Quote from: zaitcev on 12/22/2009 12:00 amInterestingly, the auxiliary pad (west-south-west of the technical facilities) that I thought was older does not even exist at Terraserver photo, so it is in fact very new.I'm not sure if the structure you describe as the "auxilary pad" is even a launch pad at all: there's no mention of a launch pad in that area in the Environmental Assesment of the launch site and it's a lot closer to the other buildings and the launch site perimeter than the launch and landing pad.
Interestingly, the auxiliary pad (west-south-west of the technical facilities) that I thought was older does not even exist at Terraserver photo, so it is in fact very new.
Blue Origin has build their planned landing pad (in addition to their launch/testing pad) some time in 2008: see this link for a satellite photo: http://www.terraserver.com/view.asp?cx=522734&cy=3479319&proj=32613&mpp=5&pic=img&prov=gx19&stac=1056&ovrl=-1&drwl=-1.
According to this thread, Blue Origin is one of the recipients of funding (initially $3.7 million) to "further the commercial sector's capability to support transport of crew to and from low Earth orbit." Any thoughts on what this might entail? I'd been under the impression that Blue Origin was focusing on suborbital for now, with orbital quite a ways off.
Quote from: neilh on 02/01/2010 10:42 pmAccording to this thread, Blue Origin is one of the recipients of funding (initially $3.7 million) to "further the commercial sector's capability to support transport of crew to and from low Earth orbit." Any thoughts on what this might entail? I'd been under the impression that Blue Origin was focusing on suborbital for now, with orbital quite a ways off.From the NASA selection statement:"Blue Origin proposes to mature a pusher escape system that will provide information on pusher concepts, which is a different concept that the pull escape system used in crew transportation systems to date."The source means "tractor" instead of "pull" but wasn't aware of the correct terminology, apparently.
Reminds me of MLAS:
From the CCDev Source Selection PDF, one of the reasons that Blue Origin was chosen is because it's proposals is "well aligned with the needs of ISS and other commercial customers." This makes me wonder if they're planning on developing their pusher escape system in a way that would be adaptable to the capsules being built by other companies, perhaps even as an alternative to SpaceX developing their own launch escape system for the Dragon capsule.
From the on-going FAA/AST conference, it is reported by Hobbyspace:"[Alan] Lindenmoyer, NASA: Blue Origin CCDev funding for concept for bi-conic crew vehicle that could be launched on Atlas 5 402."See: http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=18585
t/Space CXV reborn? If so it could kill two birds with one grant...or LockMart's CTV concept when they started pushing a human rated Atlas V....
Quote from: docmordrid on 02/11/2010 09:44 pmt/Space CXV reborn? If so it could kill two birds with one grant...or LockMart's CTV concept when they started pushing a human rated Atlas V....My CXV design derives from the Discoverer platform, but isn't a bicone RV as BO's is reported to be. CXV's principal advantage is if there is a control systems failure on re-entry it will default to a completely stable "carefree re-entry" albeit ballistic, without pilot input.
Quote from: HMXHMX on 02/11/2010 10:29 pmQuote from: docmordrid on 02/11/2010 09:44 pmt/Space CXV reborn? If so it could kill two birds with one grant...or LockMart's CTV concept when they started pushing a human rated Atlas V....My CXV design derives from the Discoverer platform, but isn't a bicone RV as BO's is reported to be. CXV's principal advantage is if there is a control systems failure on re-entry it will default to a completely stable "carefree re-entry" albeit ballistic, without pilot input.What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of going with a biconic capsule?(ADDENDUM) Most info I've found so far is in this post from 2006 by simcosmos: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=709.msg19120#msg19120
Quote from: neilh on 02/02/2010 10:26 pmFrom the CCDev Source Selection PDF, one of the reasons that Blue Origin was chosen is because it's proposals is "well aligned with the needs of ISS and other commercial customers." This makes me wonder if they're planning on developing their pusher escape system in a way that would be adaptable to the capsules being built by other companies, perhaps even as an alternative to SpaceX developing their own launch escape system for the Dragon capsule. That would be only reason they were chosen. From an outside point of view