
Blue Origin successfully lands both booster and crew capsule after test launch - Ours90
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/18/blue-origin-successfully-lands-both-booster-and-crew-capsule-after-test-launch/
======
ChuckMcM
I really appreciate Blue Origin's methodical approach to building this system.
I note that they are closer to being operational than Virgin Galactic who I
consider their primary competitor.

The challenge I have with the 'suborbital tourist' economy is that while some
folks will pay $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity, one has
to compare that to the Zero Gravity Corp which gives you over 6 minutes of
weightlessness (in 20 - 30 second increments) for $5K[1]

Sure there is the 'Concorde' effect where the very wealthy will all do it once
so that they won't feel left out at cocktail parties but that does not seem
sustainable.

My hope is that Blue Origin's plans to move into orbital flights is
successful. Spending $200K to spend nearly 90 minutes (1 orbit) weightless has
much more appeal.

[1]
[https://www.gozerog.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reservations.we...](https://www.gozerog.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reservations.welcome)

~~~
tango24
Agreed. Let’s say if I earned $200K/yr, and was close to “retirement”. I’d
consider working an extra year to take a 90 min orbit in space. I would not
make that same decision for a 3 min joy ride.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Just noodling about the economics, 7 passengers at $200K each is $1.4M gross
revenue. So assuming very low earth orbit (basically you just need to be above
enough of the atmosphere that you won't re-enter before the end of your first
orbit) that is still a very low cost for a Falcon9 launch given that the
second stage is not recovered. So you need to recover both stages
operationally "close" to where they lifted off so that you minimize
refurbishment/transport costs.

I'm guessing that would be that the second stage provides retropulsion to get
you back to nominal zero velocity over the return point.

So that would be launch, booster returns to the pad, and the second stage
pushes you up enough to insure an orbit, then your orient for return. Enjoy
the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your velocity to 0
as you arrive over the launch facility (you'll have to scoot 1000 miles or so
east as well given planetary rotation) and then separate for a parachute
landing of perhaps both the capsule and the second stage booster.

Sounds pretty complex. But you would have to recover _all_ equipment if you
wanted to have a chance as meeting the economics of that.

~~~
thebluehawk
> Enjoy the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your
> velocity to 0

That is not feasible. Your second stage would have to be roughly as large as
an entire orbital rocket in order to slow itself down from orbital speeds to
zero, which means your first stage would have to be massive in order to push
the second stage into orbit.

The reason every vehicle that re-enters the atmosphere uses a heat shield is
because it's way easier to carry a relatively light heat shield that sheds off
the speed than to carry the massive amount of fuel to shed off the same speed.

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

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
If instead of a circular orbit you just went for an arc with a really high
apoapsis you could probably burn a little fuel to reduce the forward momentum
to zero, and then proceed to slowly plummet back to earth... which then means
you need a really big heat shield as that gravitational potential energy turns
back into kinetic and you smack into the atmosphere at a ridiculous velocity.
Scratch that, too much Kerbal.

~~~
walrus01
a tall suborbital parabola that falls back into the atmosphere at an 85 degree
angle is basically the same re-entry heat as if you were to do what you
described, fly the parabola, and thrust retrograde at apoapsis to cancel out
the downrange velocity, then fall into the atmosphere dead vertical.

It's horizontal velocity (actual LEO velocity) that causes the heating effects
a Soyuz or Dragon type capsule needs to survive with heat shield on re-entry.

------
wlesieutre
The article glosses over what kind of rocket this is, so it's worth pointing
out that New Shepherd is a suborbital booster. You can't launch satellites
with it, only go up and fall back down.

Still cool though!

ADDENDUM - if you want to keep an eye on other projects, their reusable
orbital booster is New Glenn. IIRC it's higher capacity than Falcon 9, maybe
more toward Falcon Heavy. Last I heard they're shooting for a first test
launch in 2020.

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

~~~
crispyambulance
So basically, it's a very very expensive 10 minute amusement park ride with
10G's and a lot of danger? :-)

~~~
Griffinsauce
And a lot of pollution.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
Get that deadly dihydrogen monoxide out of my atmosphere!

~~~
gooseus
Well, let's not forget that water vapor is a greenhouse gas[0] though not
quite as serious as others since it will condense out in clouds and increase
albedo.

[0] [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-
references/faq/greenhou...](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-
references/faq/greenhouse-gases.php?section=watervapor)

~~~
dnautics
what's the atmospheric half life of high altitude water vapor?

------
rory096
Note that this flight tested an in-space abort, firing the crew capsule's
solid motor to simulate an emergency escape from the booster.

Because the abort took place after MECO, the capsule reached an apogee of
118.8km. This will likely stand as New Shepard's altitude record.

Blue Origin previously tested a transonic abort and (unexpectedly) recovered
the booster. Recovery did not appear to be in question this time.

~~~
hackujin
More like "in high altitude, low air pressure environment abort". This thing
will never go to space. It's not designed for that.

~~~
rory096
This is false. Space begins at 100km, the Karman line. New Shepard's typical
apogee is about 107km, while this flight reached nearly 119km.

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

------
cspags
Interesting that they stated a passenger would have experienced a peak of 10
Gs, that seems excessively high for tourism. The space shuttle launches were
around 3 Gs and Soyuz rockets around 4 Gs.

[https://space.stackexchange.com/a/7857](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/7857)

~~~
olex
That's 10G during an abort motor firing. Shuttle didn't have those in the
first place, and Soyuz's abort motors produced ~18G iirc.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Fuck it. Deleted.

~~~
calcifer
You are being downvoted because you tried to introduce a _" does anyone else
think Soviets were nasty evil people?"_ rhetoric into what was previously a
technical discussion.

~~~
stcredzero
Also, the gp commenter seems to misunderstand what 18g would do to somebody.
For an extended span of time, that's a death sentence. For just a moment, it's
likely going to knock you out, but it's survivable by healthy people and it's
far better than being in a rocket explosion.

------
725686
Completely irrelevant, but boy are those blue origin rockets ugly.

~~~
sidcool
I read it somewhere that Elon Musk was since the beginning very demanding of
aesthetics, in his rockets as well as cars. This has resulted in some
beautiful looking rockets and cars.

Having said that I believe it's primary for rockets to be safe and efficient
rather than beautiful.

~~~
drawnwren
That's turned out well for his rockets, but man are most (except the S) of his
cars ugly.

~~~
zuck9
Roadster too?

~~~
drawnwren
In my opinion, especially the roadster. Easily the ugliest sports car since
the fox body mustang. Right up there with the MR-S.

Edit: The 1st Gen roadster. I'll reserve judgement on the second gen until
it's released, but it looks a lot like the new NSX in photos. And the new NSX
looked great until we saw them in real life and they turned out to be possibly
the worst supercar of the 21st century.

~~~
jacquesm
1st gen roadster isn't really a Tesla design, that's just a Lotus Elise body.

~~~
drawnwren
I mean, it is a Tesla design in-as-much as I really like the Lotus Elise and
really dislike the Tesla. They specifically restyled the Elise horribly.
Probably at the request of Lotus, but it's certainly a design failure imo.
You're right though, they did start from a Lotus Elise.

------
usermac
I stopped listening when they said "curve of the Earth"

------
Sir_Cmpwn
The difference between suborbital spaceflight and orbital spaceflight is like
the difference between reading a book about Antarctica and going to
Antarctica.

~~~
m3kw9
The temperature difference.

~~~
SamUK96
This was probably the most pragmatic transaction i've seen all week.

------
Scarbutt
Is it me or the capsule didn't land where it supposed to be? from the video
looks like there was a spot for it.

Also, landing at 16mph seems a little rough? I guess the capsule is not
reused?

~~~
welikespace
The rocket & capsule are designed to be fully reusable.

Retro rockets fire just before landing. This is the main cause of the dust
cloud that kicks up around the capsule.

Various sources on the web put the touchdown speed at 1-3 mph.

Edit: the 3mph comes from a test where they disabled 1/3 of the parachutes
[1]:

 _Similar flights had been done with the same craft three times before, but
this time around, one of the capsule’s parachutes was disabled. Bezos said the
two parachutes slowed the descent to 23 mph, as opposed to the usual 16 mph
with three parachutes._

 _Just before the touchdown, the capsule’s retro rocket system fired. Bezos
said that brought the speed at impact down to 3 mph. The capsule was equipped
with a ring of crushable bumpers on its bottom to absorb that remaining
force._

[1] [https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-test-
ch...](https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-test-chute/)

~~~
alex_young
Thanks. Looks like no retro rockets on the capsule this time around to me.
Wonder what the underside looks like now.

~~~
greglindahl
Looks the same as previous landings -- a big puff of dust. Normally everyone's
showing up to claim that it looked like a hard landing, but the dust is kicked
up by the retrorockets that make the landing soft.

------
hackujin
Straight up... straight down. No orbit. Nothing to see other than "tourist"
flights for people who want to see what space is like but without
weightlessness.

~~~
melling
Will it be a profitable business?

You could bootstrap the future of space flight simply by starting with a small
profitable company.

~~~
Jach
It hasn't exactly worked out for XCOR or Virgin Galactic, what will Blue
Origin's edge be?

~~~
melling
XCOR filed for bankruptcy. That’s not profitable.

Virgin Galactic isn’t a profitable company either. They could be, of course.

My point was that you can start with a small company with a well-defined goal
and product then continue to grow the vision, as long as you remain
profitable.

~~~
Jach
Yeah I don't disagree here, my point was that Blue Origin's particular goal
and product bootstrapping from space tourism has already been tried and more
or less failed. Whereas Musk's/SpaceX's goal is to get a Mars colony going,
they started with something different than space tourism and it seems to be
working out.

~~~
melling
Virgin Galactic hasn’t failed yet. Someone was killed so they’ve been
extremely cautious.

Bezos is a good business person. It’s quite possible he’ll run thin margins
and grow the business.

------
preparedzebra
Seems like SpaceX is a light year beyond these guys. Do they just get coverage
because they're a private space corp?

~~~
blhack
SpaceX _is_ light years beyond what they are doing right now.

\-- _but_ \--

Jeff Bezos has said he plans on spending $1 Billion/year on blue origin.

Unlike SpaceX, they don't need to actually worry about money.

To put in perspective how much money Jeff Bezos has (and he is somebody who
really want to do space travel): he could privately fund a manned mission to
mars _and still remain the richest man in the world_.

It's just incomprehensible the resources that they have there. Blue O will
almost definitely catch SpaceX.

~~~
lstodd
He might as well spend $10B a year, results will be the same. Time is money,
but money isn't time.

~~~
drawnwren
Bezos frequently speaks about efficiency of deploying capital. My guess is he
doesn't believe he would get 10x results from 10x investment.

~~~
Tepix
I'm sure that there is _some_ speedup when he starts spending more than $1
billion. Given that his net worth reached $150 billion it seems like it's safe
to go to $2 billion/year without running out of money during his lifetime.

------
JackFr
It's been said before, but it bears repeating: Bezos and Musk are literal
Bond-villains -- freaky looking billionaires building ICBMs under our very
noses -- and no one is doing anything about it.

Where is the gadget-laden, womanizing secret agent who will save us?

------
legitster
SpaceX has been a phenomenal force in space flight, but their whole philosophy
has been to move fast and break things. And consumers have gotten to watch
crash after crash and explosion after explosion.

Bezos is making the bet that the average person is to trust their luggage but
not their life on SpaceX. If they take their time and get it right, there are
huge second mover advantages here.

~~~
rory096
This comment does not deserve to be downvoted so far. SpaceX's policy is
_absolutely_ to move fast and iterate constantly instead of relying on
hardware 'legacy' and keeping designs static. This is a stark break from the
way traditional space companies do things, and both sides have recognized that
it has caused some friction with NASA as it adjusts to SpaceX's way of doing
things.

Dan Rasky's (excellent) oral history videos[0] of his time as NASA's liaison
to SpaceX for technology transfer under the COTS program touches on this, as
does SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell's oral history.[1]

Blue Origin's motto, on the other hand, is _Gradatim Ferociter_ : Step by
Step, Ferociously. They are known for moving slowly and surely.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk)

[1]
[https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/C3PO/Shotwel...](https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/C3PO/ShotwellGE/ShotwellGE_1-15-13.htm)

~~~
kanox
> consumers have gotten to watch crash after crash and explosion after
> explosion.

No, it definitely deserves to be downvoted.

~~~
rory096
It's a valid point. Even though we informed spaceflight observers know that
these explosions were experimental (and would've happened anyway, more
violently even, when boosters were expended), the average member of the public
may not be familiar with the nuances of booster recovery.

It's plausible that it could become a PR issue.

~~~
pavs
People watching videos on Youtube are not SpaceX consumer/customer. Or am I
missing something?

Here is a full SpaceX manifest both past and future:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceX/wiki/launches/manifest](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceX/wiki/launches/manifest)

As it stands right now, they are most likely the largest rocket company right
now (or at least the top 2), they seem to be adding more order every other
month. Not a sign of their customer base losing confidence in them.

~~~
rory096
This is true, of course, but I think the grandparent is talking about the far
future. Eventually, if Musk's and/or Bezos' visions are to be realized, the
average person will be a consumer — whether for space tourism, earth-to-earth
transit, industry, or colonization.

