
Launch, Land, Repeat - Aaronn
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blog/launch-land-repeat
======
molyss
Am I the only one finding the last 2 BO videos highly disingenuous ?

As mentioned numerous times, there's the whole "reaching space" vs "going into
orbit" before landing.

More important to me is the fact that SpaceX is streaming its different tries
in _live_, taking the risk of crashing the rocket out in the open. How many
vehicles did BO lose before achieving a vertical landing ?

Oh, and what about the fact that they have total control on the location and
time of the launch ? Meaning they basically control weather to an accuracy no
one launching anything useful into space has. For example, last failed SpaceX
landing was officially linked to fog icing the leg locks. That's not going to
happen if you launch on a clear day from the desert.

These are more comparable to the Grasshoper tries than to anything SpaceX has
done recently : no horizontal speed, full weather control, no reporting on
failed attempts, very limited weight. Even the last grasshoper video seemed to
have more side winds that had to be countered than this 100k altitude video.

Even the format of the video itself screams "vaporware" to me. It looks like a
trailer for a bad action movie, where some spacey something goes to space,
separates and lands back in 15 seconds. When the grasshoper videos left me in
awe, looping over them 5 times in a row, the BO ones just make me feel like
they sh/could end with some sexual innuendo over their big rocket

~~~
dandelany
You're the one turning it into a competition, in reality it is simply two
separate companies doing different awesome things. Yes, obviously, going into
orbit is harder than not doing so. But going to space sub-orbitally is still
very difficult and cool, and the only reason there's a negative spin on BO's
achievements is because people feel the need to compare it with SpaceX as if
there can be only one.

Just be excited for the positive direction of spaceflight in general. Everyone
benefits from both companies doing well, even if SpaceX is ahead of everyone
else for awhile.

~~~
molyss
I wish I had the power to turn that into a competition, but I don't think they
need me for that :)

Jocking aside, I don't think there can only be one. I am comparing BO and
SpaceX the same way I'd compare google and apple. In the same industry but not
doing exactly the same thing. And when Apple tried to go on one of Google's
turf with maps, they sucked. When Google tried to go do phones, at first they
sucked. Comparison is natural and welcome.

Here, it feels to me that BO is putting themselves up for comparison for no
reason.

As far as the positive direction of spaceflight, I think that transparency is
key. Space exploration needs more accountability and trust that ever has been
available before _in_any_industry_ever_. And there, so far SpaceX is winning
hands down, including versus the old players (soyouz, ariane, ULA...). When
SpaceX says "one of our struts was structurally deficient, broke down, made
the rocket lose equilibrium and ultimately explode", they're also telling
their competitors "Watch this. We've learned it the hard way.". Same with fog
icing the leg lock. In the grand scheme of things they are making space safer,
and not only for their customers. I only see bragging and borderline (note the
"borderline") bullying on BO's side

------
yborg
Honestly just roll my eyes now at these pissing contest blogposts from Bezos.
He does his team a disservice by suggesting that what they are achieving is
actually more advanced than what SpaceX has done - it all looks like the
approach the Soviets took in trumpeting various "firsts" in space in the 60s
as the US methodically built capability far beyond what the Russians could
sustain.

I am impressed by both companies' ambition, and SpaceX clearly has both the
time and money advantage over Blue Origin. Let your accomplishments speak for
themselves.

~~~
ehnto
If it's a pissing contest that accelerates the rate at which we progress space
travel and technology then that's fine by me.

Also I feel like perhaps you're underselling their achievements here, it's
still impressive and it's still incredible progress in space travel.

Good luck to them both.

~~~
jrometty
What's great about Blue Origins long term is the frequency of launches. Blue
Origins will be launching a rocket every day years before SpaceX will, because
of obvious differences in rocket magnitude and mission.

There's a fair amount of boilerplate that comes with launching a rocket. From
the command terminals (and associated IRL command structure) to the pod's
parachute and rocket assisted landing , all components will be used and tested
_A LOT_ thanks to Blue Origins' strategy.

Assuming Blue Origins learns as much as possible and iterates on any sliver of
weakness, we as a planet can be far more confident in the human carrying
structures that are used to transport space-to-surface. SpaceX undeniably has
more impactful and impressive rocket technology, but I'll always respect the
lower level work Blue Origins is focusing on.

Space is really, really, really hard. Everyone wants to go up, I enjoy how
much Blue Origins wants to come back down. :)

~~~
aerovistae
> Blue Origins will be launching a rocket every day years before SpaceX will

I would stake my life on you being dead wrong, that's how fucking positive I
am. It's such a silly thing to suggest! SpaceX has made dozens of launches,
Blue Origin has made a _couple_ ! What in the world implies to you that their
rate of scaling will soon outpace Spacex??

~~~
dandelany
The fuel cost of a Falcon 9 launch is ~$200k. In a perfect world (tons of
launches), lets say (generously) that we get launch costs down a million a
pop, all things included.

BO's New Shepard is shooting for something like $100k or less per flight. The
rocket is much smaller, uses less fuel, and is much easier to move around on
the ground, reducing fixed launch costs. It's at least an order of magnitude
lower in price, for a completely different service (suborbital tourism), which
will make it accessible to a much larger market.

~~~
sandworm101
Larger market? I think not. The space launch biz is populated by hundreds of
different companies, all wanting to spend millions or billions to get a useful
sat into orbit. BO is looking to a small group of billionaires with the money
to throw 30-50k to spend a few minutes vomiting. And of those, only the ones
young enough to participate, a rare thing amongst billionaires.

(1) The launch is not gentle. Everyone will be strapped tightly into chairs,
ready for launch escape rocket thrust if necessary.

(2) Time weightless will be measured in minutes, probably less than ten. So
nobody is getting out of the chairs. At best they get a few minutes of
watching pens hover, unless that is everything has to be secure. In such cases
only the vomit will float.

(3) The landing options are not great. Soft if all goes to plan, but
parachutes/hard if no. So everyone stays in chairs. No old people and/or heart
conditions need apply.

How many people pay to ride the vomit comet every year? How many of them are
billionaires? That's BO's market.

~~~
motoboi
Well, I'm not even a millionaire and I would very gladly sell my house to go
to the space, even for a few minutes.

Best thing is: with that money, I can go twice!

~~~
sandworm101
cc. Here ya go: [https://www.gozerog.com/](https://www.gozerog.com/)

------
gus_massa
Impressive, but one important difference with the SpaceX rockets is that this
rocket only goes up to space but it doesn't put satellites in orbit.

Form: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/)

> _The reason it 's hard to get to orbit isn't that space is high up. It's
> hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast. _

~~~
banku_brougham
I agree with this. But Jeff makes a valid point about judging the rocket by
its smaller size. The launch of orbital vehicles is a solved problem, but
landing the booster is newly under development. The smaller booster is harder
to land vertically, so the technological solutions they are testing may prove
to be more robust in adverse conditions.

~~~
jpgvm
I don't think the smaller booster is harder. It's almost by definition easier.
It weighs less, doesn't need to reach orbital velocity and can have an engine
that throttles all the way down to hover because the MTOW is not that
different from it's dry weight. Not reaching orbital velocity is the main
thing here, it's what makes all of this easy in comparison.

The solutions they are exploring are many times less complicated and difficult
than what SpaceX is doing. Saying otherwise is mischaracterising both of their
achievements.

~~~
zardo
The dynamics problem of balancing an inverted pendulum gets easier as the
distance between the COM and the force input is increased.

Of course, its also easier to have very fast gimballing on a smaller engine,
and a taller rocket bends more which makes it harder to detect exactly where
it's pointed in the first place.

~~~
NamTaf
A rocket isn't an inverted pendulum. This is a common mistake.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy)

~~~
gozur88
The pendulum fallacy has to do with the tail of the rocket not naturally
following the head during launch. Landing really is an inverted pendulum
problem.

~~~
jakub_h
_How_ is even the landing an inverted pendulum problem? There's no instability
of an inclined rocket during the landing; there's an instability of a
"gimbaled-away" rocket. That's not the same thing.

~~~
gozur88
I'm not sure what you mean by that. How is this different, mathematically,
from the classic 8th grade textbook picture of a child balancing a yardstick
on his nose?

~~~
jakub_h
Easily. The yardstick is unstable in inclination if it isn't vertical. The
rocket is unstable in horizontal position if it isn't vertical. But it doesn't
start to rotate as long as the thrust vector goes through the CG. The thrust
vector has stable orientation relative to the rocket (if you don't gimbal),
whereas the force vector doesn't have stable orientation relative to the
yardstick.

~~~
dandelany
> The thrust vector has stable orientation relative to the rocket (if you
> don't gimbal)

This is what makes your argument moot - because they _do_ gimbal, and the
gimbaling is what creates the moment/torque. In a way that _is_ very nearly
analogous to twisting your hand around slightly to balance a broomstick.

> The yardstick is unstable in inclination if it isn't vertical. The rocket is
> unstable in horizontal position if it isn't vertical.

The rocket is unstable in position _and_ inclination (attitude). So you're
right that there's more to it, but it's still the inverted pendulum problem
for attitude, plus the rocket formulas for translation and added constraints
of landing location. Are you saying Bezos is lying in this post when he
explicitly says "When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic
inverted pendulum problem"? He would know, and I don't see a reason for him to
lie about it.

~~~
jakub_h
> This is what makes your argument moot - because they do gimbal, and the
> gimbaling is what creates the moment/torque. In a way that is very nearly
> analogous to twisting your hand around slightly to balance a broomstick.

The point of the inverted pendulum problem is that the torque on a long, thin,
ground-supported object (or even just any ground-supported object with a
narrow base or a hinge on its bottom) is a function of its orientation. That
gives you a second order differential equation for tilt. This is NOT the case
with the free-flying rocket because the engine is rotating along with the
rocket. You could simulate the inverted pendulum actively, by rotating the
engine so that it has a fixed orientation relative to the ground (up to the
gimbaling limit, which is usually <10 degrees), but you actually want to do
the opposite with the landing rocket (with significant damping to boot).
Basically, you want the active control system to simulate a _normal_ pendulum,
just turned upside down (but with the damping so that it doesn't actually
oscillate).

> The rocket is unstable in position and inclination (attitude).

Not the latter unless you make it behave in that way. You could also check on
the Apollo LM landing guidance, maybe it will become more clear if you study
that.

> So you're right that there's more to it, but it's still the inverted
> pendulum problem for attitude

No, it's not. That's the point.

> Are you saying Bezos is lying in this post when he explicitly says "When you
> do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum
> problem"? He would know, and I don't see a reason for him to lie about it.

No, I'm saying that this phrasing makes no sense. Remember that Goddard made a
similar mistake when reasoning about rockets and pendulums, so arguments to
authority are demonstrably to be avoided here. A significant clarification on
his part could make it more comprehensible what he actually meant, but making
any kind of analogy to a ground-supported object is clearly bad when talking
about a free-flying body.

~~~
dandelany
This is an excellent response - thanks.

------
hayksaakian
I like it -- we're starting a 21st century space race between corporations
rather than nations.

~~~
dauoalagio
I like that, too, but this feels like just a cheap shot at SpaceX right now...

------
vonklaus
This is amazing, and a pretty amazing feat that we are taking for granted.
Space is super super tough, the complex coordination of manufacturing
something like this is being totally written off by many, but I assure you it
is non trivial.

A popular sentiment in that industry is that rocketry is like writing software
composed of many modules and testing each module separately on mac, then
deploying the entire build on linux. If it doesn't work, you don't just back
out the conversion error or stray quotes you left in, your rocket explodes.

The engineering spend alone is massive, as is the damage to the company when a
failure is syndicated across youtube. Taking big risks is something we should
be promoting.

We are in a technological renaissance and it starts with lowering launch costs
to achieve realtime LEO satellite blanketing and distributed communication
channels to connect to the other fucking 3 billion people without internet.
Bezos is accomplishing something great, and we don't need to qualify that
statement.

He and Musk are definitively the Jobs and Gates of the 21st century if you
want to use the obvious cliche.

What Gates did. What Jobs accomplished. It was pretty fucking powerful. Musk
and Bezos are sort of doing that, except both are working in at least 3
industries at that same scale.

I wish Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Firefly and all the other people in new
space well. Nano-sats will provide realtime insight to the earth, people will
be able to own a satellite in ~5-10 years because of these advancements.

this is good for _all_ of us, and the only negative thing to say about it is
that for god sakes Jeff, that rocket does look a bit like a stubby penis.

~~~
dba7dba
1\. _popular sentiment in that industry is that rocketry is like writing
software composed of many modules and testing each module separately on mac,
then deploying the entire build on linux._

Musk always says the passing grade in rocketry is 100%. As there's no way to
test a rocket fully except to actually launch it.

2\. _bit like a stubby penis_ lol

And that stubby thing shoots less powerfully than SpaceX.

------
sandworm101
SpaceX = Space launch.

Blue Origin = Rollercoaster.

I really don't see why these companies are competing. They are in totally
different markets. Sure, there is some technological crossover in that they
both use rockets, but this is like comparing a prius to a locomotive.

~~~
ericd
Because BO wants to be seen as being in the same league as the much more
advanced spacex to raise their profile.

------
raldi
It sounds like Blue Origin rockets are only capable of sending payloads to
space for just an instant, before gravity pulls them back down to earth.
They're nowhere near close to capable of putting anything into orbit.

Is that correct? If so, what are they good for?

~~~
pjscott
They're a smaller-scale test platform for figuring out how to do propulsive
landing and re-use, similar to SpaceX's grasshopper rockets. Blue Origin is
also developing an orbital rocket, which will hopefully be more impressive.

------
xgbi
"Our vision: millions of people working and living in space"

When you have only a few seconds above the "official" space altitude on a
parabolic trajectory, I wouldn't say" working and living in space", and
specially not "millions" at the same time..

Is it me or this is primarily a pitch video ?

~~~
espadrine
Very much so.

It is a bit disingenuous to imagine sustained life in space when we can barely
live sustainably on the overwhelming majority of the surface of Earth. At
least on Earth, we don't encounter the physical limitations that our bodies
have when exposed to zero gravity, like loss of bone and muscle.

------
ChuckMcM
I think its great that New Shepard is coming along, I don't get how Bezos
feels he is helping his cause when he says "people living and working in
space." when he doesn't come close reaching orbit. The difference between an
orbital mission and a sounding rocket.

Now, that he is getting closer to having tourist flights outside the
atmosphere than Virgin Galactic? That is pretty cool and a fair comparison.
Being able to out execute Burt Rutan? That counts for a lot, but don't try to
compare yourself to SpaceX until you're putting things into LEO and getting
back the hardware to use again.

------
andrewtbham
Here is an animated video that shows what space tourism will be like. You will
be in space for a few minutes. the view of the world from space will be
amazing. plus you will be weightless. not sure how long you will be up there
or the cost but it looks awesome.

[https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience#youtube-
YJhy...](https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience#youtube-YJhymiZjqc)

------
dba7dba
I wonder SpaceX opening an office in Seattle was just to make it easier to
hire away engineers from Bezos?

------
sailfast
This looks like a very complicated engineering achievement that undoubtedly
will lead to advances in space travel and tourism.

That said, I didn't get to watch the launch and join in its success or
failure, so I'm finding it difficult to actually care as much as other
launches.

------
igravious
Is there a significance for ~100km? Is this, roughly speaking, space -- where
the atmosphere is so thin to be almost negligible? Clearly atmosphere thins
gradually so how do we define where space starts? Is the significance of
~100km something to do with the effects of gravity at that altitude from the
Earth's surface? Does ~100km give you weightlessness? Or is Blue Origin going
up to ~100km because it's a nice round number that is roughly (whatever that
means) in space. But aren't kilometres completely arbitrary?

Also, can people please stop knocking Blue Origin. We get it at this point,
okay? I'm a huge fan of SpaceX and Elon Musk but does Blue Origin have to lose
for SpaceX to win? No. There's nothing in this post from Bezos bashing SpaceX
as far as I can see. There's simply saying, look, we did it again with the
same refurbished rocket. Good on them. May they do it again and again. And so
may SpaceX. The next space race is on, happy days!

~~~
rory096
100km is the Kármán line, the generally accepted boundary of space. It's the
point at which aeronautics become useless, as the atmosphere is too thin to
support lift greater than your weight without going faster than orbital
velocity. Contrary to popular belief, in Low Earth Orbit you're still very
much in reach of the Earth's gravity; it's only about 10% less than the
gravity on the surface.[2] The tricky part about orbit is moving _sideways_
fast enough that you miss the ground.

So Blue Origin indeed got to space, landed and did it again. But it took a
tiny fraction of the energy of the same feat for an orbital rocket (which is
why SpaceX can only land its first stage).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line)

[2] [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/)

~~~
igravious
Why then do astronauts on the ISS appear weightless? Do _not_ make me Google
this :) And maybe we shouldn't call them astro- (suggesting star) nauts until
they get to Sol and back. I kid! I guess in some sense we are all astronauts,
man, on spaceship Earth. Seriously, maybe we should call them orbiternauts?

~~~
AdamTReineke
I love this question!

Something appears to be weightless when it is falling the same speed as
everything around it. If you took a kitchen scale, taped a weight to the top,
and dropped them, you'd notice it appears to have a weight of zero.

On the topic of falling, if you walk off a cliff, you fall to the base of the
cliff. If you run, you fall farther way. The faster you go, the trajectory of
your fall will be farther from the cliff. Now go really fast and you may fall
miles away - but you'll be fighting air resistance and eventually slow down
and hit the ground.

Above the Karman Line (62mi/100km up), the air is thin enough that there
barely any air resistance. If you go fast up here, the air isn't there to slow
you down. Gravity still pulls you back to earth though. [Blue Origin]

Now if you're above the atmosphere and going horizontally fast enough, the
trajectory of your fall eventually overshoots the curvature of the earth.
Follow that trajectory a quarter rotation around the earth -- you're still in
space, you're still going fast, and you're still falling. You're in orbit.
(SpaceX)

Since you're falling forever and the space station around you is also falling,
you appear to be weightless in relation to the space station.

(The indie game Kerbal Space Program is a great way to play with/explore the
concepts of orbital mechanics if you're intrigued.)

[Edit: For reference, the different in thrust needed to go straight up and
coast to the Karman line compared to going up at an angle (spending more time
traveling through the dense atmosphere) and establishing a horizontal speed of
about 17,500 miles per hour is very big. I believe it's at least an order of
magnitude though I don't have a citation for that number.]

~~~
dingaling
> Above the Karman Line (62mi/100km up), the air is thin enough that there
> barely any air resistance. I

On the contrary, even at the altitude of the ISS there is sufficient
atmosphere to reduce its velocity by around 5 metres / hour under normal
conditions. Particle density at 400 km altitude is 10E+15 particles / cubic
metre ( about a billion times less than at sea level ( but much more at times
of Solar flaring.

The ISS makes a sonic boom which propagates to the ground, it's just
incredibly weak.

------
forrestthewoods
Is Blue Origin landing a booster that SpaceX is letting crash? Would their
forces combined result in total re-use? I'm not sure what all the parts and
roles are. Sorry for the dumb question.

~~~
moron4hire
SpaceX is going 10x higher than Blue Origin. They can land on the ground,
perfectly fine. They just haven't figured out how to do it on _a moving barge_
, yet. Because launching from Houston means burning extra fuel to put the
rocket over land. Fuel that could be used for boosting.

~~~
zardo
They aren't going ten times higher, or launching from Houston. They launch
from Florida and California, they are building a launch site in Texas, but its
not in Houston.

The Falcon 9 1st stage will get over twice as high on some flights. Then
height it self isn't a big deal, it's the extra time in free fall speeding up
before it hits the atmosphere.

The big difference, is that the Falcon 9 is heading east at 1.7km/s, carrying
as much mass as a fully fueled BO rocket when it stages.

~~~
ceejayoz
> They aren't going ten times higher, or launching from Houston.

They're definitely going 10x higher (significantly more, in fact). The SES-8
launch saw the SpaceX second stage hit 79,130km - 790x higher than Blue
Origin's vehicle has hit.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1s33mz/ses8_deorbit...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1s33mz/ses8_deorbiting_the_second_stage/cdtmwqr)

~~~
zardo
The first stage does not go to orbit with the payload.

------
iamcreasy
What I am really looking forward in the bigger rocket from Blue Origin that
will be able to achieve orbital velocity.

------
anjc
Article title sounds like somebody's attempt at a new MVP/PMF paradigm

------
sjg007
These guys played way too much lunar lander :)

------
jcoffland
This is awesome. A great compliment to the work SpaceX is doing. To put it in
perspective this rocket went about 100x as high as an average international
airline flight but would still need to go about 4000x as far to reach the
moon. Not sure about the 3 mile per hour impact with the ground on my way home
from work. I suppose with a nice soft seat it would be fine but by the time
United Airlines gets done with it you'll be packed in like an NYC cross town
bus with a seat just as hard.

edit: got my facts straight

~~~
CamperBob2
The moon is about 4000 times farther than the Kármán line, and you need to
reach escape velocity to get there.

~~~
jcoffland
Right, corrected.

------
mchahn
One would think that using fuel to touch-down slowly is wasting fuel since
they could use some kind of capture scheme with a parachute instead. I've read
many times that the weight of the fuel is a big problem in spacecraft.

~~~
simonh
I don't know why you're getting down votes, it's a reasonable question.

Most capture schemes require the rocket to survive structural forces it isn't
designed to handle. Increasing its structural thrength would increase its
weight. Spacex tried parachutes on early designs, but gave up on them. A
parachute landing on the ground means impact forces, landing in the ocean
means salt water corrosion. Also even parachutes have a cost in weight,
including structural strengthening. SoaceX and Blue Origin have both looked at
the various options, crunched the numbers and opted for propulsive landing.

