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Bezos / Blue Origin rocket successful vertical landing

T

tynopik

Diamond Member
http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rocket-landing/

Blue Origin, the private space firm owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has just dropped a huge, unexpected gauntlet in the race to develop a reusable rocket. It just launched its New Shepard space vehicle (video, below) consisting of a BE-3 rocket and crew capsule to a suborbital height of around 100.5 kilometers (62 miles). The capsule then separated and touched down beneath a parachute, but more importantly, the BE-3 rocket also started its own descent. After the rockets fired at nearly 5,000 feet, it made a a controlled vertical landing at a gentle 4.4 mph.

. . .

Elon Musk's company does have a more daunting task, however -- its Falcon 9 reusable first stage is propelling the rocket to an orbital, not suborbital altitude. While SpaceX's rocket separates at a similar height of around 50 miles, its speed at that point is much faster than that of New Shepard -- around Mach 10 compared to Mach 3.7.
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This was pretty amazing, actually, because Musk and SpaceX have not pulled it off yet.
 
I guess it answers the question of what you do when you're worth billions.

That's money where "I want my own space program" isn't a joke. 😀


When Earthbound hookers and blow just doesn't do it for you anymore...




What is the reason for this vertical landing thing? Doesn't that really raise the fuel requirement? The fuel for landing needs to be hoisted to LEO. I guess you're at least not fighting gravity 100% on the way down. Cheaper than the cost of ocean recovery, I suppose?

Neat stuff though.
 
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tynopik said:
they have done a vertical landing, just not from one that has gone that high
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Yeah and also I didn't realize how different the objectives were when I noticed the article earlier and posted. Bezos wasn't even trying to get anywhere near orbit and the vehicle is a lot smaller than one that could do that.

Still, impressive.
 
The part with the engines and fuel tank gets a nice controlled landing on a pad so it can be reused but the part with the people just gets a parachute and slams down in the dirt somewhere? 😕
 
Humpy said:
The part with the engines and fuel tank gets a nice controlled landing on a pad so it can be reused but the part with the people just gets a parachute and slams down in the dirt somewhere? 😕
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in a real launch, the crew capsule would come down in the ocean

ocean landings are contraindicated for reusability, thus the reusable part needs a different (but higher risk) approach
 
What is up with the word origin in everything? uBlock Origin, Origin for gaming, Origin PCs, now Blue Origin?

Should have named it something like Astrozon. LOL
 
Markbnj said:
This was pretty amazing, actually, because Musk and SpaceX have not pulled it off yet.
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The difference is that Musk/SpaceX is attempting this on actual missions which aren't dedicated to landing a rocket vertically. IOW, they are trying to save money on missions that were paid for and 100% successful to make them more profitable while this rocket seems to have been an expenditure specifically for testing a reusable vertically-landed booster...

...assuming I'm interpreting this right. They mentioned the mission being successful in the Bezos/Blue Origin but they didn't say that the mission was anything other than landing the rocket.

A purposeful mission dedicated to landing a rocket is probably going to be more successful than a secondary goal of recovering a booster in the course of completing another mission.
 
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CZroe said:
The difference is that Musk/SpaceX is attempting this on actual missions which aren't dedicated to landing a rocket vertically. IOW, they are trying to save money on missions that were paid for and 100% successful to make them more profitable while this rocket seems to have been an expenditure specifically for testing a reusable vertically-landed booster...

...assuming I'm interpreting this right. They mentioned the mission being successful in the Bezos/Blue Origin but they didn't say that the mission was anything other than landing the rocket.

A purposeful mission dedicated to landing a rocket is probably going to be more successful than a secondary goal of recovering a booster in the course of completing another mission.
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This.
 
Jeff7 said:
I guess it answers the question of what you do when you're worth billions.

That's money where "I want my own space program" isn't a joke. 😀


When Earthbound hookers and blow just doesn't do it for you anymore...




What is the reason for this vertical landing thing? Doesn't that really raise the fuel requirement? The fuel for landing needs to be hoisted to LEO. I guess you're at least not fighting gravity 100% on the way down. Cheaper than the cost of ocean recovery, I suppose?

Neat stuff though.
Click to expand...

While it is true one does have to haul extra fuel for the touchdown that amount is small. The vehicle has some sort of "air-brake" that slows it down a lot and if you watch the video the main engine re-lights at 1,000Ft but only develops significant thrust just before touchdown.
 
For the 4 flight Blue Origin broadcast their launch and landing for the fist time live this morning. Wanted to watch the launch today but slept in (

Pictures and videos of flight.

blue_origin_3.0.gif
 
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