Author Topic: Business Case For New Glenn  (Read 54877 times)

Offline Patchouli

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #60 on: 02/15/2018 06:48 pm »
Much of the software and other details for landing New Glenn have been worked out on Blue's earlier vehicles so I expect that part of it's development to go more smoothly than it did for Falcon 9.
« Last Edit: 02/15/2018 06:54 pm by Patchouli »

Offline Toast

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #61 on: 02/15/2018 07:02 pm »
Much of the software and other details for landing New Glenn have been worked out on Blue's earlier vehicles so I expect that part of it's development to go more smoothly than it did for Falcon 9.

I still don't buy it. There's not a lot of commonality between the landing scenarios--Shepard was on land, with negligible horizontal velocity, with a deep-throttling engine that could literally hover the rocket, at sub-hypersonic speeds, and on a stationary pad. Glenn will be at sea, on a moving ship, will have lots of horizontal velocity, entering at hypersonic speeds, and with a new engine that can't throttle as deeply.

Again, I think Blue Origin can and will solve these issues. But not going to walk in with a mature design and nail everything on their first go.

Offline Chasm

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #62 on: 02/15/2018 07:39 pm »
Landing the first attempt? Maybe, maybe not. I definitely think that they'll try to.
At the end of the day it does not matter if they stick the landing. As long as Blue charges customers enough to set of a chunk of another stage they can afford to do so almost indefinitely.

Previously there were some opinions that NG would not be able to deliver a payload to orbit on the first attempt. Or the second. That seems to be a bit too pessimistic.

My guess is that they'll set out to build a small number of stages to the initial design and then start ground testing and launching as hardware becomes available. If they have to mod hardware after the first launch so be it. Learning how to produce stages effectively is valuable in itself. (Say 4. 2 not necessarily complete units for testing and 2 for launching.)

Offline Joseph Peterson

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #63 on: 02/15/2018 08:05 pm »
Falcon 9 has already failed several more times than Atlas V has.

Hmmm.... "several more times" seems to be a bit vague and a bit of a stretch.  At the risk of going down the debate "failure" vs. "partial failure" vs. "partial success" vs. whatever...

Seems we are into fractional definitions of "failure".  Again, where does the assertion-requirement that "250 more perfect launches in a row" come from?  On its face that is absurd given that there have been only ~75 Atlas V has launches.
Atlas V had one failure in 75 flight attempts:
Falcon 9 had 3 failures in 49 flight attempts:

1 in 75 = 3 in 225

225 - 49 = 176

176 missions that falcon 9 needs to pull off in a row perfectly to match Atlas V's current record.
Only one in-flight Falcon 9 failure. If you're going to count an under-performance as a failure, then you need to count the first Atlas-Cygnus launch, too. That only worked because Cygnus was a particularly lightweight payload.

Additionally, Atlas as a launch family has a long tradition which includes plenty of failure. If you're going to say Atlas V has a perfect track record, then Falcon 9 should get to reset the clock with Block 5....


...IMHO, you should just could consecutive launches without failure.
The Cygnus mission was not a failure. No part of the mission was affected.

Why do you ignore Amos-6? That's just being dishonest.

If you need to be dishonest in order to be a fan of SpaceX, then maybe you need to reevaluate your morals.

I'd like to understand the justification for including Amos-6 as a flight failure.  Do static test fires that discover problems but don't lead to LOV count as partial flight failures too?  Is there a proper topic that discusses what counts as part of a launch and what is pre-launch preparation?

On topic:

I don't see the payloads to justify a business case for NG in 2018.  AFAIK Bezos hasn't set a price.  IF the availability of SHLVs leads payload makers to make payloads for SHLVs, and NG has a competitive price, there will be a business case.  The Magic 8-ball says ask again later.

Edits: Fixed quote.
« Last Edit: 02/15/2018 08:07 pm by Joseph Peterson »

Offline envy887

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #64 on: 02/15/2018 11:04 pm »
Falcon 9 has already failed several more times than Atlas V has.

Hmmm.... "several more times" seems to be a bit vague and a bit of a stretch.  At the risk of going down the debate "failure" vs. "partial failure" vs. "partial success" vs. whatever...

Seems we are into fractional definitions of "failure".  Again, where does the assertion-requirement that "250 more perfect launches in a row" come from?  On its face that is absurd given that there have been only ~75 Atlas V has launches.
Atlas V had one failure in 75 flight attempts:
Falcon 9 had 3 failures in 49 flight attempts:

1 in 75 = 3 in 225

225 - 49 = 176

176 missions that falcon 9 needs to pull off in a row perfectly to match Atlas V's current record.
Only one in-flight Falcon 9 failure. If you're going to count an under-performance as a failure, then you need to count the first Atlas-Cygnus launch, too. That only worked because Cygnus was a particularly lightweight payload.

Additionally, Atlas as a launch family has a long tradition which includes plenty of failure. If you're going to say Atlas V has a perfect track record, then Falcon 9 should get to reset the clock with Block 5....


...IMHO, you should just could consecutive launches without failure.
The Cygnus mission was not a failure. No part of the mission was affected.

Why do you ignore Amos-6? That's just being dishonest.

If you need to be dishonest in order to be a fan of SpaceX, then maybe you need to reevaluate your morals.

I'd like to understand the justification for including Amos-6 as a flight failure.  Do static test fires that discover problems but don't lead to LOV count as partial flight failures too?  Is there a proper topic that discusses what counts as part of a launch and what is pre-launch preparation?

On topic:

I don't see the payloads to justify a business case for NG in 2018.  AFAIK Bezos hasn't set a price.  IF the availability of SHLVs leads payload makers to make payloads for SHLVs, and NG has a competitive price, there will be a business case.  The Magic 8-ball says ask again later.

Edits: Fixed quote.

He's sold some launches, so obviously he's set a price and it's at least reasonably competitive.

New Glenn isn't a SHLV by any definition. It has about the same payload to GTO as Ariane 5. It will have to compete in that market at those prices.

Offline envy887

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #65 on: 02/15/2018 11:08 pm »
Much of the software and other details for landing New Glenn have been worked out on Blue's earlier vehicles so I expect that part of it's development to go more smoothly than it did for Falcon 9.

I still don't buy it. There's not a lot of commonality between the landing scenarios--Shepard was on land, with negligible horizontal velocity, with a deep-throttling engine that could literally hover the rocket, at sub-hypersonic speeds, and on a stationary pad. Glenn will be at sea, on a moving ship, will have lots of horizontal velocity, entering at hypersonic speeds, and with a new engine that can't throttle as deeply.

Again, I think Blue Origin can and will solve these issues. But not going to walk in with a mature design and nail everything on their first go.

What makes you think that New Glenn cannot hover?

I think Blue is building in lots of margin and isn't going to try to push the envelope nearly as fast SpaceX does. If the first NEw Glenn booster gets through reentry I think they have a 95% chance of landing it just fine. But getting to staging, getting the upper stage to orbit, and getting the booster back through entry are not going to be easy.

Offline AncientU

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #66 on: 02/15/2018 11:27 pm »
Much of the software and other details for landing New Glenn have been worked out on Blue's earlier vehicles so I expect that part of it's development to go more smoothly than it did for Falcon 9.

I still don't buy it. There's not a lot of commonality between the landing scenarios--Shepard was on land, with negligible horizontal velocity, with a deep-throttling engine that could literally hover the rocket, at sub-hypersonic speeds, and on a stationary pad. Glenn will be at sea, on a moving ship, will have lots of horizontal velocity, entering at hypersonic speeds, and with a new engine that can't throttle as deeply.

Again, I think Blue Origin can and will solve these issues. But not going to walk in with a mature design and nail everything on their first go.

What makes you think that New Glenn cannot hover?

I think Blue is building in lots of margin and isn't going to try to push the envelope nearly as fast SpaceX does. If the first NEw Glenn booster gets through reentry I think they have a 95% chance of landing it just fine. But getting to staging, getting the upper stage to orbit, and getting the booster back through entry are not going to be easy.

I'd put that at much below 50/50 -- 95% is (kinda) absurd.  In fact, if they attempt an on board landing for first orbital launch I'd be amazed... unless they've done a handful of successful sub-orbital landing attempts first.
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Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #67 on: 02/16/2018 01:42 am »
Falcon 9 has already failed several more times than Atlas V has.

Hmmm.... "several more times" seems to be a bit vague and a bit of a stretch.  At the risk of going down the debate "failure" vs. "partial failure" vs. "partial success" vs. whatever...

Seems we are into fractional definitions of "failure".  Again, where does the assertion-requirement that "250 more perfect launches in a row" come from?  On its face that is absurd given that there have been only ~75 Atlas V has launches.
Atlas V had one failure in 75 flight attempts:
Falcon 9 had 3 failures in 49 flight attempts:

1 in 75 = 3 in 225

225 - 49 = 176

176 missions that falcon 9 needs to pull off in a row perfectly to match Atlas V's current record.
Only one in-flight Falcon 9 failure. If you're going to count an under-performance as a failure, then you need to count the first Atlas-Cygnus launch, too. That only worked because Cygnus was a particularly lightweight payload.

Additionally, Atlas as a launch family has a long tradition which includes plenty of failure. If you're going to say Atlas V has a perfect track record, then Falcon 9 should get to reset the clock with Block 5....


...IMHO, you should just could consecutive launches without failure.
The Cygnus mission was not a failure. No part of the mission was affected.

Why do you ignore Amos-6? That's just being dishonest.

If you need to be dishonest in order to be a fan of SpaceX, then maybe you need to reevaluate your morals.

I'd like to understand the justification for including Amos-6 as a flight failure.  Do static test fires that discover problems but don't lead to LOV count as partial flight failures too?  Is there a proper topic that discusses what counts as part of a launch and what is pre-launch preparation?

On topic:

I don't see the payloads to justify a business case for NG in 2018.  AFAIK Bezos hasn't set a price.  IF the availability of SHLVs leads payload makers to make payloads for SHLVs, and NG has a competitive price, there will be a business case.  The Magic 8-ball says ask again later.

Edits: Fixed quote.

He's sold some launches, so obviously he's set a price and it's at least reasonably competitive.

New Glenn isn't a SHLV by any definition. It has about the same payload to GTO as Ariane 5. It will have to compete in that market at those prices.
Landing the first attempt? Maybe, maybe not. I definitely think that they'll try to.
At the end of the day it does not matter if they stick the landing. As long as Blue charges customers enough to set of a chunk of another stage they can afford to do so almost indefinitely.

Previously there were some opinions that NG would not be able to deliver a payload to orbit on the first attempt. Or the second. That seems to be a bit too pessimistic.

My guess is that they'll set out to build a small number of stages to the initial design and then start ground testing and launching as hardware becomes available. If they have to mod hardware after the first launch so be it. Learning how to produce stages effectively is valuable in itself. (Say 4. 2 not necessarily complete units for testing and 2 for launching.)
A modified NS booster that can reproduce most flight profile, especially ship landing would be good place to start. NS is lot cheaper to crash and less likely to sink landing ship when landing goes wrong.

Offline Toast

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #68 on: 02/16/2018 01:45 am »
What makes you think that New Glenn cannot hover?

It's just a guess, but a reasonable one. We know Blue Origin is focusing on deep throttle capability for BE-4, but getting thrust low enough to hover an almost empty rocket stage is pretty difficult. Look at Falcon 9: It can get down to ~11% thrust just by shutting down 8 of it's nine engines, then down to ~55% of that by throttling the engine itself, for a total of ~6% of peak thrust. And even that isn't enough to drop the TWR below 1. Now look at New Glenn: It only has 7 engines, so shutting off all but one only gets them down to 14%. We don't know a lot about New Glenn yet, but because it's larger than Falcon 9 it's reasonable to expect it's inert mass fraction will be equal to or lower than Falcon 9's, so it'll have to be able to throttle to something a ways below 40% to be able to hover. That's pretty dang difficult in an atmospheric engine on that scale. Maybe not impossible, but I'd bet Blue Origin isn't going to waste engineering time trying to get the throttle that low when burning the engines at a hover would be wastefully inefficient anyways. New Shepard got away with it because it had huge performance margins thanks to an undemanding flight trajectory and light payload. New Glenn won't have those luxuries.

I think Blue is building in lots of margin and isn't going to try to push the envelope nearly as fast SpaceX does. If the first NEw Glenn booster gets through reentry I think they have a 95% chance of landing it just fine. But getting to staging, getting the upper stage to orbit, and getting the booster back through entry are not going to be easy.

I'd say that's pretty heavily optimistic. AncientU's 50/50 seems a lot more reasonable.

I guess what really irks me is that people are acting like New Glenn will be a cakewalk because it was "designed to be reusable". But plenty of rockets were designed to be reusable. Virtually all of them failed anyways. What really set SpaceX apart wasn't the intent to reuse the rocket, it was their aggressive use of rapid iteration on design. No matter how slow Blue Origin takes things, no matter how much they plan in advance, New Glenn will still have unforeseen problems when it debuts. For them to catch up to SpaceX's reuse will require them to make rapid iteration a core competency as well.

Offline su27k

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #69 on: 02/16/2018 01:53 am »
I guess what really irks me is that people are acting like New Glenn will be a cakewalk because it was "designed to be reusable". But plenty of rockets were designed to be reusable. Virtually all of them failed anyways. What really set SpaceX apart wasn't the intent to reuse the rocket, it was their aggressive use of rapid iteration on design. No matter how slow Blue Origin takes things, no matter how much they plan in advance, New Glenn will still have unforeseen problems when it debuts. For them to catch up to SpaceX's reuse will require them to make rapid iteration a core competency as well.

I believe Blue is using a different process, they're more traditional where they front load a lot of analysis and try to get it right the first time, "measure twice and cut once" as they say. How well this will work out for reusability remains to be seen, they did ok with New Shepard, but the year long delay between 2nd and 3rd vehicle seem to show they had to do some iteration on design at least.

Offline Toast

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #70 on: 02/16/2018 02:17 am »
I agree that's their intention, but no amount of analysis is ever enough to catch every eventuality, especially when you're pushing to do things few people have done before. New Glenn will still run into unexpected issues. And I stand by what I said--Blue Origin will have to make rapid iteration a part of their business. Even if they run into relatively few hiccups with New Glenn, SpaceX isn't standing still. They're constantly finding newer, cheaper, and better ways to do things. If Blue Origin doesn't do the same, they'll never keep pace.

Online Galactic Penguin SST

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #71 on: 02/16/2018 02:42 am »
IMHO the large size for New Glenn will mean that it is ill suited for the common satellites of today - F9 really hits the sweetspot for those missions and I think the large size of NG will make it difficult for BO to cut the price down to levels below $70M.

I also sincerely doubt that BO can fly it as announced by 2020, as their operation experience is so far very sparse. IMHO first flight in 2023 +- 1 year is more realistic.

Given that however, I think there are 3 areas where NG will excel at:

1. Large scale deployment of LEO/MEO comsat constellations (see e.g. the OneWeb contract)
2. Carrying people around LEO with their own spacecraft (this assumes however that they have developed the spacecraft first)
3. Carrying cargo/fuel (and later people) to cis-lunar space (e.g. in the context of a COTS-like program for cargo delivery to an EM-L2 outpost as proposed by NASA).

These missions might not be present if they launch by 2020-21, but the few missions they have already signed might be enough to keep it running in the interim (and I sincerely doubt that they can hit that time mark anyway, given the pace they are handling New Shepard). By the mid-2020s the market might be more favorable for those missions I listed above.

Another interesting thing to speculate is how will the BO-ULA partnership turns out, especially given that NG is planned to be certified for NASA and US military payloads. My own speculation is that BO isn't usually interested in such missions that requires lots of reviews to the launcher and will nominally leave those to ULA/Vulcan, but the two will agree to use NG as a secondary launcher a la Delta IV today in case of a crowded manifest. ULA-BO will agree (at least initially) to minimize competition of launches contracts in each others' areas and co-operate in areas such as bread-and-butter US government missions (as mentioned here) and maybe even partner on lunar fuel depots, should the demand for it arises later on.

I may be completely wrong, but this is what I think the business case for New Glenn will turn out by 2030.
Astronomy & spaceflight geek penguin. In a relationship w/ Space Shuttle Discovery. Current Priority: Chasing the Chinese Spaceflight Wonder Egg & A Certain Chinese Mars Rover

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #72 on: 02/16/2018 02:58 am »
IMHO the large size for New Glenn will mean that it is ill suited for the common satellites of today - F9 really hits the sweetspot for those missions and I think the large size of NG will make it difficult for BO to cut the price down to levels below $70M.

I also sincerely doubt that BO can fly it as announced by 2020, as their operation experience is so far very sparse. IMHO first flight in 2023 +- 1 year is more realistic.

Given that however, I think there are 3 areas where NG will excel at:

1. Large scale deployment of LEO/MEO comsat constellations (see e.g. the OneWeb contract)
2. Carrying people around LEO with their own spacecraft (this assumes however that they have developed the spacecraft first)
3. Carrying cargo/fuel (and later people) to cis-lunar space (e.g. in the context of a COTS-like program for cargo delivery to an EM-L2 outpost as proposed by NASA).

These missions might not be present if they launch by 2020-21, but the few missions they have already signed might be enough to keep it running in the interim (and I sincerely doubt that they can hit that time mark anyway, given the pace they are handling New Shepard). By the mid-2020s the market might be more favorable for those missions I listed above.

Another interesting thing to speculate is how will the BO-ULA partnership turns out, especially given that NG is planned to be certified for NASA and US military payloads. My own speculation is that BO isn't usually interested in such missions that requires lots of reviews to the launcher and will nominally leave those to ULA/Vulcan, but the two will agree to use NG as a secondary launcher a la Delta IV today in case of a crowded manifest. ULA-BO will agree (at least initially) to minimize competition of launches contracts in each others' areas and co-operate in areas such as bread-and-butter US government missions (as mentioned here) and maybe even partner on lunar fuel depots, should the demand for it arises later on.

I may be completely wrong, but this is what I think the business case for New Glenn will turn out by 2030.
NG makes ideal fuel tanker for ULA distributed launch.

Offline MaxTeranous

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #73 on: 02/16/2018 08:23 am »

I'd like to understand the justification for including Amos-6 as a flight failure.  Do static test fires that discover problems but don't lead to LOV count as partial flight failures too?  Is there a proper topic that discusses what counts as part of a launch and what is pre-launch preparation?

IMO, the loss of the payload means it counts as a failure. By the obvious metric that the payload is in lots of little pieces due to SpaceX's actions rather than orbiting the earth.

But using a simplistic measure of percentage of flights as reliability for a launcher is wrong anyways. You'd not consider a LV that's flown successfully once to be more reliable than one that's flown 1000 times, with 1 failure 950 flights ago.

Offline hkultala

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #74 on: 02/16/2018 08:29 am »
NG versus FH, payload vs. reuse

So, they have about equal payload, and probably also mfg cost in expendable mode.

But, with partial reuse, the situation changed considerable due to the different stage sizes and reuse options:

1) FH reuse only boosters. Slight performance penalty, some >30% cost savings.
2) NG reuse 1st stage. Slightly higher performance penalty, more cost savings.
3) FH reuse all 1st stage cores. Highest performance penalty, most cost savings.

So it they payload is too big to be launched with FH center core recovery, but small enough to be launched with NG with 1st  stage reuse, NG should be cheaper to use than FH.





Offline DJPledger

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #75 on: 02/16/2018 09:24 am »
By 2030 NG may be replaced by NA unless BO decides to keep NG and operate NG and NA concurrently. Any business case for NG may only last a few years until NA IOC if BO decides to ditch NG in favor of NA. BO can afford to dev. NA without even a single revenue paying launch of any of their vehicles so there may be no business case for NG at all and NG will merely be a stepping stone to NA which will realize BO's long term ambitions. NG becoming effectively a technology test bed for NA. Current launch manifest for NG is just a bonus for BO. NA will likely become BO's workhorse heavy lifter like SpaceX's BFR plans to be.

Offline AncientU

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #76 on: 02/16/2018 10:38 am »
I guess what really irks me is that people are acting like New Glenn will be a cakewalk because it was "designed to be reusable". But plenty of rockets were designed to be reusable. Virtually all of them failed anyways. What really set SpaceX apart wasn't the intent to reuse the rocket, it was their aggressive use of rapid iteration on design. No matter how slow Blue Origin takes things, no matter how much they plan in advance, New Glenn will still have unforeseen problems when it debuts. For them to catch up to SpaceX's reuse will require them to make rapid iteration a core competency as well.

I believe Blue is using a different process, they're more traditional where they front load a lot of analysis and try to get it right the first time, "measure twice and cut once" as they say. How well this will work out for reusability remains to be seen, they did ok with New Shepard, but the year long delay between 2nd and 3rd vehicle seem to show they had to do some iteration on design at least.

Bingo.  Maybe fewer iterations, but significant delays between them.  Fairly easy to run up years of iterations in this mode -- a decade even. They'll be over two decades between company start and first orbital launch -- factor of a few slower than the competition.  Does that put NA out beyond 2030?  Does Bezos have the staying power (not the cash) to weather several year-long iterations to get NG flying reliably?  Not at all crazy to think they'll need several attempts to perfect the entire flight cycle (launch, land, relaunch).  Several slow iterations would take Blue out to mid 2020s before going commercial...  OR, they might nail it first try.  (Sounds like poll material.)
« Last Edit: 02/16/2018 10:39 am by AncientU »
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Offline Chasm

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #77 on: 02/16/2018 05:01 pm »
What is the internal business case for NG at Blue Origin? I suspect it is something like this:
Learning how to design, build and operate a (partially) reusable orbital launch vehicle. Deliver customer payloads as contracted.

It has been said before: Blue needs to evolve beyond suborbital launches. They were able to attract staff from ULA, SpaceX and other companies with orbital rockets. On the flip side it seems unlikely that all those experienced people signed up to do paper designs for another 10-20 years, they want to see progress.

Blue is not starting from zero, they should be able to make NG work from day one. Of course things will go wrong, but there is no requirement to blow up your first attempts.

Offline Darkseraph

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Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #78 on: 02/16/2018 07:50 pm »
Speculating here, but it is possible Amazon/Blue Origin gets into the internet constellation business creating a rival to Starlink and OneWeb. Not only would it generate revenue, but it would lower the cost of launch for other usersby giving New Glenn a lot payloads to put into orbit and replenish.

This would sync well with Bezos other line of business, Amazon Web Services which provide a huge amount of infrastructure for the internet via Cloud Data Centers. AWS started out as a way to sell excess capacity Amazon had in creating an IT system for its primary business of online retail. Bezos and Amazon certainly have more free resources to do something like this than Musk. Competing with their own customers and quasi-monopolist practices is not beyond them.

Although so far there is zero indication that Blue or AWS are planning anything like this, I wouldn't be surprised.
« Last Edit: 02/16/2018 07:51 pm by Darkseraph »
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." R.P.Feynman

Offline Toast

Re: Business Case For New Glenn
« Reply #79 on: 02/16/2018 08:22 pm »
Blue is not starting from zero, they should be able to make NG work from day one. Of course things will go wrong, but there is no requirement to blow up your first attempts.

Sure they're not starting from zero, but let's not overstate how far along they are either. They've done six suborbital launches. And even well-established and respected launch providers have failed their first attempts with new rockets.

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