New Armstrong Speculation and Discussion - Thread 2

[Chris Bergin]

Thread 2.

Thread 1:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41160.0

Please post useful comments and be civil to each other - and be on topic.

[meekGee]

I'm going to use the opportunity to speculate: NA will be very similar to SS but a bit larger.

[jstrotha0975]

I'm going to use the opportunity to speculate: NA will be very similar to SS but a bit larger.

And made of different materials.

[envy887]

I'm going to use the opportunity to speculate: NA will be very similar to SS but a bit larger.

IMO it will share some features of Starship:
2-stage to LEO
support refueling in orbit
methalox booster
booster primarily RTLS
both stages VTVL

But will differ from Starship with:
fewer larger engines on each stage
different fuels and engines between stages (LH2 upper)
use of horizontal integration of the stages

[GWH]

I will speculate that whatever New Armstrong was planned to be has already changed.

[spacenut]

If/when they get experience with New Glenn, I think it will be a larger version of New Glenn, except return to launch site because of it's size. 

It will probably be larger than SH/SS in a 12-14m range.  They could use multiple BE-4 engines without having to develop a larger engine. 

They may develop a BE-4U for an upper stage for a LEO super heavy lifter. 

For deep space probes they have BE-3U.  Now they may try to use multiple BE-3U's with some BE-3's on a second stage with the standard BE-3's used to land the upper stage.  Take the BE-3's off and strip off the heat shielding and you have a large deep space upper stage. 

All speculation.  If SS/SH gets going as Musk hopes.  I think they may develop New Armstrong quicker to compete.  However they are taking their sweet time to get New Glenn operational, as F9 has been around for 10 years already. 

[rakaydos]

Bezos and Musk have different visions for the future, different directions they want to take their respective companies.

Starship is designed for mars. There are certain efficiencies made possible by having an atmosphere on both ends of the trip, that starship is designed to take advantage of.

New Armstrong will be designed for the Moon and for asteroid resources. Bezos sees the goal as "people living and working in space", and the moon and asteroids are the easiest sources of bulk materials for the kinds of habitats popularized by the L5 society, of which Bezos is a member.

If New Glen can handle a reasonably priced reusable upper stage tanker, New Armstrong might not even be designed to land back on earth at all, instead focusing on landing  heavy equipment and lifting bulk resources from the moon

[Coastal Ron]

Bezos and Musk have different visions for the future, different directions they want to take their respective companies.

I think this is an important point, meaning we shouldn't being thinking that Blue Origin will exactly follow in the footsteps of SpaceX. In fact New Shepard and New Glenn are not copies of what SpaceX has been doing, they have their own path they are taking.

Starship is designed for mars. There are certain efficiencies made possible by having an atmosphere on both ends of the trip, that starship is designed to take advantage of.

Again, another important point! SpaceX has a specific use case that the Starship addresses, and that starts with Mars. Jeff Bezos has other plans.

New Armstrong will be designed for the Moon and for asteroid resources. Bezos sees the goal as "people living and working in space", and the moon and asteroids are the easiest sources of bulk materials for the kinds of habitats popularized by the L5 society, of which Bezos is a member.

If New Glen can handle a reasonably priced reusable upper stage tanker, New Armstrong might not even be designed to land back on earth at all, instead focusing on landing  heavy equipment and lifting bulk resources from the moon

At this point we can only guess, and my guess is that Blue Origin has its hands full with New Glenn, and they are keeping a close eye on Starship to see how easy or hard that will be to make operational. Then, based on what the use case is once both of those launch systems are operational, that is when I think Jeff Bezos will start defining what New Armstrong should be.

And if Bezos wants to support living and working in space, then he should focus on a bulk transporter, since lowering the cost to move "stuff" to space is the limitation to expanding humanity out into space. Musk is shooting for $10/kg for a fully loaded Starship, so if Bezos can meet or beat that number, and offer a large payload capacity, that to me would be a worthy system to build.

[Steve G]

What was the last update Blue Origin gave for New Armstrong? Is it possible they have quietly given up on it?

[Pipcard]

What was the last update Blue Origin gave for New Armstrong? Is it possible they have quietly given up on it?

When they first announced New Glenn in 2016, and only as a brief mention. They probably still have to launch that first before making an announcement on its successor.

[Steve G]

I grew up during the space race, and I don't think the Soviets were as secretive as Blue Origin is. We'll see about New Armstrong, but there's a lot of speculation based on a single mention.

[rakaydos]

I grew up during the space race, and I don't think the Soviets were as secretive as Blue Origin is. We'll see about New Armstrong, but there's a lot of speculation based on a single mention.

The soviets were getting things DONE during the space race. Blue is in an awkward place where their first rocket is ready but not flying due to the pandemic, so there's nothing to announce there, and their next rocket is under development behind closed doors, with nothing ready to be announced.

As for the scarcity of information on New Armstrong, compare it to "18m Starship" which is also the only thing we know about that vehical, but I've seen speculative renders comparing a fatter starship with starship, the shuttle, Orion, and even the ISS.

[Seamurda]

I grew up during the space race, and I don't think the Soviets were as secretive as Blue Origin is. We'll see about New Armstrong, but there's a lot of speculation based on a single mention.

The N1 wasn't known about for decades!

[John Santos]

I grew up during the space race, and I don't think the Soviets were as secretive as Blue Origin is. We'll see about New Armstrong, but there's a lot of speculation based on a single mention.

The N1 wasn't known about for decades!

Technical details weren't known (by the public) for a long time after, but the US definitely knew about the rocket, its capabilities, and most of its difficulties at the time (in early 1969.)

[Steve G]

I distinctly recall the N1 was well known. It was called the G-1-E back in the day, and there were also crude drawings of it back in 1969. The pad explosion in July 1969 was also reported at the time. I distinctly recall reading an article back then that the Soyuz 6, 7, & 8 troika mission, that they speculated that there was a missing element that was to have been launched on the ill-fated N1. I believe it may have been a Flight International magazine article written about 1974 that detailed the four N1 launch failures, and stated that they were waiting for the next test flight. All based on ancient memory, but the N1 was not an unknown commodity.

As for the New Armstrong? Not a known commodity. We'll have to be patient.
 

[Lemurion]

We know precisely two things about New Armstrong and one is a logical inference. All that’s been officially said is the name and that New Glenn is the smallest orbital launcher Blue ever intends to build. The latter implies New Armstrong will be larger, but that’s as far as it goes.

I think it’s likely that Blue will continue with a single-stick methalox booster with hydrolox upper stage design but beyond that basic architecture I don’t even think they know. Truth is, it doesn’t really make sense to make decisions until they are sure what they want to do.

Starship has a huge advantage in that everyone knows what it’s supposed to do and that’s driven a lot of design decisions. Once Blue settles on a mission and business case for New Armstrong, then they can work on closing the design.

[meekGee]

We know precisely two things about New Armstrong and one is a logical inference. All that’s been officially said is the name and that New Glenn is the smallest orbital launcher Blue ever intends to build. The latter implies New Armstrong will be larger, but that’s as far as it goes.

I think it’s likely that Blue will continue with a single-stick methalox booster with hydrolox upper stage design but beyond that basic architecture I don’t even think they know. Truth is, it doesn’t really make sense to make decisions until they are sure what they want to do.

Starship has a huge advantage in that everyone knows what it’s supposed to do and that’s driven a lot of design decisions. Once Blue settles on a mission and business case for New Armstrong, then they can work on closing the design.

Well StarShip does a lot of things, right?  You take a basic architecture that's brilliant, and turns out that with variants it's good for anything from p2p to colonizing Mars.

With variants, it's also good for cis-lunar industry.

IMO BO should move ASAP to a rapidly and fully reusable launcher, and that should be the definition of NA. The business case may change later, but once in-orbit fueling is matter-of-course, you gain flexibility to do anything you want.

They're trying to be a fast follower and they have infinite funding.  They should always aim ahead of the company they're following.

[Eric Hedman]

We know precisely two things about New Armstrong and one is a logical inference. All that’s been officially said is the name and that New Glenn is the smallest orbital launcher Blue ever intends to build. The latter implies New Armstrong will be larger, but that’s as far as it goes.

I think it’s likely that Blue will continue with a single-stick methalox booster with hydrolox upper stage design but beyond that basic architecture I don’t even think they know. Truth is, it doesn’t really make sense to make decisions until they are sure what they want to do.

Starship has a huge advantage in that everyone knows what it’s supposed to do and that’s driven a lot of design decisions. Once Blue settles on a mission and business case for New Armstrong, then they can work on closing the design.

Well StarShip does a lot of things, right?  You take a basic architecture that's brilliant, and turns out that with variants it's good for anything from p2p to colonizing Mars.

With variants, it's also good for cis-lunar industry.

IMO BO should move ASAP to a rapidly and fully reusable launcher, and that should be the definition of NA. The business case may change later, but once in-orbit fueling is matter-of-course, you gain flexibility to do anything you want.

They're trying to be a fast follower and they have infinite funding.  They should always aim ahead of the company they're following.

Do you really think SpaceX could have jumped from Falcon 1 to Starship with out building and launching Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy first?

Blue might have a lot of money.  But they haven't built up the team with design and operational experience that SpaceX has.  Even with an unlimited supply of money, they need to go through the learning curve New Glenn is going to give them.

[meekGee]

We know precisely two things about New Armstrong and one is a logical inference. All that’s been officially said is the name and that New Glenn is the smallest orbital launcher Blue ever intends to build. The latter implies New Armstrong will be larger, but that’s as far as it goes.

I think it’s likely that Blue will continue with a single-stick methalox booster with hydrolox upper stage design but beyond that basic architecture I don’t even think they know. Truth is, it doesn’t really make sense to make decisions until they are sure what they want to do.

Starship has a huge advantage in that everyone knows what it’s supposed to do and that’s driven a lot of design decisions. Once Blue settles on a mission and business case for New Armstrong, then they can work on closing the design.

Well StarShip does a lot of things, right?  You take a basic architecture that's brilliant, and turns out that with variants it's good for anything from p2p to colonizing Mars.

With variants, it's also good for cis-lunar industry.

IMO BO should move ASAP to a rapidly and fully reusable launcher, and that should be the definition of NA. The business case may change later, but once in-orbit fueling is matter-of-course, you gain flexibility to do anything you want.

They're trying to be a fast follower and they have infinite funding.  They should always aim ahead of the company they're following.

Do you really think SpaceX could have jumped from Falcon 1 to Starship with out building and launching Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy first?

Blue might have a lot of money.  But they haven't built up the team with design and operational experience that SpaceX has.  Even with an unlimited supply of money, they need to go through the learning curve New Glenn is going to give them.

They should finish NG, but only as a stepping stone, and then immediately move on..  IMO..

[GWH]

According to this ex-employee on reddit New Armstrong wasn't ever a real thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueOrigin/comments/k23bih/comment/gdt5v6t

New Armstrong is not actually a thing

I used to work for Blue Origin. It's not a thing. The name was floated internally by employees but it is completely not a thing. 

No.

Here was the idea: Alan Shepard flew suborbital. Therefore the suborbital rocket was New Shepard. John Glen flew orbital. Therefore the orbital rocket is New Glenn. So logically the lunar vehicle would be New Armstrong, right?

Except with 2 and 3 stages, New Glenn can power a moon landing. Also there will be other iterations of New Shepard. Developing an entirely new vehicle to do the same thing as New Glenn would be a waste of resources.

Furthermore, Blue Origin teamed up with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper Labs for the Project Artemis Human Landing System to return to the moon, and there is no New Armstrong that is part of that.

I repeat, New Armstrong is not a thing, but if that delusion makes you happy, have at it.