

Blue Origin – First Flight - hendler
https://www.blueorigin.com/

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TimSAstro
tl;dr: A competitor to Virgin Galactic (space tourism) using what appears to
be a more traditional booster rocket / parachute pod arrangement - except that
the booster rocket self-lands after separation. Interesting to see another
competitor in the space industry!

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nine_k
The self-landing was not performed, it seems: no video coverage, no mention.

They _plan_ the first stage to self-land, though.

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jccooper
It was intended to on this test, but it failed. Hydraulic issues (just like
SpaceX!). No video, presumably because they thought a nice video of part of
they system exploding would be bad press.

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whoisthemachine
Very cool! Seems like they could be a serious competitor to SpaceX, although
they are only aiming for sub-orbital flights at the moment.

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jccooper
At 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.

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jccooper
And all of a sudden Blue Origin looks to be in the lead in the (very long)
race to suborbital passenger flights. Scaled/Virgin seemed to be a lock in the
beginning, but have been squandering their lead. Until yesterday, I'd have
thought underfunded but competent XCOR might beat out VG.

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antoniuschan99
For those who aren't aware. Blue Origin is backed by Amazon/Jeff Bezos

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kitd
Sorry, I have to say this: it's very ... phallic.

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krallja
It's a frustrum on top of a fuel tanker. What other shape could it possibly
be?

