully funded C9, NG is really not going to have loads, UNLESS BO make it up themselves.
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They could use New Glenn for Amazon deliveries, I suppose.
Fly with an insufficiently managed company? (Score:2)
The top-level management capability of Jeff Bezos, is indicated by the Amazon.com web site. The web site has many insufficiencies.
Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars, he has the annoying problem of deciding what to do with that. Are the kinds of imperfections at Amazon in Blue Origin management, also?
Dozens of Amazon's Own Products Have Been Reported as Dangerous -- Melting, Exploding or Even Bursting Into Fl [slashdot.org]
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I don't know that he's making a secret of his goals. Unlike Musk, his destination isn't other planets, it's building city sized habitats in space. If that's the kind of technology he's developing, he wouldn't necessarily be doing a lot of launches at this point. So, I'm cautious about comparing Blue Origin with SpaceX or other launch outfits. Their goals aren't the same.
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I had high hopes for Blue Origin in the beginning, but rather than being run like a business like every other Bezos project it seems to be an expensive hobby. Bezos cashes in about a billion dollars in stock a year to support his hobby, with essentially no plan for profitability ever. I personally would prefer if Blue Origin were to be combined with something like Rocket Lab, which is an actual business, but that probably won't happen unless Bezos passes away.
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I had high hopes for Blue Origin in the beginning, but rather than being run like a business like every other Bezos project it seems to be an expensive hobby. Bezos cashes in about a billion dollars in stock a year to support his hobby, with essentially no plan for profitability ever. I personally would prefer if Blue Origin were to be combined with something like Rocket Lab, which is an actual business, but that probably won't happen unless Bezos passes away.
BO have begun delivery of BE-4 engines to ULA so that's encouraging. Rocket Labs has been successful because they really nailed the design on a minimum viable product for commercial satellite services. Their electrical pumps don't scale up past smallsat launchers; you need turbopumps.
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BO have begun delivery of BE-4 engines to ULA so that's encouraging.
Which neither vulcan nor new glenn will fly until next year.
By then, Starship will have cargo going, and MIGHT even have landed on the moon.
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Which neither vulcan nor new glenn will fly until next year. By then, Starship will have cargo going, and MIGHT even have landed on the moon.
I wouldn't put money either way on the first operational flights being next year. It's possible but it's also possible that delays building out production launch, landing, and integration facilities will crop up or, worse, that some kinks with Raptor will be identified. Maybe it's like Cargill said about software: the first 90 percent of development takes the first 90 percent of the time, the remaining 10 percent of development takes the other 90 percent of the time.
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I watched the launch and it is quite impressive
It could have been impressive. I was impressed when to check the Crew Dragon emergency system SpaceX launched a Dragon capsule and BLEW UP a reusable booster to prove it works. I was impressed when Crew Dragon took 2 Astronauts to the ISS and brought them back. Impressed again when the next Crew Dragon took 4 astronauts and was joined at the ISS by a Cargo Dragon. All 3 of those launches the Falcon landed for reuse. Call me impressed. What they are doing with Starship and Super Heavy Booster once again
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The plan? Not even his. Sad.
Hey hey hey. You can't say "Sad." Slashdot is the one platform Trump hasn't been banned from. If you start saying "Sad" you'll muddle everything when TheRealDonaldTrump starts posting.
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No, he's the goatse guy. You've only seen him on /. in ascii art form.
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The plan? Not even his. Sad.
Hey hey hey. You can't say "Sad." Slashdot is the one platform Trump hasn't been banned from. If you start saying "Sad" you'll muddle everything when TheRealDonaldTrump starts posting.
It is sad. All that money and talent losing out by so much. They should have been well ahead of SpaceX. We should be seeing the 2nd Generation B.O. version of the Starship SpaceX is working on. They should have a Station that dwarfs the ISS with DOZENS of people aboard prototyping orbital manufacturing systems and Artemis should be a B.O. plan to do lunar and asteroid mining for the materials to feed orbital factories. But NADA. So Sad.
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I just don't see Blue Origin competing with SpaceX until they (mixed metaphor) light a fire under themselves and move the ball 'way downfield.
At this time, that is not good enough. WHy? Unless Bezo heavily subsidizes launch like China, Europe, Japan, Russia does, Bezo will NOT be able to compete against SX. Other than China, the others have loads of national sats to launch. IOW, like ULA before, they are guaranteed to have loads. BO is NOT. And even if this was new glenn and not shepard, they would still have issues. BUT, in 1-2 years for new Glenn? Vs. Starship, FH, and F9????
So what loads will they have in 2 years? Not much. Unless they get
Life-sized test dummy (Score:4, Funny)
life-sized test dummy
Ahh... so that's how big they are in real-life.
Why does the capsule separate? (Score:2)
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Parachutes are perceived to be more reliable than a propulsive landing. So the small tough capsule with humans has parachutes. It can survive banging into the ground and rolling over.
The large fragile booster does a gentle propulsive landing.
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It's much safer to land a manned capsule when it's not sitting on top of a big container of explosives, which is essentially what the booster is. The capsule also can travel considerably higher without the mass of the booster, I think the booster only traveled about 2/3 of the distance that the capsule did.
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It's much safer to land a manned capsule when it's not sitting on top of a big container of explosives, which is essentially what the booster is. The capsule also can travel considerably higher without the mass of the booster, I think the booster only traveled about 2/3 of the distance that the capsule did.
Yes to the first part, no to the second... Blue Origin's capsule is unpowered, and doesn't go any farther than the booster (other than a couple hundred feet as a result of the separation charge). Whatever velocity it has when they separate is the maximum it gets, so no, it can't travel considerably higher. With a regular rocket with a powered second stage sure, but not BO.
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Apparently I was remembering incorrectly, for some reason I thought the capsule had a booster engine.
https://www.blueorigin.com/new... [blueorigin.com]
The crew capsule reached an apogee of 347,568 ft above ground level (AGL) / 351,215 ft mean sea level (MSL) (105 km AGL/107 km MSL).
The booster reached an apogee of 347,211 ft AGL / 350,858 ft MSL (105 km AGL/ 106 km MSL).
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I also assume it is a functional test of systems, because in normal flights, the main engines probably won't stay with the capsule.
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We've seen new Shepard before...launch a REAL ONE (Score:1)
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Sorry Blue Origin. We've seen new Sheppard before. Call me when you have LAUNCHED SOMETHING INTO ORBIT!
Perhaps we could say the same thing to Spacwx talk to us when you land people on the moon, amirite?
Because for all the braying of his cult, Ol Muskie isn't doing much that hasn't been done before, other than landing those candles.
Don't get me wrong - I like Spacex, Their cult? not so much.
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I'm not a personal fan of Musk, but I do have to say that SpaceX currently looks like the only viable option to get us to the moon in less than a decade. Will it happen on Musks day-dream time schedule? No. But I do think it will happen. Most of his other predictions are off by a factor of three to five, so his day-dream of getting us there in two years seems. . . unlikely at best. But multiply that by three and I could start to see it being possible. Multiply by five and, barring some sort of disaste
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I'm not a personal fan of Musk, but I do have to say that SpaceX currently looks like the only viable option to get us to the moon in less than a decade. Will it happen on Musks day-dream time schedule? No. But I do think it will happen. Most of his other predictions are off by a factor of three to five, so his day-dream of getting us there in two years seems. . . unlikely at best. But multiply that by three and I could start to see it being possible. Multiply by five and, barring some sort of disaster resulting in loss of life jamming federal regulations up SpaceX's poop chute, I'd say that's a reasonable expectation.
Having said all that, I'd love to be proven wrong and see it happen sooner.
I know the SLS exists, but considering they haven't even had a launch, let alone successful missions to and from orbit, I don't hold much hope it will ever do more than suck down ever rising funding costs.
NASA operates on a different paradigm than Spacex. So the SLS development is a bit different. Spacex has leeway to do different things than NASA. StarShip development for instance. Given the numbers of failures so far, if it was NASA in the same situation, they'd be calling for abandoning it, perhaps even a congressional investigation.
Now the Spacex situation isn't bad - it is nice to have a cowboy approach to the research. A lot of the early research I was involved with was cowboy style, and it's fun. B
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Now the Spacex situation isn't bad - it is nice to have a cowboy approach to the research. A lot of the early research I was involved with was cowboy style, and it's fun. But eventually Spacex will eventually have to drop that approach, because when people are aboard, things get different real quick
They don't test with people aboard, aside from the sense in which every single launch has an element of doubt since the stresses are so intense. They do the destructive testing ahead of time so that they can see where the problems are and fix them before humans ride the rockets. There is really no flaw in this plan, it's not like testing to destruction is the only kind of analysis they are doing. But because they are doing it and others don't, they could reasonably actually achieve greater safety.
Given the numbers of failures so far, if it was NASA in the same situation, they'd be calling for abandoning it, perhaps even a congressional investigation.
SpaceX is
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Now the Spacex situation isn't bad - it is nice to have a cowboy approach to the research. A lot of the early research I was involved with was cowboy style, and it's fun. But eventually Spacex will eventually have to drop that approach, because when people are aboard, things get different real quick
They don't test with people aboard, aside from the sense in which every single launch has an element of doubt since the stresses are so intense. They do the destructive testing ahead of time so that they can see where the problems are and fix them before humans ride the rockets. There is really no flaw in this plan, it's not like testing to destruction is the only kind of analysis they are doing. But because they are doing it and others don't, they could reasonably actually achieve greater safety.
Given the numbers of failures so far, if it was NASA in the same situation, they'd be calling for abandoning it, perhaps even a congressional investigation.
SpaceX is using cheaper systems, so it's cheaper to just go ahead and blow some up in testing, rather than spending a whole lot of time trying to imagine what might happen they make it happen and then figure out how to stop it from happening. You're right that if NASA were in charge there would be congressional calls for abandonment, but that's not because those demands would make any sense from a scientific standpoint or a cost standpoint, only from a "I want this money for pork in my district instead of for science" standpoint.
Spacex is indeed cheaper, because they are using applied science. I've seen the attitude online that NASA, Boung, Blue Origin must be eliminated, because the only real space stuff going on is Spacex, and they are the only -ones doing it right, all of the others are wasting government money, and Spacex is doing it all form the Deep pockets of Elon Musk.
Which by the way is cultist level bullshit. That is my Spacex problem. Not the company, not what they are doing, but a level of Spacex fans versus anyone
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I'm with you at a certain level. I like that there are multiple approaches happening, even if some of those approaches are glacially slow. The big problem with direct NASA sponsored programs like the SLS is that from the outside, it seems incredibly wasteful. They're reusing so much previous technology, yet spending an incredibly long time (and tons more money than initially proposed) to get to the point of even having a viable launch platform. It's a hard pill to swallow, and seems more about continuin
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I'm with you at a certain level. I like that there are multiple approaches happening, even if some of those approaches are glacially slow. The big problem with direct NASA sponsored programs like the SLS is that from the outside, it seems incredibly wasteful. They're reusing so much previous technology, yet spending an incredibly long time (and tons more money than initially proposed) to get to the point of even having a viable launch platform.
There is the final wet test scheduled for January. But, they are different scenarios, Unless people think that you just scale an engine up and all will be well. But here is the big question - if Spacex was tasked with producing a 130,000 Kg Rocket to to LEO in 2011, would you assert they would be long done with it already? As well, all of the specifications would be met and it would be launching regularly now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There is a lot more to a system than just a big engine. An
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Anyone that thinks NASA overall is a failure isn't paying very close attention. I would say there are aspects of NASA that don't operate at peak efficiency, but that's inherited via their funding structure and the fact that every four to eight years they're expected to turn on somebody else's whim. But there's some major achievements happening constantly via NASA programs. Including exoplanetary probes, the rovers on Mars that are helping to set the tone for future missions to Mars, including SpaceX and
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I'd still rather see both projects succeed. Diversity is a good thing, even if one does appear to be a bit of a boondoggle.
True - I'm not at all anti-Spacex. What we are developing is a family of Rockets that have differing uses. Let's call them skillsets for lack of a better term.
The Falcon 9 has a skillset, as do the Atlas Rockets, and for all that matter, the Ariane rockets and the Soyuz, plus the new Angara-A5.
The SLS is a replacement for the monster Saturn V.
And that's what we need sometimes. Otherwise we could end up with multiple launches and assembly in orbit. But you surely don't want a block 3 SLS to be launch
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NASA is not just launching Rockets. They are research, they develop instruments and vehicles to land on other planets. They do basic science. They do a lot of educational material. Yet apparently there is one job and one job only for Spacex fans, and that's launching and landing. All else should be eliminated, I guess.
All of that is true, and I don't think we should abolish NASA. But we also need to recognize that we don't need them to fund launch vehicles at this time, because private industry has stepped in to handle that. NASA does have one severe flaw, and that is that it is subject to the whims of congress. The money we spend there is often simply redirected from projects which make sense to pork projects which are designed to enrich specific states, not to produce maximum science. Therefore we should not use NASA f
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I don't know how much you can compare SpaceX and BO. Musk was in a position where he had to make SpaceX profitable, or it wouldn't have been viable. That wasn't such a problem for Bezos, who could finance BO with his Amazon fortune. He's in position where he can spend his money on research without having to worry about a profit.
Also, Bezos' goal is building giant space habitats, going to other planets such as Mars doesn't interest him much. SpaceX is more of a launch service, whereas BO is more of a space t
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I don't know how much you can compare SpaceX and BO. Musk was in a position where he had to make SpaceX profitable, or it wouldn't have been viable. That wasn't such a problem for Bezos, who could finance BO with his Amazon fortune. He's in position where he can spend his money on research without having to worry about a profit.
Also, Bezos' goal is building giant space habitats, going to other planets such as Mars doesn't interest him much. SpaceX is more of a launch service, whereas BO is more of a space technologies company.
So Bezos has squandered 20 years and how many billions to NOT have the ability to build those space habitats. Musk built rockets that can be used to build a space station in less than 20 years. So when will Bezos actually finish developing the technologies that will let him actually start doing what he claims he wants to do? How does making a rocket and capsule for suborbital space tourism count as making space habitats?
Big deal.. (Score:3)
Text me when they reach orbit.
The Bezos Bug Out Bag (Score:2)
If I was as popular as Jeff Bezos, I'd sure as hell be building a rocket too!
Salvage-1 (Score:1)
Text me (Score:2)
Text me when they reach orbit. Not holding my breath.