Author Topic: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight  (Read 73216 times)

Offline kevinof

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #40 on: 04/03/2016 01:53 pm »
Hence the quote "still a ways to go".

....
My guess is they are continuing to qualify the equipment and refine the booster recovery profile.  I have not yet heard whether they have yet lofted a fully capable capsule with a life support system, but all of that will have to be qualified prior to taking crew/passengers....

Offline Oersted

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #41 on: 04/03/2016 08:19 pm »
Excellent. Now we wait for some photos, facts and video!


It's interesting how they are now becoming  much less secretive.

Marketing is becoming important for filling the places on future commercial launches.

A live web streaming of the next launch ?

"Much less secretive"... - Well, only compared to their high secretiveness up till now. Other companies haven't been afraid of sharing both their successes and failures, in time-honoured US fashion, as done by NASA since the 1960's.

Bezos, who is seemingly such a fan of NASA (fishing up Saturn engines etc) should perhaps take a page out of the NASA playbook for future launches.

Offline Navier–Stokes

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #42 on: 04/03/2016 09:54 pm »
Video was just released!

Edit: Got to love that drone shot of the ascent. Looks like they can still push the landing burn farther.

« Last Edit: 04/03/2016 10:28 pm by Chris Bergin »

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #43 on: 04/03/2016 10:00 pm »
You guys are fast! That tweet from Jeff was 30 seconds old when I saw it and it was already posted! ;D

Still wonder if we'll get a "Jeff Blog" overview.
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Offline QuantumG

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #44 on: 04/03/2016 10:13 pm »
"Much less secretive"... - Well, only compared to their high secretiveness up till now. Other companies haven't been afraid of sharing both their successes and failures, in time-honoured US fashion, as done by NASA since the 1960's.

Bezos, who is seemingly such a fan of NASA (fishing up Saturn engines etc) should perhaps take a page out of the NASA playbook for future launches.

... but then they wouldn't be able to choose the views that downplay how phallic that rocket is. Do you notice that we now only get 1 or 2 second shots of the vehicle in profile with the CC attached? All the contagious giggling after the first video must have hit the spot in the marketing department.
Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #45 on: 04/03/2016 11:04 pm »
So a short article, nothing you don't already know - but needed to write to mark the test - for this one:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/04/new-shepard-hat-trick-blue-origin/

Will add more if we get some more details/quotes from Jeff.
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Offline meekGee

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #46 on: 04/03/2016 11:32 pm »
"Much less secretive"... - Well, only compared to their high secretiveness up till now. Other companies haven't been afraid of sharing both their successes and failures, in time-honoured US fashion, as done by NASA since the 1960's.

Bezos, who is seemingly such a fan of NASA (fishing up Saturn engines etc) should perhaps take a page out of the NASA playbook for future launches.

... but then they wouldn't be able to choose the views that downplay how phallic that rocket is. Do you notice that we now only get 1 or 2 second shots of the vehicle in profile with the CC attached? All the contagious giggling after the first video must have hit the spot in the marketing department.

One thing all suborbital flight vehicles do is emphasize how much they are "in space".

For example - the sound of beeping satellites - very 60's.  - well, it's part of the music track, so plausible deniability....

But also the curvature of the earth.  Was that the actual curvature of the horizon, or was that a very wide lens doing its thing?   

The picture below implies the camera is seeing a 30 degree slice of earth, right?  Can you do that from 100 km?

The landing makes clear how much margin they have...  They stop on a dime, and then just sit there and hover.

« Last Edit: 04/03/2016 11:40 pm by meekGee »
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Offline cmcqueen

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #47 on: 04/03/2016 11:43 pm »
The NSF article said the crew capsule landed before the booster. I'm wondering what flight profile allows the crew capsule to come down, with parachutes, before the booster returns at such high speed. I would have thought the booster would naturally come down before the crew capsule.

Offline leaflion

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #48 on: 04/03/2016 11:50 pm »
If you look at that same cam on takeoff you can see that it is fairly distorted.  However, what a wide-angle is doing is taking what you would see with your eyes, a relatively wide view, and squishing it together.  So you can see the curvature from that altitude, and that is maybe roughly all of the curvature you can see with your eyes, but crammed into a youtube-sized screen.

For reference, google found me this view from 100km at Mojave.  But you can see wider angle than this.


edit: changed fisheye to wide angle
« Last Edit: 04/03/2016 11:52 pm by leaflion »

Offline leaflion

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #49 on: 04/03/2016 11:55 pm »
The NSF article said the crew capsule landed before the booster. I'm wondering what flight profile allows the crew capsule to come down, with parachutes, before the booster returns at such high speed. I would have thought the booster would naturally come down before the crew capsule.

I agree, that must be wrong.  If you look at Jeff's livetweets, he says that the booster landed and the CC chutes deployed in one tweet, than later said CC touched down in another tweet 2 minutes later.

Offline Machdiamond

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #50 on: 04/04/2016 12:53 am »
At that altitude the curvature is still 99% due to the wide angle lens, as long as the frame center points below the horizon.
SpaceShipOne apogee videos are famous for that, when the spacecraft tumbles around, the earth curvature actually reverses.

Offline Damon Hill

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #51 on: 04/04/2016 01:39 am »
Bit of a pucker factor on that abrupt braking to a dead stop and hover; they probably could cut it even closer.  The relight while cramming air into the nozzle must be interesting.

Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #52 on: 04/04/2016 01:43 am »
Video was just released!

Edit: Got to love that drone shot of the ascent. Looks like they can still push the landing burn farther.



Geeze...that approach starting at 1:07 would cause some serious pucker-power if there were anyone on board!

Congrats on the good landing though!

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #53 on: 04/04/2016 02:07 am »

Geeze...that approach starting at 1:07 would cause some serious pucker-power if there were anyone on board!

Congrats on the good landing though!

There wouldn't be - future passengers are in the capsule coming down under a parachute.
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 03:02 am by Dalhousie »
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #54 on: 04/04/2016 02:48 am »
I wonder what is done, if anything, to ensure that the capsule and booster won't come into contact at any point between separation and landing?

Looking at the video and using Google earth to measure distance...

The booster landed 2 mi (3.25 km) from the launch pad, on the concrete landing pad.

The capsule landed about 1.7 mi (2.7 km) from the launch pad and 2,000 ft (600 m) from the center of the booster's concrete landing pad.

Looking at the landing video and at Google earth, there is a group of bushes that form a triangle (see landing video in posts above, at 59 seconds into the video). The capsule landed about 50 feet west of those bushes (to the left of the capsule in the video). Google earth gives these coordinates for the landing spot: 31°26'52.9"N 104°45'28.7"W.

Here is a link to the Google earth view of the Blue origin launch and landing site.

https://goo.gl/maps/hnd42wUefUD2

The light circle near the top center of the Google earth image is the booster landing pad.

Just below the landing circle, is a smaller, slightly flattened circle, connected by a road. The capsule landed just to the right (east) of that circle. (About 3 of the smaller circle widths to the right, judging from the landing video. The capsule landing video is looking south, back toward the launch pad in the distance). I wonder if this smaller circle (south of the booster landing site) is the aim point for capsule landings?

At the bottom of the image, connected by the same road, is a circular area where the launch pad is located.
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 10:09 am by Antilope7724 »

Offline meekGee

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #55 on: 04/04/2016 02:50 am »
At that altitude the curvature is still 99% due to the wide angle lens, as long as the frame center points below the horizon.
SpaceShipOne apogee videos are famous for that, when the spacecraft tumbles around, the earth curvature actually reverses.

I worked out the horizon distance at 1000 km, so that you're basically looking at the edge of a 2000 km diameter disk, from ~200 km height.

So if you stare straight at mid-horizon, and level, clearly that perimeter will be projected as an arc, but I haven't figured out just how far below a straight line it would be.  (Assuming a FoV of 60 degrees)

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Offline Lee Jay

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #56 on: 04/04/2016 03:04 am »

Geeze...that approach starting at 1:07 would cause some serious pucker-power if there were anyone on board!

Congrats on the good landing though!

There wouldn't be - future passengers are in the capsule coming down under a parachute.

Yes, I know, I was just saying if anyone was, just before the engine fired they'd be seeing the ground come up at quite a frightening pace.

Offline savuporo

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #57 on: 04/04/2016 03:06 am »
I wonder what is done, if anything, to ensure that the capsule and booster won't come into contact at any point between separation and landing?
Pretty sure physics are in charge of that coordination, a tag team of gravity and drag.
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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #58 on: 04/04/2016 09:46 am »
The video has the altitude as 339,178 feet, which according to my calculations is 103.4 km (103,381 m to be more precise), although the video gives the conversion as 103.8 km (340,551 feet). The video callout is 339,000 feet, so this indicates the mistake is in Blue's metric conversion or perhaps simply a typo.
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 10:09 am by Steven Pietrobon »
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Offline JamesH65

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Re: Blue Origin Fourth Developmental Flight
« Reply #59 on: 04/04/2016 10:56 am »
I make that deceleration about 15ms^2 (approx 1.5g).

Looks more than that....but that would be the average, so perhaps double that once the engine ramps up.

180m/s speed at burn start, height 1066m (assuming about 3500ft from burn start to hover)

s = 1/2(u+v)t  gives t = 11.84s

v = u+at gives a = 15.2ms^2

« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 10:58 am by JamesH65 »

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