Author Topic: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2  (Read 465763 times)

Offline Jim

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #60 on: 11/10/2017 04:54 pm »
Suggest BE-4, unlike BE-3, hasn't enough throttle/gimbal to do a single engine vehicle landing.

If you're going to do a single BE-4 vehicle, it'll be an expendable like a twin engine Vulcan.

Landing of a single main engine rocket can always be accomplished by adding more little engines :) such as the 11,000 lb methalox thrusters planned for use in Blue Moon. I digress since this is off topic for the most part, but that "single engine can't land" comment always bugs me as being dismissive of other design possibilities.

No, single engine means one only and no other little engines.  Using engines that are not of the same design and are special purpose defeat the purpose and cost savings

Offline Rabidpanda

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #61 on: 11/10/2017 04:57 pm »
Considering that there is *zero* evidence that Blue is developing a single BE-4 powered launch vehicle, this whole discussion seems pointless.

Offline GWH

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #62 on: 11/10/2017 05:08 pm »
And your comment strikes me as dismissive of design *practicalities*. Adding several smaller landing engines is not trivial, and it will effect the performance of the vehicle.

Of course it will, don't take my comment as dismissive of that.  it is simply a statement that just because one design philosophy (clustered engines with center engine used to land) has seem to become "the way things are always done" - over a sample size of two - doesn't mean alternatives should be dismissed either.

Performance effects could be mitigated somewhat - having the landing engines ignite at lift off can help mitigate the incurred dry mass and improve TWR. Perhaps a simplified fixed nozzle main engine could be used, where the clustered secondary engines provide all attitude and roll control.

Off hand I just don't see reasons why it can't be done - the very nature of a vertical landing booster has many complexities, and off hand I can't see why the above would be significantly more complicated than the alternative.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #63 on: 11/10/2017 05:39 pm »
Considering that there is *zero* evidence that Blue is developing a single BE-4 powered launch vehicle, this whole discussion seems pointless.
Perhaps.

Boils down to ... if you do smallest ELV first, does that accelerate or retard NG?

Argument for current course of action - BO has already enough flight/staff experience with suborbital NS, so all on/up focus on NG means first mission complete success is 95+ % likely.

Argument for alternative - BO doesn't want to do a complete redesign of LV/GSE/pad/recovery at scale because of flaw that requires such a costly "retry", so potentially "crawl/walk" of smaller LV (if it is and GSE/pad difference can be kept small - like with a "milkstool" etc) means you prove the less capability to potentially speed larger. And, if you have to respin larger, you're still launching likely with smaller while you respin.

Choice of different "gradatim". Are they better at gradual vehicles or gradual with a vehicle?

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #64 on: 11/10/2017 06:11 pm »
I thought Bezos said they were considering optional US for NS booster so it could service cubesat and smallsat market.

Besides this I can't see the point in another booster, better to use NG with lower cost BE3 US for smaller payloads. 

Offline Lars-J

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #65 on: 11/10/2017 06:26 pm »
I thought Bezos said they were considering optional US for NS booster so it could service cubesat and smallsat market.
S for smaller payloads.

No, he has never said that. It may have been speculated by forum members, though.

Offline GWH

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #66 on: 11/10/2017 06:58 pm »
I thought Bezos said they were considering optional US for NS booster so it could service cubesat and smallsat market.
S for smaller payloads.

No, he has never said that. It may have been speculated by forum members, though.

Yes, he did.
Quote from: Jeff Bezos
“I’m thinking it might be interesting to build a small second stage for this New Shepard booster because we could use it to put smallsats into orbit. It would be perfectly capable of being a first stage for a small orbital vehicle."
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3213/1

Offline Lars-J

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #67 on: 11/10/2017 07:36 pm »
I stand corrected!

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #68 on: 11/10/2017 08:51 pm »
There are other ways to land boosters besides rockets. Air bags were considered for the Kistler K-1.
I don't think airbags have been seriously attempted, never mind demonstrated, though they have been proposed several times for vehicles as large as Zenit.
Thanks to both of you for bringing this up.

What happened when a Falcon 9 fell over on its side? Boom!

That's what would happen also with an airbag landing. You can't passivate the booster fast enough, and the landing area as well as the engine/stage is still hot and extremely dangerous - how do you mitigate those?

Also, what's the parasitic weight gain for the airbag/deployment mechanism? Reuse following burn through? How does the engine spin down / tale off during the "topple"?

Online envy887

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #69 on: 11/11/2017 02:01 am »
There are other ways to land boosters besides rockets. Air bags were considered for the Kistler K-1.
I don't think airbags have been seriously attempted, never mind demonstrated, though they have been proposed several times for vehicles as large as Zenit.
Thanks to both of you for bringing this up.

What happened when a Falcon 9 fell over on its side? Boom!

That's what would happen also with an airbag landing. You can't passivate the booster fast enough, and the landing area as well as the engine/stage is still hot and extremely dangerous - how do you mitigate those?

Also, what's the parasitic weight gain for the airbag/deployment mechanism? Reuse following burn through? How does the engine spin down / tale off during the "topple"?

Has anyone proposed a retroburn immediately followed by airbag landing? Everything I have seen uses chutes to reduce terminal velocity to something the airbags can handle, which would leave the booster hanging in cool air for a long time, enough to cool at least the really hot surfaces. And maybe even long enough to fully passivate and dump all props and fluids.

Small chutes are lighter than landing fuel; they just don't scale to EELV sizes.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2017 02:02 am by envy887 »

Online envy887

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #70 on: 11/11/2017 02:08 am »
I thought Bezos said they were considering optional US for NS booster so it could service cubesat and smallsat market.
S for smaller payloads.

No, he has never said that. It may have been speculated by forum members, though.

Yes, he did.
Quote from: Jeff Bezos
“I’m thinking it might be interesting to build a small second stage for this New Shepard booster because we could use it to put smallsats into orbit. It would be perfectly capable of being a first stage for a small orbital vehicle."
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3213/1

"Would be interesting" does not equal seriously considering doing it. This would be the ultimate LEGO rocket as the upper stage would have to provide almost all the delta-v. Possibly interesting for very small payloads, but this would be competing against Electron etc.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #71 on: 11/11/2017 02:28 am »
There are other ways to land boosters besides rockets. Air bags were considered for the Kistler K-1.
I don't think airbags have been seriously attempted, never mind demonstrated, though they have been proposed several times for vehicles as large as Zenit.
Thanks to both of you for bringing this up.

What happened when a Falcon 9 fell over on its side? Boom!

That's what would happen also with an airbag landing. You can't passivate the booster fast enough, and the landing area as well as the engine/stage is still hot and extremely dangerous - how do you mitigate those?

Also, what's the parasitic weight gain for the airbag/deployment mechanism? Reuse following burn through? How does the engine spin down / tale off during the "topple"?

Has anyone proposed a retroburn immediately followed by airbag landing? Everything I have seen uses chutes to reduce terminal velocity to something the airbags can handle, which would leave the booster hanging in cool air for a long time, enough to cool at least the really hot surfaces. And maybe even long enough to fully passivate and dump all props and fluids.

Yes - the alternative to an undeployable chute. Please note all the difficulties with large chutes, even at transonic speeds. Even things like ballutes are not as predictable as propulsion systems to deploy and detach.

Quote
Small chutes are lighter than landing fuel; they just don't scale to EELV sizes.
Indeed. Thus the above post.

add:

By the way, the burns are "boost back burn", "entry burn", and "braking burn".  Entry burn for dealing with the entry shock and bringing the relative stage trajectory velocity (horizontal and vertical) down to transonic, boost back to RTLS (most costly because you're cancelling your downrange or horizontal velocity), and braking/landing burn to cancel terminal velocity (vertical)  to keep from crashing into the ground.

All are retro or cancelling velocity.
« Last Edit: 11/11/2017 03:09 am by Space Ghost 1962 »

Offline Zed_Noir

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #72 on: 11/11/2017 02:44 am »
I thought Bezos said they were considering optional US for NS booster so it could service cubesat and smallsat market.
S for smaller payloads.

No, he has never said that. It may have been speculated by forum members, though.

Yes, he did.
Quote from: Jeff Bezos
“I’m thinking it might be interesting to build a small second stage for this New Shepard booster because we could use it to put smallsats into orbit. It would be perfectly capable of being a first stage for a small orbital vehicle."
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3213/1

"Would be interesting" does not equal seriously considering doing it. This would be the ultimate LEGO rocket as the upper stage would have to provide almost all the delta-v. Possibly interesting for very small payloads, but this would be competing against Electron etc.

This LEGO rocket will be a money loser against many other small launchers. But Bezos could still under cut the rest of the market with negative profit launch prices. That is  his M.O. with Amazon on how to deal with competitors.

Offline DreamyPickle

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #73 on: 11/11/2017 02:26 pm »
Quote from: Jeff Bezos
“I’m thinking it might be interesting to build a small second stage for this New Shepard booster because we could use it to put smallsats into orbit. It would be perfectly capable of being a first stage for a small orbital vehicle."
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3213/1

"Would be interesting" does not equal seriously considering doing it. This would be the ultimate LEGO rocket as the upper stage would have to provide almost all the delta-v. Possibly interesting for very small payloads, but this would be competing against Electron etc.

While the New Shepard's flight profile doesn't look impressive it carries a very large and heavy capsule on top. They claim a pressurized volume of 530 cubic feet, larger than Dragon 2 or CST-100. If that capsule is replaced with a light-weight solid motor (STAR-48?) the flight profile could look much more like Falcon 9 RTLS.

Offline GWH

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #74 on: 11/11/2017 02:56 pm »



"Would be interesting" does not equal seriously considering doing it. This would be the ultimate LEGO rocket as the upper stage would have to provide almost all the delta-v. Possibly interesting for very small payloads, but this would be competing against Electron etc.

While the New Shepard's flight profile doesn't look impressive it carries a very large and heavy capsule on top. They claim a pressurized volume of 530 cubic feet, larger than Dragon 2 or CST-100. If that capsule is replaced with a light-weight solid motor (STAR-48?) the flight profile could look much more like Falcon 9 RTLS.

This has all been discusses and looked at before, such as this post by Jon Goff: http://selenianboondocks.com/2016/01/random-thoughts-new-shepard-for-pop-up-tsto-nanosat-launch/

Discussing exactly how seriously Blue is considering it is a circular conversation that can't be resolved. Maybe they merely gave it enough consideration to check if the numbers worked, maybe more, maybe Jeff Bezos just made an off the cuff comment. Regardless a statement was made suggesting the possibility.

Online Johnnyhinbos

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #75 on: 11/25/2017 02:40 pm »
Bezos just regained title of world's richest man. Considering that just last Friday his fortune went up by a paltry $2.4 billion, I guess his $1 billion annual burn rate on Blue Origin isn't that concerning for the company's long term plans...

http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/24/technology/jeff-bezos-100-billion/index.html
John Hanzl. Author, action / adventure www.johnhanzl.com

Offline yg1968

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #76 on: 11/25/2017 05:45 pm »
I thought Bezos said they were considering optional US for NS booster so it could service cubesat and smallsat market.
S for smaller payloads.

No, he has never said that. It may have been speculated by forum members, though.

Yes, he did.
Quote from: Jeff Bezos
“I’m thinking it might be interesting to build a small second stage for this New Shepard booster because we could use it to put smallsats into orbit. It would be perfectly capable of being a first stage for a small orbital vehicle."
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3213/1

Incidentally, here is a link to the presser where he said this:

« Last Edit: 11/25/2017 05:46 pm by yg1968 »

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #77 on: 12/05/2017 07:07 pm »
Quote
PARC to Partner with Commercial Space Leader to Accelerate Space R&D
Partnership to Explore Advanced Technologies and Launch Suborbital Space R&D Projects
5 December 2017

Palo Alto, CA: PARC, a Xerox company, today announced its partnership with Blue Origin to enhance awareness and interest in the vast possibilities made possible by conducting R&D in space. The partnership will leverage PARC’s expertise in technology innovation and Blue Origin’s reusable suborbital rocket, New Shepard, to push new frontiers in four areas of technology R&D: advanced manufacturing, energy systems, human-machine interaction, and predictive analytics.
 
“This is an exciting partnership at an exciting time,” said Austin Pugh, Senior Director of Global Business Development at PARC. “We look forward to working with Blue Origin’s world class team of scientists and engineers on gaining new insights from performing R&D in space. When a truly multi-disciplinary team of scientists come together to think about how to tackle big challenges, the possibilities are endless.”
The two will work together in “Accelerating Research in Space” (ARIS) to market joint R&D opportunities to PARC’s global 1000 partners and government agencies. The ultimate goal is to include an advanced technology R&D experiment on one of Blue Origin’s upcoming suborbital flights.
“PARC’s history of innovation makes them a fantastic partner for Blue Origin’s vision of opening the space frontier to new technologies, new science, and new people,” said Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s Business Development Manager. “We look forward to adding space access to PARC’s toolbox of R&D capabilities.”
PARC will establish an ARIS working group to focus on generating new technology concepts that would benefit from performing investigations in spaceflight environments. Together, the multidisciplinary group of scientists will build an understanding of commercial space Payload Lockers and begin scoping potential experiments to bring new understandings about how technologies behave in space, as well as how they may enable future generations of advanced space systems that support PARC’s commercial and government partners.

https://www.parc.com/news-release/146/parc-to-partner-with-commercial-space-leader-to-accelerate-space-rd.html

Offline vaporcobra

Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #78 on: 12/22/2017 07:31 pm »
Hm, Blue was just granted a license for New Shepard Flight 8, NET Dec 25 (Christmas Day!). I have doubts that that NET has any actual meaning, but it would certainly be impressive if they manage to refly NS that quickly.

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/els/reports/GetApplicationInfo.cfm?id_file_num=1769-EX-ST-2017

Online Confusador

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Re: Blue Origin General Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #79 on: 12/23/2017 01:48 am »
Hm, Blue was just granted a license for New Shepard Flight 8, NET Dec 25 (Christmas Day!). I have doubts that that NET has any actual meaning, but it would certainly be impressive if they manage to refly NS that quickly.

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/els/reports/GetApplicationInfo.cfm?id_file_num=1769-EX-ST-2017

Seeing as it has a 6 month duration, I think skepticism that they'll launch next week is warranted.  Still good to see that they're already moving on it.

Tags: Jeff Bezos 
 

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