

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Just Launched Its Flagship Rocket - samaysharma
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-just-launched-flagship-rocket

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ColinWright
Trying to gauge the precise achievement here, it seems to have gone up about
60 miles, about 10 kms, and then parachuted the empty crew capsule back to
Earth. That's about 1/4 of the altitude needed to get to LEO.

Then we recall that the kinetic energy it needs to be in orbit is about 10
times the gravitational potential energy[0]. That means this is about 1/40 of
the energy needed to get to LEO.

Does that sound about right?

This is undoubtedly a stage any company needs to go through, but it would be
nice to have some confirmation of where they are in the progress time-line.

[0] Roughly, orbital velocity is around 8000 m/s, or 1/2 (8000)^2 m^2/s^2/kg,
which is 32 x 10^6 m^2/s^2/kg. GPE is about 10 x 320000 = 32 x 10^5
m^2/s^2/kg.

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sithadmin
Rockets tend to be phallic, but this vehicle really goes all out.

