New Glenn 9x4 discussion

[Starmang10]

Blue Origin recently posted an update on New Glenn showcasing future upgrades and changes.

"Blue Origin announced a series of upgrades to New Glenn designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability. The enhancements span propulsion, structures, avionics, reusability, and recovery operations, and will be phased into upcoming New Glenn missions beginning with NG-3.

One of the primary enhancements includes higher-performing engines on both stages. Total thrust for the seven BE-4 booster engines is increasing from 3.9 million lbf (17,219 kN) to 4.5 million lbf (19,928 kN). BE-4 has already demonstrated 625,000 lbf on the test stand at current propellant conditions and will achieve 640,000 lbf later this year, with propellant subcooling increasing the current thrust capability from the existing 550,000 lbf.

The total thrust of the two BE-3Us powering New Glenn’s upper stage is increasing from the original design of 320,000 lbf (1,423 kN) to 400,000 lbf (1,779 kN) thrust over the next few missions. BE-3U has already demonstrated 211,658 lbf on the test stand.

These enhancements will immediately benefit customers already manifested on New Glenn to fly to destinations including low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and beyond. Additional vehicle upgrades include a reusable fairing to support increased flight rates, an updated lower-cost tank design, and a higher-performing and reusable thermal protection system to improve turnaround time.   

The next chapter in New Glenn’s roadmap is a new super-heavy class rocket. Named after the number of engines on each stage, New Glenn 9x4, is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance. The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9x4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.

Both engines: 9x4 and our current variant, 7x2, will serve the market concurrently, giving customers more launch options for their missions, including mega-constellations, lunar and deep space exploration, and national security imperatives such as Golden Dome."
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-glenn-upgraded-engines-subcooled-components-drive-enhanced-performance

[meekGee]

New Glenner.

[leeloodallasmultipass]

Not very Blue Origin like. They will probably put it again soon.

[sstli2]

Any screenshots of the contents?

[wannamoonbase]

New Glenner.

Newer Glenn or New New Glenn?

I like this thread idea.

More engines
More thrust
Subcooled prop
A booster stretch because of the above improvements
Cheaper upper stage, maybe an optional smaller single engine upper stage
Cutting weight from over engineered systems that now have flight data

[Starmang10]

Any screenshots of the contents?

Unfortunately not. I was mainly trying to find information about Blue's Biconic Spacecraft when I happened to stumble upon the update.

I believe they might try and post it later, but for now all we can really do is speculate.

Edit: Looks like they fixed it.

[DanClemmensen]

New Glenner.

Newer Glenn or New New Glenn?

I like this thread idea.

More engines
More thrust
Subcooled prop
A booster stretch because of the above improvements
Cheaper upper stage, maybe an optional smaller single engine upper stage
Cutting weight from over engineered systems that now have flight data

You appear to be proposing a hardware-rich iterative design approach, which implies that the existing design is not perfect. This is the thread for Blue Origin's New Glenn. You are clearly on the wrong thread. Maybe a SpaceX thread?

[Starmang10]

Any screenshots of the contents?

Unfortunately not. I was mainly trying to find information about Blue's Biconic Spacecraft when I happened to stumble upon the update.

I believe they might try and post it later, but for now all we can really do is speculate.

Edit: Looks like they fixed it.

Contents, will be posted in the top thread

Blue Origin announced a series of upgrades to New Glenn designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability. The enhancements span propulsion, structures, avionics, reusability, and recovery operations, and will be phased into upcoming New Glenn missions beginning with NG-3.

One of the primary enhancements includes higher-performing engines on both stages. Total thrust for the seven BE-4 booster engines is increasing from 3.9 million lbf (17,219 kN) to 4.5 million lbf (19,928 kN). BE-4 has already demonstrated 625,000 lbf on the test stand at current propellant conditions and will achieve 640,000 lbf later this year, with propellant subcooling increasing the current thrust capability from the existing 550,000 lbf.

The total thrust of the two BE-3Us powering New Glenn’s upper stage is increasing from the original design of 320,000 lbf (1,423 kN) to 400,000 lbf (1,779 kN) thrust over the next few missions. BE-3U has already demonstrated 211,658 lbf on the test stand.

These enhancements will immediately benefit customers already manifested on New Glenn to fly to destinations including low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and beyond. Additional vehicle upgrades include a reusable fairing to support increased flight rates, an updated lower-cost tank design, and a higher-performing and reusable thermal protection system to improve turnaround time.   

The next chapter in New Glenn’s roadmap is a new super-heavy class rocket. Named after the number of engines on each stage, New Glenn 9x4, is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance. The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9x4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.

Both engines: 9x4 and our current variant, 7x2, will serve the market concurrently, giving customers more launch options for their missions, including mega-constellations, lunar and deep space exploration, and national security imperatives such as Golden Dome.

[Starmang10]

High quality render showcasing the officially titled 9x4 (9 first stage engines and 4 second stage engines) configuration.

The 9x4 and current 7x2 will fly in tandem based off of customer needs. It should be noted that the 9x4 configuration is labeled as a super-heavy launch vehicle, making it a market competitor to Starship.

[StraumliBlight]

Anyone want to ask Tory Bruno if Vulcan will take advantage of the increased BE-4 thrust (2,847 kN)?

Could be some large cost savings if fewer GEM 63XLs are required ($7 million per solid?).

[Robert_the_Doll]

https://twitter.com/davill/status/1991538235609326013

Incredible upgrades to the New Glenn system as we enhance our BE-4 and BE-3U engine performance. The total thrust on the booster is increasing from 3.9 million lbf (17,219 kN) to 4.5 million lbf (19,928 kN) thrust. Total thrust on our two BE-3Us is increasing from 320,000 lbf (1,423 kN) to 400,000 lbf (1,779 kN) thrust over the next few missions.

[StraumliBlight]

High quality render showcasing the officially titled 9x4 (9 first stage engines and 4 second stage engines) configuration.

The 9x4 and current 7x2 will fly in tandem based off of customer needs. It should be noted that the 9x4 configuration is labeled as a super-heavy launch vehicle, making it a market competitor to Starship.

Its got Falcon 9 style legs.

'Quattro' confirmed.

[lightleviathan]

9x4 variant is insane! GS2 in this configuration is effectively just EUS, but mass produced. I can't get over how impressed I am with Blue over the past week.

[sstli2]

Note the picture shows a new launch tower, not a transporter erector.

[Robert_the_Doll]

High quality render showcasing the officially titled 9x4 (9 first stage engines and 4 second stage engines) configuration.

The 9x4 and current 7x2 will fly in tandem based off of customer needs. It should be noted that the 9x4 configuration is labeled as a super-heavy launch vehicle, making it a market competitor to Starship.

Its got Falcon 9 style legs.

The legs are booted to the outside to make room on the inside for the two extra BE-4s, so it makes some sense.

[Starmang10]

High quality render showcasing the officially titled 9x4 (9 first stage engines and 4 second stage engines) configuration.

The 9x4 and current 7x2 will fly in tandem based off of customer needs. It should be noted that the 9x4 configuration is labeled as a super-heavy launch vehicle, making it a market competitor to Starship.

Its got Falcon 9 style legs.

The legs are booted to the outside to make room on the inside for the two extra BE-4s, so it makes some sense.

Along with this, it has a fixed structure at the end so that the legs are set flat on the ground.

[Robert_the_Doll]

https://twitter.com/davill/status/1991544049095045367

[DanClemmensen]

Anyone want to ask Tory Bruno if Vulcan will take advantage of the increased BE-4 thrust (2,847 kN)?

Could be some large cost savings if fewer GEM 63XLs are required ($7 million per solid?).

The SRBs don't just add thrust. They also add propellant. Increased BE-4 thrust will improve the performance and thereby improve the max payload masses for each Vulcan variant, but it's complicated. Also, ULA already took delivery of at least six BE-4 and we do not know what the deal is for upgrades.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Great to see Blue Origin make this official. 

Thrust to weight for the 7x2 should improve closer to 1.3 as a rough guess, perhaps more if the first 2 launches were throttled a bit. 

So these improvements will be phased in starting with NG3.  I'm curious how many of these changes can be incorporated into NG3 if the launch target is Q1.

I'm also curious on the timeline for the 9x4.  Damn that's a big rocket.

So if that's New Steroid Glenn, will there still be a New Armstrong in the future?

[wannamoonbase]

New Glenner.

Newer Glenn or New New Glenn?

I like this thread idea.

More engines
More thrust
Subcooled prop
A booster stretch because of the above improvements
Cheaper upper stage, maybe an optional smaller single engine upper stage
Cutting weight from over engineered systems that now have flight data

You appear to be proposing a hardware-rich iterative design approach, which implies that the existing design is not perfect. This is the thread for Blue Origin's New Glenn. You are clearly on the wrong thread. Maybe a SpaceX thread?

Well, I was thinking that it's Blue and they could apply this to the next 3 or 4 boosters.  So that could be the next 6 years or so, lol.

Now that the BO Newer Glenn info is back up, dam, the 9x4 is a wild machine.

I still wonder if there is room for a cheaper 7x1 for payloads that don't need a super heavy lift mass to orbit but could use the benefit of pricing of a reuseable booster.

Encouraging to see the growth path.

[Tywin]

https://twitter.com/davill/status/1991544049095045367

New New Glenn, is a MONSTER!!!

[StraumliBlight]

https://x.com/davill/status/1991544049095045367

Getting closer to Saturn V's liftoff thrust:

9 subcooled BE-4s	25,622 kN
5 F-1s	33,362 kN

In the reddit thread, NG upgrade's internal name was revealed as "KITSUNE". Someone suggested "Because it's a nine tailed fourx?"


Explicit comparison in this job description:

We are building a road to space, and a rocket that approximates the size of the Saturn V. The path is long, with challenges at every step of the way.

[Tywin]

Great to see Blue Origin make this official. 

Thrust to weight for the 7x2 should improve closer to 1.3 as a rough guess, perhaps more if the first 2 launches were throttled a bit. 

So these improvements will be phased in starting with NG3.  I'm curious how many of these changes can be incorporated into NG3 if the launch target is Q1.

I'm also curious on the timeline for the 9x4.  Damn that's a big rocket.

So if that's New Steroid Glenn, will there still be a New Armstrong in the future?

YES!! is a beast, New Glenn coming to compete with Everybody!! and be the best rocket...

[SpaceLizard]

About time Blue showed something genuinely competitive, even if it falls a little short of the leader.
Are those the suggestions of landing legs I see on the second stage? I sure hope so...

[wannamoonbase]

About time Blue showed something genuinely competitive, even if it falls a little short of the leader.
Are those the suggestions of landing legs I see on the second stage? I sure hope so...

1) I think what you suggest as legs on the US are actually the prop lines from the upper tank going around the lower tank.  (Hydrogen and LOx are different enough in temps you won't want them flowing through each other)
2) I love big rockets, however, not every customer flight needs a super heavy lift.  SpaceX and Blue seem to be abandoning the small and medium market for others.

[ZachF]

See, I told you guys NG had an easy path to large performance upgrades. 

[ZachF]

Anyone want to ask Tory Bruno if Vulcan will take advantage of the increased BE-4 thrust (2,847 kN)?

Could be some large cost savings if fewer GEM 63XLs are required ($7 million per solid?).

Good chance Blue will be offering 14 tonnes direct to geo with a cost basis lower than ULA’s cheapest Vulcan…. When Blue and SX start competing on price and the price drifts closer to the cost basis of a semi-reusable LV, it’s joever for expendable LVs.

[Tywin]

See, I told you guys NG had an easy path to large performance upgrades. 

Me too, I said

[Tywin]

Anyone want to ask Tory Bruno if Vulcan will take advantage of the increased BE-4 thrust (2,847 kN)?

Could be some large cost savings if fewer GEM 63XLs are required ($7 million per solid?).

Good chance Blue will be offering 14 tonnes direct to geo with a cost basis lower than ULA’s cheapest Vulcan….

Yes and that 70 tons to LEO, could be the price, be lower of 1.000$ per kg?

[SpaceLizard]

Well if they're not landing legs that will be disappointing. Disposable stages really ought to become a thing of the past and clash badly with Blue's environmentally friendly vision...

[StraumliBlight]

Comparing engine skirts (assuming each pixel is ~0.2-0.206 m):

New Glenn Section	Pixels	Diameter (m)
Body	34	7
Old skirt	42	~8.4-8.65
New skirt	50	~10-10.3

Using a perspective tool, the new skirt diameter is 10.1 m. Coincidentally the same diameter as a Saturn V...

[Rakietwawka2021]

New skirt is 12 wide

[hkultala]

9x4 variant is insane! GS2 in this configuration is effectively just EUS, but mass produced. I can't get over how impressed I am with Blue over the past week.

Each BE-3U engine has ~7-8 times more thrust than each RL-10.

This upper stage is MUCH bigger and MUCH more powerful than EUS.

[sstli2]

New skirt is 12 wide

Wouldn't you just move to a larger diameter tank at this point?

[lightleviathan]

9x4 variant is insane! GS2 in this configuration is effectively just EUS, but mass produced. I can't get over how impressed I am with Blue over the past week.

Each BE-3U engine has ~7-8 times more thrust than each RL-10.

This upper stage is MUCH bigger and MUCH more powerful than EUS.

Good point, I lose scale when rockets get this large.

[DrTadd]

New skirt is 12 wide

Wouldn't you just move to a larger diameter tank at this point?

If they keep the current diameter, then they can utilize the current tooling and methods that have been developed, right?

I would think that diameter is more difficult to change than overall length... especially since the domes can keep the current manufacturing method?

[Tywin]

Berger post...

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/11/blue-origin-says-its-just-getting-started-with-the-new-glenn-rocket/

[Tywin]

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

[Brigantine]

making it a market competitor to Starship.

More like a direct competitor to Long March 10, which is also 70 tons to LEO, 27 tons to TLI and in a not too dis-similar stage of development
(maiden launch of the reusable^(?) no-boosters version next year)

[Brigantine]

not every customer flight needs a super heavy lift.  SpaceX and Blue seem to be abandoning the small and medium market for others.

Wait for NG with Blue Ring deploying multiple payloads to (moderately?) different orbits in one launch.

Who saw Transporter and Bandwagon coming, before it happened?

[XRZ.YZ]

If adding a third stage with only one BE3U. Can it carry 27mt to TMI so will be direct replacement for SLS?

[DanClemmensen]

not every customer flight needs a super heavy lift.  SpaceX and Blue seem to be abandoning the small and medium market for others.

Wait for NG with Blue Ring deploying multiple payloads to (moderately?) different orbits in one launch.

Who saw Transporter and Bandwagon coming, before it happened?

I am unclear on the economics of these missions, but apparently it takes awhile for SpaceX to accumulate enough compatible customers for a mission. I surmise that a larger aggregate mass would require a larger amount of coordination effort and a longer time between missions. I would guess that a smaller LV with the same $/kg would be more flexible and the only reason F9 is effective is its very low $/kg. Am I missing something?

[JEF_300]

If adding a third stage with only one BE3U. Can it carry 27mt to TMI so will be direct replacement for SLS?

Any third stage will probably use BE-7.

Think of the reusable, 9 engine booster as being like the SLS SRBs, but with better performance.
The 4 engine GS2 is then like a mini-SLS core.
Thus, any third stage should be thought of more like ICPS and EUS; the stage that basically does not need to worry about gravity losses, and thus can go all in on specific impulse.

Of course, in Blue's plans, cislunar transporter is the thing that's supposed to be doing that job.

[JEF_300]

Until very recently, like last month, I was extremely skeptical that 9 engine New Glenn was a real thing that was actually going to happen, and I argued such a few different times. So I will take this opportunity to publicly concede that I was very wrong on this one.

[hkultala]

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

That huge hydrogen upper stage has about 3.6x the thrust of the kerolox upper stage of FH.

But the weight difference of second stage + payload will be much less.

Falcon heavy second stage ~115 tonnes + payload 15 tonnes is about 130 tonnes total.
Thrust ~100 tonnes => T/W ratio ~ 0.77

New Glenn 9x4 second stage maybe about 300 tonnes + payload 20 tonnes is about 320 tonnes,
Thrust about 90 tonnes * 4 =~360 tonnes => T/W ratio ~1.1,

So New Glenn 9x4 second stage will have much better than the T/W ratio of the falcon second stage.

So no, it's not gravity losses "killing it".

[Tywin]

not every customer flight needs a super heavy lift.  SpaceX and Blue seem to be abandoning the small and medium market for others.

Wait for NG with Blue Ring deploying multiple payloads to (moderately?) different orbits in one launch.

Who saw Transporter and Bandwagon coming, before it happened?

Exactly the Blue Ring will flight a LOT...

[sstli2]

Until very recently, like last month, I was extremely skeptical that 9 engine New Glenn was a real thing that was actually going to happen, and I argued such a few different times. So I will take this opportunity to publicly concede that I was very wrong on this one.

I find paying attention to social media useful for this. Both 9-engine ("Kitsune") and 4-engine ("Quattro") got a lot of mentions from the Blue Origin employee crowd on Reddit.

Job postings are also useful. 9-engines was mentioned in multiple job postings. "Advanced Upper Stage" was also mentioned.

[wannamoonbase]

New skirt is 12 wide

Wouldn't you just move to a larger diameter tank at this point?

I've been asking the same question about Starship for years.  (I hate that it's not 10 meters in diameter)

[ZachF]

So now that we will have NG 9-4 and Starship, SLS is seeming extra superfluous…

This rocket is practically SLS tier and ~85% reusable.

[TrevorMonty]

New skirt is 12 wide

Wouldn't you just move to a larger diameter tank at this point?

If they keep the current diameter, then they can utilize the current tooling and methods that have been developed, right?

I would think that diameter is more difficult to change than overall length... especially since the domes can keep the current manufacturing method?

Pad and transporters are all setup for 7m. I assume they built pad ie flame trench to take this extra thrust.

[TrevorMonty]

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

That huge hydrogen upper stage has about 3.6x the thrust of the kerolox upper stage of FH.

But the weight difference of second stage + payload will be much less.

Falcon heavy second stage ~115 tonnes + payload 15 tonnes is about 130 tonnes total.
Thrust ~100 tonnes => T/W ratio ~ 0.77

New Glenn 9x4 second stage maybe about 300 tonnes + payload 20 tonnes is about 320 tonnes,
Thrust about 90 tonnes * 4 =~360 tonnes => T/W ratio ~1.1,

So New Glenn 9x4 second stage will have much better than the T/W ratio of the falcon second stage.

So no, it's not gravity losses "killing it".

A 2.5 stage LV  (FH) will always give better performance due to staging. Downside is 3 boosters  to recover and maintain than one large one.

[meekGee]

https://x.com/davill/status/1991544049095045367

Getting closer to Saturn V's liftoff thrust:

9 subcooled BE-4s	25,622 kN
5 F-1s	33,362 kN

In the reddit thread, NG upgrade's internal name was revealed as "KITSUNE". Someone suggested "Because it's a nine tailed fourx?"

That's exactly what BO should be doing, not standing still. Good for them, color me a fan and impressed.

However, this is not remotely a Starship - even in its full-up configuration it is just a notch above FH.

So answering the other question: Yes, they absolutely have to do a rapidly reusable 200-ton class vehicle, because this ain't that.

And soon. The rocket it's going to beat will be retired by the time the 9x4 flies.

[meekGee]

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

FH is not 15 ton to LEO expended, where did you get that?  It's over 60 tons.
Even when recovering 3 cores it's well over 40.

NG 9x4 should be similar. 

EDIT:  ah, TLI.  Yes, that will make sense due to higher ISP.  9x4 lifts off a bit heavier than FH, so by the time it's at TLI, a 33% difference is reasonable.

[SpaceLizard]

https://x.com/davill/status/1991544049095045367

Getting closer to Saturn V's liftoff thrust:

9 subcooled BE-4s	25,622 kN
5 F-1s	33,362 kN

In the reddit thread, NG upgrade's internal name was revealed as "KITSUNE". Someone suggested "Because it's a nine tailed fourx?"

That's exactly what BO should be doing, not standing still. Good for them, color me a fan and impressed.

However, this is not remotely a Starship - even in its full-up configuration it is just a notch above FH.

So answering the other question: Yes, they absolutely have to do a rapidly reusable 200-ton class vehicle, because this ain't that.

And soon. The rocket it's going to beat will be retired by the time the 9x4 flies.

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

FH is not 15 ton to LEO expended, where did you get that?  It's over 50 IIRC, maybe even 60...

The picture actually says TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection).

[envy887]

Current New Glenn is ~7 t to TLI per NASA LSP. Extrapolating based on the 49% booster thrust increase bumps that to 10.5 t. There's a slight increase in performance from improved mass ratios from subcooling, and from increased upper stage thrust, but neither of those seem like they would get it to 20 t.

[Stan-1967]

A 2.5 stage LV  (FH) will always give better performance due to staging. Downside is 3 boosters  to recover and maintain than one large one.

Man this comparison takes me back to 2016-2017 when we were all talking about what a kludge FH was. NG is not a kludge!  Beautiful vehicle!

[meekGee]

https://x.com/davill/status/1991544049095045367

Getting closer to Saturn V's liftoff thrust:

9 subcooled BE-4s	25,622 kN
5 F-1s	33,362 kN

In the reddit thread, NG upgrade's internal name was revealed as "KITSUNE". Someone suggested "Because it's a nine tailed fourx?"

That's exactly what BO should be doing, not standing still. Good for them, color me a fan and impressed.

However, this is not remotely a Starship - even in its full-up configuration it is just a notch above FH.

So answering the other question: Yes, they absolutely have to do a rapidly reusable 200-ton class vehicle, because this ain't that.

And soon. The rocket it's going to beat will be retired by the time the 9x4 flies.

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

FH is not 15 ton to LEO expended, where did you get that?  It's over 50 IIRC, maybe even 60...

The picture actually says TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection).

Ah thx.
Yes, with higher ISP NG should outperform FH by a nice margin at higher energies, agreed.

[TrevorMonty]

A 2.5 stage LV  (FH) will always give better performance due to staging. Downside is 3 boosters  to recover and maintain than one large one.

Man this comparison takes me back to 2016-2017 when we were all talking about what a kludge FH was. NG is not a kludge!  Beautiful vehicle!

FH achieved its mission objective, allow SpaceX to compete directly with ULA for NSSL missions even if F9 flys most of them.

Back to main program. These upgrades on NG are awesome and came out of the Blue (pun intended)

[Brigantine]

I am unclear on the economics of these missions, but apparently it takes awhile for SpaceX to accumulate enough compatible customers for a mission. I surmise that a larger aggregate mass would require a larger amount of coordination effort and a longer time between missions. I would guess that a smaller LV with the same $/kg would be more flexible and the only reason F9 is effective is its very low $/kg. Am I missing something?

NG transporter to GEO would only be similar aggregate mass to F9 Transporter to SSO, and I suspect the average rideshare customer would indeed have a higher mass satellite.
Then you can also have customers to GTO and customers to GEO on the same mission, potentially also with LEO payloads to 27-33⁰ inclination if you can think of any.

Re coordination, yeah I got nothing to argue against that. Need some fair way to price for that, and maybe the result is that cubesats don't fly on NG

[StraumliBlight]

https://www.blueorigin.com/es-MX/new-glenn/9x4

Our First Super-Heavy Class Vehicle
More volume, performance, and affordability. 9x4 is nearly 400 feet tall. Its 8.7 meter fairing packs 29,000 cubic feet of volume, nearly 70% more than New Glenn's 7x2 configuration. 9x4 evolves the 7x2 variant, using existing designs, subsystems, manufacturing processes, and operations footprint.

5.7 Million Pounds of Lift
9x4’s reusable first stage is designed for a minimum of 25 missions and will be powered by nine BE-4 Block 2 engines. They will generate over 5.7 million lbf combined thrust (25,621 kN), 50% more than New Glenn’s current first stage.

Superpowered Second Stage Performance
Powered by four BE-3U engines, 9x4’s second stage carries 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 14 metric tons to Geostationary Orbit Direct, and 20 metric tons to Trans Lunar Injection. The second stage engines generate over 800,000 lbf thrust (3,558 kN), more than 100% of New Glenn 7x2 configuration.

A Super-Heavy Evolution
9x4's addition to our fleet supports demand for larger commercial mega-constellations, lunar and deep space exploration, and national security missions.  A visual comparison shows the progression from New Glenn's 7x2 configuration, with the historic Saturn V shown for scale.

[Tywin]

Wow amazing rocket, I hope launch in the future many BIG mission for NASA...like UOP and HWO...

[Ike17055]

From a spectator standpoint, the added beauty of this is that pad 36 is the most visible major pad. Many thousands of folks can line the Cape beaches and Coco Beach and points south and have a clear view of this beast rising right off the pad. These launches will be very exciting

[hkultala]

Good comparation vs FH...

https://twitter.com/KenKirtland17/status/1991568180666667236

That huge hydrogen upper stage has about 3.6x the thrust of the kerolox upper stage of FH.

But the weight difference of second stage + payload will be much less.

Falcon heavy second stage ~115 tonnes + payload 15 tonnes is about 130 tonnes total.
Thrust ~100 tonnes => T/W ratio ~ 0.77

New Glenn 9x4 second stage maybe about 300 tonnes + payload 20 tonnes is about 320 tonnes,
Thrust about 90 tonnes * 4 =~360 tonnes => T/W ratio ~1.1,

So New Glenn 9x4 second stage will have much better than the T/W ratio of the falcon second stage.

So no, it's not gravity losses "killing it".

A 2.5 stage LV  (FH) will always give better performance due to staging. Downside is 3 boosters  to recover and maintain than one large one.

FH is not 2.5-stage.

It is about 2.1-stage. The balance between stages is very far from balanced 2.5-stage vehicle that would give full benefits of "2.5-stage".

If the center core engines would run at full power, they would run out of fuel at exactly the same time than the side boosters run out of fuel.

The center core is either expended, or throttled down to make it run longer than the side boosters.

And then, the upper stage of Falcon Heavy has MUCH worse isp than the upper stage of NG has.
 
Claiming that "because it's 2.5 stage is must be better" is really stupid claim.


Also, no Falcon Heavy center core has ever been successfully recovered. One did land but was lost after the landing.

[Rakietwawka2021]

New skirt is 12 wide

Wouldn't you just move to a larger diameter tank at this point?

I've read somewhere on Twitter (was posted by BO's employee) that tanks are gonna be actually 9m in diameter

[sstli2]

New skirt is 12 wide

Wouldn't you just move to a larger diameter tank at this point?

I've read somewhere on Twitter (was posted by BO's employee) that tanks are gonna be actually 9m in diameter

That doesn't make sense. The payload fairing is 8.7m and you can clearly see the payload fairing exceed the diameter of the tanks in the render.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Interesting comparison of super heavy rockets found on Reddit

[meekGee]

They already omitted NG 7x2 ?!  What a short career it's had.

[Brigantine]

Interesting comparison of super heavy rockets found on Reddit

link? [here]

There are one or two "citation needed"s and asterisks in there. E.g:

Includes mass of Apollo command module, Apollo service module, Apollo Lunar Module, Spacecraft/LM Adapter, Saturn V Instrument Unit, S-IVB stage, and propellant for translunar injection

S-IVB is 15,200 kg dry, so 125 ton to LEO is a fairer comparison. An LEO version would omit S-IVB, but need new avionics and fairings.

On a separate note, I'd love a version with stages colour-coded by propellant mass/volume or energy/volume density, and maybe stages solid-outlined per re-use. And a more visual quick-reference to payload e.g. as a bar chart in the background. (using the metric height scale)

They already omitted NG 7x2 ?!  What a short career it's had.

The image appears to be super heavy lift (>50 ton) only. 7x2 was never in that club - if only because they never published performance with an expended booster.

[TrevorMonty]

Should show expended plus reuse(partial and full) for RLVs.
Using F9E 22,800kg v F9R 18,500kg as reference SNGE should be 86mt v SNGR 70mt.

[meekGee]

Those posters are beautiful, but not useful for meaningful comparisons..

E.g. Should the height be scaled by diameter-squared?   Or by density*diameter -squared?

Maybe scale the rockets by stored energy or stored impulse?

Payload should be listed under the same op-mode, or have separate lines for expendable, partial reusable, fully reusable..

In short, it never ends...

[JEF_300]

Can we get this thread renamed to "New Glenn 9x4 discussion"? The company has given us a name, we ought to use it.

[catdlr]

Can we get this thread renamed to "New Glenn 9x4 discussion"? The company has given us a name, we ought to use it.

TA-Daaa..

[JH]

Very pleased with the announced New Glenn evolution. Wish they’d quit doing a lucky dip of U.S. customary units and metric. The arbitrary mix sets my teeth on edge.

[Big RI Joe]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

[seb21051]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

Optimize 7x2 and BE-4 engines: About 1 - 3 years.

Design and build 9x4: maybe 3 - 7 years.

Design and build reuseable NG second stage: 7 - 12 years.

Armstrong: 12 - 18 years out.   

And that is not taking into account all their other projects.

Don't hold me to this, but I think its reasonable timing.   

PS:- About the only reason I can think of building a 200 tonne payload capable LV at this point is to be able to transport masses of propellant up to fuel depots in LEO. And it would have to be completely reuseable.

[sstli2]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

Optimize 7x2 and BE-4 engines: About 1 - 3 years.

Design and build 9x4: maybe 3 - 7 years.

Design and build reuseable NG second stage: 7 - 12 years.

Armstrong: 12 - 18 years out.   

And that is not taking into account all their other projects.

Don't hold me to this, but I think its reasonable timing.   

This is way too pessimistic and conflates projects that we know exist and are in active development with ones that do not and are not.

They are already installing sub-coolers at LC-36 as we speak. Already happening. I would put my money on full 7x2 capability by mid-to-late 2026. We're talking months, not years.

9x4 is a logical iteration which stretches the tanks and uses engines that already exist and 7m tooling that already exists. It may not be 2027, but if not, it's going to be 2028.

New Armstrong and a reusable upper stage has no meaningful progress at this point and I would not bet on any specific time frame until they actually commit to the project.

[meekGee]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

Optimize 7x2 and BE-4 engines: About 1 - 3 years.

Design and build 9x4: maybe 3 - 7 years.

Design and build reuseable NG second stage: 7 - 12 years.

Armstrong: 12 - 18 years out.   

And that is not taking into account all their other projects.

Don't hold me to this, but I think its reasonable timing.   

This is way too pessimistic and conflates projects that we know exist and are in active development with ones that do not and are not.

They are already installing sub-coolers at LC-36 as we speak. Already happening. I would put my money on full 7x2 capability by mid-to-late 2026. We're talking months, not years.

9x4 is a logical iteration which stretches the tanks and uses engines that already exist and 7m tooling that already exists. It may not be 2027, but if not, it's going to be 2028.

New Armstrong and a reusable upper stage has no meaningful progress at this point and I would not bet on any specific time frame until they actually commit to the project.

I'd subtract one, and make the second two tasks concurrent.

So:
- Booster reuse, increase performance: next two years
- 9x4: Will first launch NET 2 years from now
- Reusable US: on 9x4, First launch NET 4 years
- Starship class vehicle: First launch NET 8

The third step is a maybe - they can choose to make that part of nextGen.

[DrTadd]

I'd subtract one, and make the second two tasks concurrent.

So:
- Booster reuse, increase performance: next two years
- 9x4: Will first launch NET 2 years from now
- Reusable US: on 9x4, First launch NET 4 years
- Starship class vehicle: First launch' NET 8

The third step is a maybe - they can choose to make that part of nextGen.

So what is your definition of a 'starship class vehicle?

Are you labeling by theoretical lift capacity to LEO (or TLI or GEO), or by current lift capacity?

Or are you binning launchers by faring volume?

As I have said before at some point BO is going to have to lift something heavy. My guess is the first round will be the MK1 lander. It has a published wet mass of 47,000# (23.5T), about 1/2 the designed lift. IIRC, NG will put the MK1 in a 350km LEO, then the lander takes it from there. But it will finally be a reasonable lift short of faring full of kuiper sats.

[meekGee]

I'd subtract one, and make the second two tasks concurrent.

So:
- Booster reuse, increase performance: next two years
- 9x4: Will first launch NET 2 years from now
- Reusable US: on 9x4, First launch NET 4 years
- Starship class vehicle: First launch' NET 8

The third step is a maybe - they can choose to make that part of nextGen.

So what is your definition of a 'starship class vehicle?

Are you labeling by theoretical lift capacity to LEO (or TLI or GEO), or by current lift capacity?

Or are you binning launchers by faring volume?

As I have said before at some point BO is going to have to lift something heavy. My guess is the first round will be the MK1 lander. It has a published wet mass of 47,000# (23.5T), about 1/2 the designed lift. IIRC, NG will put the MK1 in a 350km LEO, then the lander takes it from there. But it will finally be a reasonable lift short of faring full of kuiper sats.

Short answer?  Broadly and inaccurately, I'd say "Starship Class" is around 100 tons, rapidly and fully reusable, give or take.

Long answer?  It's not about a single mission or a single number.

I said before: Designing a vehicle to meet the requirements of a mission (such as Artemis) is misguided.  Starship is designed to satisfy a campaign.  So it's not just "how much you can lift" but also:
- How often will you launch per tower (per day?)
- How many towers
- Production capacity of hardware (per month?)
- Operating mode (Towers/pads? Landing towers? Refueling? Assembly? Integrated US/vehicle or separate?)

So "Starship class" doesn't mean there's a hard number that you should hit.

You can in principle support a campaign with a completely different type of ship (Aluminum Alloy or composite, Stoke-type upper stage, separate ship, etc.)

Go ahead and factor fairing volume into it, to the extent it makes a difference.

NG, 7x2 or 9x4, is far from Starship Class, if that's where you're driving.  9x4 will exceed FH's payload by a bit, but that's about it.

It is expendable, cannot support high flight rates, etc.  Fly it with a theoretical reusable upper stage and RTLS booster, and see what the payload is.

Hence my earlier statement that BO will need a nextGen vehicle, and IMO the sooner the better.

[Chris Huys]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

Optimize 7x2 and BE-4 engines: About 1 - 3 years.

Design and build 9x4: maybe 3 - 7 years.

Design and build reuseable NG second stage: 7 - 12 years.

Armstrong: 12 - 18 years out.   

And that is not taking into account all their other projects.

Don't hold me to this, but I think its reasonable timing.   

PS:- About the only reason I can think of building a 200 tonne payload capable LV at this point is to be able to transport masses of propellant up to fuel depots in LEO. And it would have to be completely reuseable.

spaceX
falcon 9
officialy unveiled okt 2005
first flight june 2010
first operational flight dec 2010 (flight 3)
first successfull booster landing block 3 B1019 dec 2015 (flight 20) (B1019 never flew again, as the historic rocket it was)
first flight block 5 B1021 apr 2016 (flight 24)
8 month refurbishment B1021
first successfull reuse block 5 B1021 march 2017 (flight 39)
first crewed testflight may 2020 (flight 85)
first crewed operational flight nov 2020 (flight 100)

falcon heavy
official unveiled april 2011
first (test) flight/successfull booster landing feb 2018
first operational flight apr, 2019 (flight 2)

starship
official unveiled sept 2019
first test flight april, 2023
first successfull booster landing test flight, oct 2024 (flight 5)

blue origin
new shepard
first sub-scale test vehicle, goddard, nov 2006
first uncrewed scaled testflight april 2015 (flight 1)
first uncrewed operational flight april 2015 (flight 2)
first successfull booster landing nov 2015 (flight 3)
first operational crewed flight july 2020 (flight 16)

new glenn 7*2
officially unveiled sept 2016
first flight jan 2025 (flight 1)
first operational flight/succesfull booster landing nov 2025 (flight 2)

new glenn 9*4
officially unveiled nov 2025
 

[321]

I'd subtract one, and make the second two tasks concurrent.

So:
- Booster reuse, increase performance: next two years
- 9x4: Will first launch NET 2 years from now
- Reusable US: on 9x4, First launch NET 4 years
- Starship class vehicle: First launch' NET 8

The third step is a maybe - they can choose to make that part of nextGen.

So what is your definition of a 'starship class vehicle?

Are you labeling by theoretical lift capacity to LEO (or TLI or GEO), or by current lift capacity?

Or are you binning launchers by faring volume?

As I have said before at some point BO is going to have to lift something heavy. My guess is the first round will be the MK1 lander. It has a published wet mass of 47,000# (23.5T), about 1/2 the designed lift. IIRC, NG will put the MK1 in a 350km LEO, then the lander takes it from there. But it will finally be a reasonable lift short of faring full of kuiper sats.

Short answer?  Broadly and inaccurately, I'd say "Starship Class" is around 100 tons, rapidly and fully reusable, give or take.

Long answer?  It's not about a single mission or a single number.

I said before: Designing a vehicle to meet the requirements of a mission (such as Artemis) is misguided.  Starship is designed to satisfy a campaign.  So it's not just "how much you can lift" but also:
- How often will you launch per tower (per day?)
- How many towers
- Production capacity of hardware (per month?)
- Operating mode (Towers/pads? Landing towers? Refueling? Assembly? Integrated US/vehicle or separate?)

So "Starship class" doesn't mean there's a hard number that you should hit.

You can in principle support a campaign with a completely different type of ship (Aluminum Alloy or composite, Stoke-type upper stage, separate ship, etc.)

Go ahead and factor fairing volume into it, to the extent it makes a difference.

NG, 7x2 or 9x4, is far from Starship Class, if that's where you're driving.  9x4 will exceed FH's payload by a bit, but that's about it.

It is expendable, cannot support high flight rates, etc.  Fly it with a theoretical reusable upper stage and RTLS booster, and see what the payload is.

Hence my earlier statement that BO will need a nextGen vehicle, and IMO the sooner the better.

Assuming BO planning to have 2 vehicles in its fleet, NG and NA, then they should not compete:
 - If NA will be next gen vehicle of starship class >100t fully reusable.
 - Then practical evolution for NG would be stay in 50t class, means with 7 engine GS1 and working hard on increasing engine trust as much as possible 50% or more, and swich to methane GS2 that is cheaper and could become reusable in future.

Just a thought...



 

[meekGee]

Assuming BO planning to have 2 vehicles in its fleet, NG and NA, then they should not compete:
 - If NA will be next gen vehicle of starship class >100t fully reusable.
 - Then practical evolution for NG would be stay in 50t class, means with 7 engine GS1 and working hard on increasing engine trust as much as possible 50% or more, and swich to methane GS2 that is cheaper and could become reusable in future.

Just a thought...

The big deal about NA would not be the tonnage.  It would be the ability to be fully reusable, rapidly, and support >1 launch/day/tower.

Even if it only flew 50 tons in that mode, it would be a class above NG.

[sstli2]

This is the New Armstrong thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51364.200

Feel free to speculate about it all you want there. But I wouldn't get your hopes up. I think the strategy is becoming a little clearer now - they're looking to make an incremental step-up in capability so that they can serve the same real customer segments (super heavy-lift, lunar) that Starship and SLS will. Capability always matters first - cost, cadence, and other considerations come after. And so having a super-heavy lift offering is better than having none.

The obvious subsequent move to make is to expand the diameter of the 9x4 to 9m or greater, develop a higher-performance engine, and slap on a bunch more of them, to build a vehicle that could be fully and rapidly reused, and deliver greater than 50 tons to orbit while doing so. That step - call it New Armstrong or any other name - would represent a significant evolution from what New Glenn is today, and isn't likely to happen anytime soon as a result. Come back when 9x4 is flying.

And while I'm sure meekGee would love for them to skip the intermediate step and go straight to the latter, doing so incrementally is a good risk management move. It allows them to test out new processes like sub-cooling and vertical integration, scale their manufacturing operations, scale their launch operations, and continue R&D and trade studies on the pre-requisite technologies (high-thrust and/or FFSC engines, thermal protection systems, etc.). It also allows them to see how the Starship experiment fares in practice and learn from it, without having to repeat the same costly learnings.

[TrevorMonty]

There is practical size liimit for downrange recovery and I think NG9x4 is at limit. The issue is removing booster from barge and transporting it back to launch facilities. Soon as LV is designed to go horizontal there is increase in drymas to support extra loads from transport.

Payload hit from RTLS means NA would need to be significantly larger than NG9x4 to justify it. That is part or reason why SS is so large.
Blue goal is moon  not to colonize Mars so no need to send large fleet every 2 years.

[DanClemmensen]

There is practical size liimit for downrange recovery and I think NG9x4 is at limit. The issue is removing booster from barge and transporting it back to launch facilities. Soon as LV is designed to go horizontal there is increase in drymas to support extra loads from transport.

How severe is this penalty? Breakover and horizontal transport are relatively benign since they are done on land in controlled conditions with empty (possibly pressurized) tanks. The booster must already be designed to support the full load of its second stage while accelerating through Max-Q. Max-Q loads are mostly axial but include dynamic lateral buffeting loads that are probably nastier than breakover and horizontal transport.

[sstli2]

There is practical size liimit for downrange recovery and I think NG9x4 is at limit. The issue is removing booster from barge and transporting it back to launch facilities. Soon as LV is designed to go horizontal there is increase in drymas to support extra loads from transport.

How severe is this penalty? Breakover and horizontal transport are relatively benign since they are done on land in controlled conditions with empty (possibly pressurized) tanks. The booster must already be designed to support the full load of its second stage while accelerating through Max-Q. Max-Q loads are mostly axial but include dynamic lateral buffeting loads that are probably nastier than breakover and horizontal transport.

It's worth noting two things here:

- Starship Superheavy is going to be transported horizontally.
- You can do upper stage reusability without simultaneously limiting yourself to RTLS.

[DanClemmensen]

There is practical size liimit for downrange recovery and I think NG9x4 is at limit. The issue is removing booster from barge and transporting it back to launch facilities. Soon as LV is designed to go horizontal there is increase in drymas to support extra loads from transport.

How severe is this penalty? Breakover and horizontal transport are relatively benign since they are done on land in controlled conditions with empty (possibly pressurized) tanks. The booster must already be designed to support the full load of its second stage while accelerating through Max-Q. Max-Q loads are mostly axial but include dynamic lateral buffeting loads that are probably nastier than breakover and horizontal transport.

- Starship Superheavy is going to be transported horizontally.

Sure. And basically all smaller boosters are/were transported horizontally, including the early Atlasses that were basically stainless steel balloons. I just don't see a penalty, which is why I asked.

[TrevorMonty]

If you watch recovery of NG booster from barge it is craned to dock onto cradle that supports/pivots base while top is lowered horizontally to transporter.
All bending forces from move are carried by booster not a cradle.

[DanClemmensen]

If you watch recovery of NG booster from barge it is craned to dock onto cradle that supports/pivots base while top is lowered horizontally to transporter.
All bending forces from move are carried by booster not a cradle.

Indeed. But by contrast to the brute-force use of two cranes, BO uses a breakover fixture that causes the pivot point to be more or less at the CoM. I think this reduces the max bending forces during the breakover. Just looking at it, I would guess there are larger bending forces during the actual horizontal transport. I'm not a structural engineer with access to the NG design so I do not actually know whether or not they added any structure specifically to handle transport forces, but it's at least possible that they just designed for Max-Q and then performed analyses that showed that the booster would also handle boost-back, landing, vertical ocean transport, breakover, and horizontal transport.

[TrevorMonty]

If you watch recovery of NG booster from barge it is craned to dock onto cradle that supports/pivots base while top is lowered horizontally to transporter.
All bending forces from move are carried by booster not a cradle.

Indeed. But by contrast to the brute-force use of two cranes, BO uses a breakover fixture that causes the pivot point to be more or less at the CoM. I think this reduces the max bending forces during the breakover. Just looking at it, I would guess there are larger bending forces during the actual horizontal transport. I'm not a structural engineer with access to the NG design so I do not actually know whether or not they added any structure specifically to handle transport forces, but it's at least possible that they just designed for Max-Q and then performed analyses that showed that the booster would also handle boost-back, landing, vertical ocean transport, breakover, and horizontal transport.

Aero dynamic forces maybe far greater in which there is no dry mass penalty.

Still logics of moving larger boosters from barge back to pad does become issue. Blue my prove me wrong and build NA with barge recovery.

[sstli2]

If you watch recovery of NG booster from barge it is craned to dock onto cradle that supports/pivots base while top is lowered horizontally to transporter.
All bending forces from move are carried by booster not a cradle.

Indeed. But by contrast to the brute-force use of two cranes, BO uses a breakover fixture that causes the pivot point to be more or less at the CoM. I think this reduces the max bending forces during the breakover. Just looking at it, I would guess there are larger bending forces during the actual horizontal transport. I'm not a structural engineer with access to the NG design so I do not actually know whether or not they added any structure specifically to handle transport forces, but it's at least possible that they just designed for Max-Q and then performed analyses that showed that the booster would also handle boost-back, landing, vertical ocean transport, breakover, and horizontal transport.

Aero dynamic forces maybe far greater in which there is no dry mass penalty.

Still logics of moving larger boosters from barge back to pad does become issue. Blue my prove me wrong and build NA with barge recovery.

I agree with your previous point about Blue not necessarily prioritizing rapid reusability. In this case, the severe payload penalty for RTLS - which requires an even larger vehicle and even more powerful engines to overcome - may be deemed a poor trade, with drone ship landing continuing to be the preferred recovery method. In fact, absent any other information, and acknowledging that we continue to have this discussion about a vehicle that does not exist, this would be my base case.

[spacenut]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

Optimize 7x2 and BE-4 engines: About 1 - 3 years.

Design and build 9x4: maybe 3 - 7 years.

Design and build reuseable NG second stage: 7 - 12 years.

Armstrong: 12 - 18 years out.   

And that is not taking into account all their other projects.

Don't hold me to this, but I think its reasonable timing.   

PS:- About the only reason I can think of building a 200 tonne payload capable LV at this point is to be able to transport masses of propellant up to fuel depots in LEO. And it would have to be completely reuseable.

spaceX
falcon 9
officialy unveiled okt 2005
first flight june 2010
first operational flight dec 2010 (flight 3)
first successfull booster landing block 3 B1019 dec 2015 (flight 20) (B1019 never flew again, as the historic rocket it was)
first flight block 5 B1021 apr 2016 (flight 24)
8 month refurbishment B1021
first successfull reuse block 5 B1021 march 2017 (flight 39)
first crewed testflight may 2020 (flight 85)
first crewed operational flight nov 2020 (flight 100)

falcon heavy
official unveiled april 2011
first (test) flight/successfull booster landing feb 2018
first operational flight apr, 2019 (flight 2)

starship
official unveiled sept 2019
first test flight april, 2023
first successfull booster landing test flight, oct 2024 (flight 5)

blue origin
new shepard
first sub-scale test vehicle, goddard, nov 2006
first uncrewed scaled testflight april 2015 (flight 1)
first uncrewed operational flight april 2015 (flight 2)
first successfull booster landing nov 2015 (flight 3)
first operational crewed flight july 2020 (flight 16)

new glenn 7*2
officially unveiled sept 2016
first flight jan 2025 (flight 1)
first operational flight/succesfull booster landing nov 2025 (flight 2)

new glenn 9*4
officially unveiled nov 2025
 

So it seems Blue takes around 10 years to develop a vehicle, while SpaceX takes around 5 years.  Give or take a year or two.  Blue is much slower, but had come up with some good vehicles. 

[JEF_300]

So it seems Blue takes around 10 years to develop a vehicle, while SpaceX takes around 5 years.  Give or take a year or two.  Blue is much slower, but had come up with some good vehicles.

Depends where you put the finish line.
If you put it at first commercial flight, yeah.
If you put it at successfully reflying a stage, they'd both be around 10 years.

Which makes more sense is mostly context dependent.

[LouScheffer]

Sure. And basically all smaller boosters are/were transported horizontally, including the early Atlasses that were basically stainless steel balloons. I just don't see a penalty, which is why I asked.

The boosters, as they exist, are capable of quite high side loads *when pressurized for flight*.  See the payload load envelope for New Glenn below.  So by pressurizing them for horizontal transport, you can get away with no dry mass penalty, at the cost of operational complexity, possibility of error, and safety concerns (SpaceX has recently demonstrated what a pressurized tank can do...).  It's a tradeoff.  Note that two non-flying Atlas rockets at museums were lost when pressurization failed, as did several Atlas rockets on the pad.  It's not an entirely academic risk.

[DanClemmensen]

Sure. And basically all smaller boosters are/were transported horizontally, including the early Atlasses that were basically stainless steel balloons. I just don't see a penalty, which is why I asked.

The boosters, as they exist, are capable of quite high side loads *when pressurized for flight*.  See the payload load envelope for New Glenn below.  So by pressurizing them for horizontal transport, you can get away with no dry mass penalty, at the cost of operational complexity, possibility of error, and safety concerns (SpaceX has recently demonstrated what a pressurized tank can do...).  It's a tradeoff.  Note that two non-flying Atlas rockets at museums were lost when pressurization failed, as did several Atlas rockets on the pad.  It's not an entirely academic risk.

The cost, including all the process, procedures, and QA, of maintaining pressurization will be a very small percentage of the total cost of recovering and refurbishing a booster, which includes maintaining and operating the recovery fleet. BO will decide whether or not the cost of maintaining pressurization is justified by whatever the payload mass gain is. Maintaining pressure during transport (at most a few days) is a different problem than maintaining pressure for weeks or months for booster storage. The Atlas steel balloons were an extreme example.

Do we know if F9, Atlas V, and Vulcan are pressurized for transport?

[LouScheffer]

Do we know if F9, Atlas V, and Vulcan are pressurized for transport?

F9 is, according to this in-person report.

[Robotbeat]

So where does this leave New Armstrong?

Optimize 7x2 and BE-4 engines: About 1 - 3 years.

Design and build 9x4: maybe 3 - 7 years.

Design and build reuseable NG second stage: 7 - 12 years.

Armstrong: 12 - 18 years out.   

And that is not taking into account all their other projects.

Don't hold me to this, but I think its reasonable timing.   

PS:- About the only reason I can think of building a 200 tonne payload capable LV at this point is to be able to transport masses of propellant up to fuel depots in LEO. And it would have to be completely reuseable.

I suspect their target is nearer term than that, but that’s pretty realistic overall

[Chris Huys]

So it seems Blue takes around 10 years to develop a vehicle, while SpaceX takes around 5 years.  Give or take a year or two.  Blue is much slower, but had come up with some good vehicles.

Depends where you put the finish line.
If you put it at first commercial flight, yeah.
If you put it at successfully reflying a stage, they'd both be around 10 years.

Which makes more sense is mostly context dependent.

Forgot spaceX falcon 1 development.

SpaceX
Falcon1
officially unveiled dec 2005

first testflight march 2006, failed on ascent
second testflight may 2007, failed also
third testflight aug 2008, failed also
fourth testflight sept 2008, successfull reached orbit
first commercial flight, razaksat satellite, july 2009 , successfull (flight 5 en final flight)
   
So if you take those flights in to account, then falcon 9 only took around 6 years to successfull recover first stage booster.

Or if you collapse development of, falcon 1 for spaceX, and new shepard for blue origin.
Then spaceX reached reuse of booster in 10 years, were it took blue origin 20 years.

[JEF_300]

So it seems Blue takes around 10 years to develop a vehicle, while SpaceX takes around 5 years.  Give or take a year or two.  Blue is much slower, but had come up with some good vehicles.

Depends where you put the finish line.
If you put it at first commercial flight, yeah.
If you put it at successfully reflying a stage, they'd both be around 10 years.

Which makes more sense is mostly context dependent.

Forgot spaceX falcon 1 development.

SpaceX
Falcon1
officially unveiled dec 2005

first testflight march 2006, failed on ascent
second testflight may 2007, failed also
third testflight aug 2008, failed also
fourth testflight sept 2008, successfull reached orbit
first commercial flight, razaksat satellite, july 2009 , successfull (flight 5 en final flight)
   
So if you take those flights in to account, then falcon 9 only took around 6 years to successfull recover first stage booster.

Or if you collapse development of, falcon 1 for spaceX, and new shepard for blue origin.
Then spaceX reached reuse of booster in 10 years, were it took blue origin 20 years.

SpaceX recovered a booster after 6 years, but they didn't refly a booster until another 2 years after that. So (presuming Blue reflies next year; we'll see), we'd be talking 8 years for SpaceX and 10 years for Blue, and I felt comfortable calling that, "both around 10 years".

Edit: Though, double checking it, it was actually more like a year a four months, which puts it outside the range where I feel comfortable conflating them. So SpaceX ~7 years, Blue ~10 years.

[TrevorMonty]

SpaceX recovered a booster after 6 years, but they didn't refly a booster until another 2 years after that. So (presuming Blue reflies next year; we'll see), we'd be talking 8 years for SpaceX and 10 years for Blue, and I felt comfortable calling that, "both around 10 years".

Edit: Though, double checking it, it was actually more like a year a four months, which puts it outside the range where I feel comfortable conflating them. So SpaceX ~7 years, Blue ~10 years.

Took while for SpaceX to improve heat sheilding so booster could be reflown plus customer were reluctant to use recovered booster.

Blue has been reflying boosters for few years now which is why recovered NG was in far better shape than first recovered F9. Customers are lot more acceptable of reuseable boosters now thanks to F9R.

[catdlr]

Please refrain from comparing with SpaceX and BO. This is the BO 9X4 thread. Why do we need to constantly argue about these two companies? Please concentrate on BO. I could very easily delete about half a dozen posts above this, or you can simply cease and refocus on BO. 

Tony

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Just a thought, and anyone working closer to the industry can correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this is more of an iteration than an entirely brand new rocket design?  The engines are already developed and will be upgraded independently of 9x4 production, on a time table that would be relatively quick compared to new rocket development.  Blue Origin should have a pretty good head start on basic architecture of the rocket, although I'm sure tooling for a larger diameter tank, fuel distribution and other accommodations for 9 engines versus 7 is no small challenge.  But if the 9x4 is an expansion of the same basic architecture, the 7x2 has already been developed, flown, and the landing system for the 7x2 has already been worked out.  Similar considerations on the 4 BE-3U powered second stage design.

I would expect this to factor in on a 'most likely' timeline for 9x4 development, compared to historical announcements of brand new rocket designs.

The 7x2 took a little over 8 years from announcement to first flight, 9 years from announcement to first successful booster landing, and that was an entirely new, large rocket.  So why are people predicting 10 years for 9x4? 

I'm going to guess they have the first 9x4 prototype flying in 6 years or so, not 10.  Could even be within 5 years.

Let me know if I'm off base here, I'm curious why this should be comparable to a brand new rocket design.

[spacenut]

If they develop the 9x4, would it be faster to do a 3 core heavy version as a New Armstrong, or just develop say a 12m New Armstrong with say 27 BE-4 engines?  I thought if they develop the 9x4 quickly it might be quicker to make it into a 3 core heavy version. 

[sstli2]

So why are people predicting 10 years for 9x4? 

I'm going to guess they have the first 9x4 prototype flying in 6 years or so, not 10.  Could even be within 5 years.

A lot of people are pessimistic about Blue's ability to develop a new design because of the long time it took for them to get to the first launch of New Glenn. Some of that concern is fair and warranted, [deleted].

However, as you note, it really isn't a significant departure from the 7x2. The whole point was to use the same engines, the same manufacturing tooling, and the only thing you actually need to develop is a new aft section for GS1 and GS2 and a new launch tower. Everything else stays the same. Pursuing anything else - 3 cores, larger diameter - completely misses the point.

They've increased their manufacturing cadence significantly since a few years ago and my baseline expectation is not even 6 years, let alone 10 years. My baseline expectation is that we'll see 9x4 fly in 2028.

[zubenelgenubi]

Moderator:
Well, some members don't read moderator warnings and lose their posts.

Please refrain from comparing with SpaceX and BO. This is the BO 9X4 thread. Why do we need to constantly argue about these two companies? Please concentrate on BO. I could very easily delete about half a dozen posts above this, or you can simply cease and refocus on BO. 

Tony

[Metalskin]

I've always been hopeful for BO and then disappointed by the slow pace that they have historically moved at.

That said, I think I agree with sstli2. Management has changed, there appears to be more focus now, and I'm not really sure if the past is a good indicator of the future. I doubt if it will be 10 years, I suspect somewhere between 3 and 6 years.

But I'm guessing. We've not seen yet the velocity of the company in designing a new rocket with the current management. I don't think there has been any clear indicator on how focused they will be on the new one. But I also agree that it's not a brand spanking new rocket, it feels more incremental in nature and that should reduce the time needed (in theory).

[envy887]

However, as you note, it really isn't a significant departure from the 7x2. The whole point was to use the same engines, the same manufacturing tooling, and the only thing you actually need to develop is a new aft section for GS1 and GS2 and a new launch tower. Everything else stays the same.

Not quite everything stays the same. Besides the engine sections on both stages, they need to develop new landing legs, there are significantly bigger strakes, there's something new on the interstage, and the PLF is new. As is the TEL, though you probably meant that with "launch tower". And fair amount of manufacturing infrastructure will probably have to be updated to handle the new longer tanks.

Blue hasn't provided a current status or a future timeline for 9x4, as far as I've seen. But their past projections haven't been particularly accurate; e.g. in 2016 they expected 7x2 to fly in 3 years, but it took almost 9 years.

I don't think it will take them 10 years, but until we see the new hardware being built I'd say 3 years is pretty optimistic.

[sstli2]

Besides the engine sections on both stages, they need to develop new landing legs,

I said "aft section", which includes the legs.

there are significantly bigger strakes

Sure, but these are fundamentally the same design. This does not strike me as material with regard to our present discussion of how long it would take to develop 9x4.

there's something new on the interstage

We cannot see the inside, but the "interstage" i.e. forward module externally appears the same and I believe what you are referring to is the new GS2 aft section I mentioned previously.

and the PLF is new

This is more material, however, they are already expanding their composite facility for payload fairings. Probably not the long pole.

As is the TEL, though you probably meant that with "launch tower".

The 9x4 was depicted without a transporter-erector and I believe that was an intentional omission, hence my wording.

And fair amount of manufacturing infrastructure will probably have to be updated to handle the new longer tanks.

Not really. A longer GS2 tank...is effectively just a GS1 tank. And the GS1 factory tooling is already variable length due to the need to hold the LH2 and LOX tank sections individually for friction stir welding and then the combined tank section. There is plenty of recent video of the factory that you can refer to, I don't see much needing to change due to tank length. And that was precisely the point.

But their past projections haven't been particularly accurate; e.g. in 2016 they expected 7x2 to fly in 3 years, but it took almost 9 years.

In 2016, they had a few hundred employees. They didn't cross 1,000 employees until almost 2018. Now they have over 10,000 employees. It's not the same company anymore.

until we see the new hardware being built

This is the thing with Blue Origin - you won't see it. This isn't like SpaceX where you can point a camera through the window of their factory or see a test tank at Massey's. We probably won't see it until it is far along.

[TrevorMonty]

But their past projections haven't been particularly accurate; e.g. in 2016 they expected 7x2 to fly in 3 years, but it took almost 9 years.

Blue's projections were accurate, what we didn't realise was they were based on Elon time.

[meekGee]

However, as you note, it really isn't a significant departure from the 7x2. The whole point was to use the same engines, the same manufacturing tooling, and the only thing you actually need to develop is a new aft section for GS1 and GS2 and a new launch tower. Everything else stays the same.

Not quite everything stays the same. Besides the engine sections on both stages, they need to develop new landing legs, there are significantly bigger strakes, there's something new on the interstage, and the PLF is new. As is the TEL, though you probably meant that with "launch tower". And fair amount of manufacturing infrastructure will probably have to be updated to handle the new longer tanks.

Blue hasn't provided a current status or a future timeline for 9x4, as far as I've seen. But their past projections haven't been particularly accurate; e.g. in 2016 they expected 7x2 to fly in 3 years, but it took almost 9 years.

I don't think it will take them 10 years, but until we see the new hardware being built I'd say 3 years is pretty optimistic.

The same way F9 1.1 was a "completely new rocket" according to most people, even though it was still 9 engines, only upgraded and arranged in a 8+1 circle instead of a 3x3 grid. 

And according to folks here, SS v3 is an entirely new thing too.

NG 9x4 is a significant upgrade.  It is not just a slightly modded NG 7x1.

[Robert_the_Doll]

We cannot see the inside, but the "interstage" i.e. forward module externally appears the same and I believe what you are referring to is the new GS2 aft section I mentioned previously.

He is erroneously referring to this structure I've outlined in red is actually added structure to the 9 x 4's GS2. Note the corrugation on the outside, which indicates a true boat tail compartment rather than just MLI blankets surrounding the BE-3U turbomachinery.

   

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

However, as you note, it really isn't a significant departure from the 7x2. The whole point was to use the same engines, the same manufacturing tooling, and the only thing you actually need to develop is a new aft section for GS1 and GS2 and a new launch tower. Everything else stays the same.

Not quite everything stays the same. Besides the engine sections on both stages, they need to develop new landing legs, there are significantly bigger strakes, there's something new on the interstage, and the PLF is new. As is the TEL, though you probably meant that with "launch tower". And fair amount of manufacturing infrastructure will probably have to be updated to handle the new longer tanks.

Blue hasn't provided a current status or a future timeline for 9x4, as far as I've seen. But their past projections haven't been particularly accurate; e.g. in 2016 they expected 7x2 to fly in 3 years, but it took almost 9 years.

I don't think it will take them 10 years, but until we see the new hardware being built I'd say 3 years is pretty optimistic.

The same way F9 1.1 was a "completely new rocket" according to most people, even though it was still 9 engines, only upgraded and arranged in a 8+1 circle instead of a 3x3 grid. 

And according to folks here, SS v3 is an entirely new thing too.

NG 9x4 is a significant upgrade.  It is not just a slightly modded NG 7x1.

2 comments:

1)  I thought we were keeping SpaceX out of this, and

2)  Please explain how this is a significant upgrade, not just slightly modded, at least to the degree that it provides a counter point to the more detailed discussion above.  Otherwise I'd counter that the semantics make little difference if the processes and tooling are mostly there already.

[envy887]

We cannot see the inside, but the "interstage" i.e. forward module externally appears the same and I believe what you are referring to is the new GS2 aft section I mentioned previously.

It appears that is correct. But that doesn't really change my larger point. They are roughly doubling the size of the rocket, so almost every single structural element probably needs to be redesigned for the higher loads. Starting with a working design helps, but it still needs to be fully updated and requalified throughout, part by part. And the manufacturing processes also needs to be qualified to make sure it can make the new design.

A longer GS2 tank...is effectively just a GS1 tank. And the GS1 factory tooling is already variable length due to the need to hold the LH2 and LOX tank sections individually for friction stir welding and then the combined tank section. There is plenty of recent video of the factory that you can refer to, I don't see much needing to change due to tank length. And that was precisely the point.

GS1 tanks are orthogrid. Aren't they going to skin and stringer for GS2? That's going to be an extremely expensive upper stage otherwise.

[meekGee]

However, as you note, it really isn't a significant departure from the 7x2. The whole point was to use the same engines, the same manufacturing tooling, and the only thing you actually need to develop is a new aft section for GS1 and GS2 and a new launch tower. Everything else stays the same.

Not quite everything stays the same. Besides the engine sections on both stages, they need to develop new landing legs, there are significantly bigger strakes, there's something new on the interstage, and the PLF is new. As is the TEL, though you probably meant that with "launch tower". And fair amount of manufacturing infrastructure will probably have to be updated to handle the new longer tanks.

Blue hasn't provided a current status or a future timeline for 9x4, as far as I've seen. But their past projections haven't been particularly accurate; e.g. in 2016 they expected 7x2 to fly in 3 years, but it took almost 9 years.

I don't think it will take them 10 years, but until we see the new hardware being built I'd say 3 years is pretty optimistic.

The same way F9 1.1 was a "completely new rocket" according to most people, even though it was still 9 engines, only upgraded and arranged in a 8+1 circle instead of a 3x3 grid. 

And according to folks here, SS v3 is an entirely new thing too.

NG 9x4 is a significant upgrade.  It is not just a slightly modded NG 7x1.

2 comments:

1)  I thought we were keeping SpaceX out of this, and

2)  Please explain how this is a significant upgrade, not just slightly modded, at least to the degree that it provides a counter point to the more detailed discussion above.  Otherwise I'd counter that the semantics make little difference if the processes and tooling are mostly there already.

Well thrust of the first stage goes up by about 30-40% (2 extra engines and added thrust) and number of engines goes up by 2, so the engine section gets pretty much redone.  Legs get moved to the outside, so the aft section gets redone.  Tank is stretched. So Aerodynamics now change.

Second stage changes too, even more aggressively.  But no legs or return aerodynamics.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're leaning into it, but (and that's where the comparisons come in) if F9.1 and SS v3 are considered major upgrades if not entirely new rockets, the I don't see how this one doesn't.

[JEF_300]

GS1 tanks are orthogrid. Aren't they going to skin and stringer for GS2? That's going to be an extremely expensive upper stage otherwise.

Supposedly, according to Bezos like a year+ ago, they'll be moving to "monocoque" tanks for the GS2. By which he seemed to mean neither orthogrid nor skin and stringer. Just skin, that's thick enough to handle the structural loads, and they just take the mass hit.

[Comga]

https://www.blueorigin.com/es-MX/new-glenn/9x4

Our First Super-Heavy Class Vehicle
More volume, performance, and affordability. 9x4 is nearly 400 feet tall. Its 8.7 meter fairing packs 29,000 cubic feet of volume, nearly 70% more than New Glenn's 7x2 configuration. 9x4 evolves the 7x2 variant, using existing designs, subsystems, manufacturing processes, and operations footprint.

Snip

Scaling off of the Blue Origin image of the bottoms of the 7x2 and 9x4 New Glenn first stages, and using 1.83 m as the diameter of the BE-4 engine bells, the diameters of the two engine modules are 8.3 and 9.9 meters.
One implication is that the packing density of 9x4 is actually 10% less than that of the 7x2, despite moving the legs from inside the diameter to outside.

[Brigantine]

It's also relevant where the centre of each outer engines is relative to the LOx tank wall.

Do the 8 engines happen to be at a radius of 3.5m? i.e. the engine bells reach out to ~4.415m. Sounds pretty close.

[EDIT to add: Post #500! I've nearly caught up to Falcon 9  ]

[spacenut]

Does anyone think they will attempt to make a 3 core heavy version instead of New Armstrong first?

[Brigantine]

Does anyone think they will attempt to make a 3 core heavy version instead of New Armstrong first?

To what end? You'll just get a less economical rocket.

I really don't think GS1 is an easy candidate to make into a 3-core version. Square-Cube law with the 7m diameter, and everything to do with the strakes and wider engine section.

I think a fully optimized 9x4 with orbital refueling is the end point of development, until there's a whole new paradigm.

I leave open the possibility for even further increasing the power of BE-4's and stretching 9x4 vertically. That is basically the replacement for New Armstrong. They reduced the scope. (IMO)

[Robert_the_Doll]

https://www.blueorigin.com/es-MX/new-glenn/9x4

Our First Super-Heavy Class Vehicle
More volume, performance, and affordability. 9x4 is nearly 400 feet tall. Its 8.7 meter fairing packs 29,000 cubic feet of volume, nearly 70% more than New Glenn's 7x2 configuration. 9x4 evolves the 7x2 variant, using existing designs, subsystems, manufacturing processes, and operations footprint.

Snip

Scaling off of the Blue Origin image of the bottoms of the 7x2 and 9x4 New Glenn first stages, and using 1.83 m as the diameter of the BE-4 engine bells, the diameters of the two engine modules are 8.3 and 9.9 meters.
One implication is that the packing density of 9x4 is actually 10% less than that of the 7x2, despite moving the legs from inside the diameter to outside.

You are slightly off. The 2018 Payload User's Guide states the 7 x 2 configuration aft module skirt is 8.5 meters wide:

https://yellowdragonblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/new_glenn_payload_users_guide_rev_c.pdf

1.2 SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS
1.2.1 First Stage

The aft module of the booster contains seven (7) BE-4 LOX/LNG engines with 1.71
x 104 kN (3,850,000 lbf) total thrust at sea level. The restartable BE-4 engines
provide precision thrust vector control and continuous deep throttle capability
to support propulsive deceleration and landing maneuvers, while featuring long
design life. The 8.5 m (28 ft) diameter engine skirt protects the engines from
atmospheric reentry conditions and contains six (6) stowed landing gear.

This would potentially make the 9 x 4 configuration 10.1 meters in diameter.

[Jim]

Supposedly, according to Bezos like a year+ ago, they'll be moving to "monocoque" tanks for the GS2. By which he seemed to mean neither orthogrid nor skin and stringer. Just skin, that's thick enough to handle the structural loads, and they just take the mass hit.

not really, see Centaur

[Jim]

He is erroneously referring to this structure I've outlined in red is actually added structure to the 9 x 4's GS2. Note the corrugation on the outside, which indicates a true boat tail compartment rather than just MLI blankets surrounding the BE-3U turbomachinery. 

T

No, that is not a boat tail.  A boat tail is tapered from wide to narrow.  That structure would be part of the thrust structure.

[StraumliBlight]

This would potentially make the 9 x 4 configuration 10.1 meters in diameter.

I calculated the same diameter from 3d modelling.

[StraumliBlight]

9x4 roles are starting to appear:

Structural Design Engineer II - New Glenn Upper Stage [Dec 11]

This role supports the development of the 2nd Generation of New Glenn, a heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle capable of routinely carrying people and payloads to low-Earth orbit, geostationary transfer orbit, cislunar, and beyond.  This position will be directly involved in the design of the next progression of New Glenn Payload Accommodations hardware, including the larger diameter 8.7M payload fairing and adapters.

Might be for a reusable second stage or a deorbit kit:

Mechanical Systems Engineer II - New Glenn Upper Stage [Dec 11]

As part of a small, passionate and accomplished team of experts, you will support the design, development, and test of launch vehicle mechanical and decelerator systems. Your primary focus will be supporting re-entry and mechanical system design development that are critical to enabling safe, reliable, and cost-effective spaceflight.

[...]

Participate in the entire design cycle of aero-decelerator and mechanical subsystems, including conceptual and detailed design, trade studies, structural analysis, development testing and qualification.

[...]

Experience in aerospace designs such as separation systems and/or deployable devices.
Experience with re-entry decelerator systems and devices such as trailing parachutes, inflatables, etc.

[sstli2]

I think it's likelier for re-entry and recovery of fairings, given the mention of parachutes.

They have been hiring for 9x4 roles for a while, they just didn't put it in the job description until now, aside from a mistake early this year that was well-noted in this forum.

[JEF_300]

Supposedly, according to Bezos like a year+ ago, they'll be moving to "monocoque" tanks for the GS2. By which he seemed to mean neither orthogrid nor skin and stringer. Just skin, that's thick enough to handle the structural loads, and they just take the mass hit.

not really, see Centaur

No. Bezos, in this case, was talking about aluminum-lithium tanks, and using them on a slot-in upgrade to the current GS2. It cannot possibly be a centaur-like pressure stabilized situation.

[briantipton]

Supposedly, according to Bezos like a year+ ago, they'll be moving to "monocoque" tanks for the GS2. By which he seemed to mean neither orthogrid nor skin and stringer. Just skin, that's thick enough to handle the structural loads, and they just take the mass hit.

not really, see Centaur

No. Bezos, in this case, was talking about aluminum-lithium tanks, and using them on a slot-in upgrade to the current GS2. It cannot possibly be a centaur-like pressure stabilized situation.

Why not? Monocoque construction works really well in stainless steel, but it can be applied to aluminum tanks as well. I believe Falcon 9 Lox tanks are monocoque.

[JEF_300]

Supposedly, according to Bezos like a year+ ago, they'll be moving to "monocoque" tanks for the GS2. By which he seemed to mean neither orthogrid nor skin and stringer. Just skin, that's thick enough to handle the structural loads, and they just take the mass hit.

not really, see Centaur

No. Bezos, in this case, was talking about aluminum-lithium tanks, and using them on a slot-in upgrade to the current GS2. It cannot possibly be a centaur-like pressure stabilized situation.

Why not? Monocoque construction works really well in stainless steel, but it can be applied to aluminum tanks as well. I believe Falcon 9 Lox tanks are monocoque.

Re-read my posts. What I am saying GS2 WILL be made monocoque, and WON'T be pressure stabilized like Centaur. Making it like Centaur would require totally different support infrastructure to keep it structurally stable during ground operations, making it functionally a totally new upper stage, not an upgrade.

[briantipton]

Supposedly, according to Bezos like a year+ ago, they'll be moving to "monocoque" tanks for the GS2. By which he seemed to mean neither orthogrid nor skin and stringer. Just skin, that's thick enough to handle the structural loads, and they just take the mass hit.

not really, see Centaur

No. Bezos, in this case, was talking about aluminum-lithium tanks, and using them on a slot-in upgrade to the current GS2. It cannot possibly be a centaur-like pressure stabilized situation.

Why not? Monocoque construction works really well in stainless steel, but it can be applied to aluminum tanks as well. I believe Falcon 9 Lox tanks are monocoque.

Re-read my posts. What I am saying GS2 WILL be made monocoque, and WON'T be pressure stabilized like Centaur. Making it like Centaur would require totally different support infrastructure to keep it structurally stable during ground operations, making it functionally a totally new upper stage, not an upgrade.

You're right, I mis-interpreted your post.

[deltaV]

https://www.blueorigin.com/es-MX/new-glenn/9x4

Powered by four BE-3U engines, 9x4’s second stage carries 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 14 metric tons to Geostationary Orbit Direct, and 20 metric tons to Trans Lunar Injection.

Do we know if those figures are with the first stage reused or expended? (Companies sometimes quote expendable performance even for vehicles that are planned to be reused to make their vehicle look better.)

I bet those figures are expendable for the following reason: 9x4's LEO/GEO payload ratio is 70/14=5.0, which is comparable to almost-three-stage expendable vehicles' ratios such as Vulcan VC6's 3.9, Vulcan VC2's 5.4 and Falcon Heavy expendable's 6.8. Two stage vehicles usually have a much larger ratio especially with first stage reuse, e.g. Falcon ASDS and Starship have infinite ratios since they can't do direct GEO and 7x2's ratio (dunno if it's which is with reuse) is 38870/1440=27.0. (The payloads I used to calculate the ratios for the other vehicles are from https://elvperf.ksc.nasa.gov/Pages/Query.aspx viewed many months ago using 200 km LEO, I forget the inclination, and using C3=24 km^2/s^2 as an approximation of direct GEO since that takes roughly the same 4.27 km/s beyond LEO delta-vee.)

If those figures are expendable then 9x4 has roughly half the capability of SLS when expended (SLS block 1B can do 42 tonnes to TLI) so 9x4 is Falcon Heavy class, not SLS/Saturn V/Starship class. Still, 70 tonnes to LEO expendable and some fraction of that reusable is plenty of performance for every plausible need in the next few decades including crewed exploration of the moon and Mars. IMO unless the US government makes a silly requirement for a larger launcher Blue should probably not design any more vehicles (e.g. New Armstrong) until Blue gets second stage reuse working.

[meekGee]

https://www.blueorigin.com/es-MX/new-glenn/9x4

Powered by four BE-3U engines, 9x4’s second stage carries 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit, 14 metric tons to Geostationary Orbit Direct, and 20 metric tons to Trans Lunar Injection.

Do we know if those figures are with the first stage reused or expended? (Companies sometimes quote expendable performance even for vehicles that are planned to be reused to make their vehicle look better.)

I bet those figures are expendable for the following reason: 9x4's LEO/GEO payload ratio is 70/14=5.0, which is comparable to almost-three-stage expendable vehicles' ratios such as Vulcan VC6's 3.9, Vulcan VC2's 5.4 and Falcon Heavy expendable's 6.8. Two stage vehicles usually have a much larger ratio especially with first stage reuse, e.g. Falcon ASDS and Starship have infinite ratios since they can't do direct GEO and 7x2's ratio (dunno if it's with reuse) is 38870/1440=27.0. (The payloads I used to calculate the ratios for the other vehicles are from https://elvperf.ksc.nasa.gov/Pages/Query.aspx viewed many months ago using 200 km LEO, I forget the inclination, and using C3=24 km^2/s^2 as an approximation of direct GEO since that takes roughly the same 4.27 km/s beyond LEO delta-vee.)

If those figures are expendable then 9x4 has roughly half the capability of SLS when expended (SLS block 1B can do 42 tonnes to TLI) so 9x4 is Falcon Heavy class, not SLS/Saturn V/Starship class. Still, 70 tonnes to LEO expendable and some fraction of that reusable is plenty of performance for every plausible need in the next few decades including crewed exploration of the moon and Mars. IMO unless the US government makes a silly requirement for a larger launcher Blue should probably not design any more vehicles (e.g. New Armstrong) until Blue gets second stage reuse working.

"plenty of performance for every plausible need in the next few decades"?

Forget plausible. It doesn't have enough performance for ANY of the currently discussed plans, EXCEPT for Artemis, maybe.

It's not enough to compete with Starlink, not enough for orbital compute, not enough for Mars colony, or even for a permanent moon base.

Even Starship, which is 5 times larger and rapidly reusable, needs to operate in the 10s of launches per day to achieve these goals.

--

The 9x4 is similar to FH (both capacity and mode of operation), it's just brand spanking new and not a hack like FH was.

If it weren't for Starship, and had it showed up 5-10 years ago, NG would have had many advantages over Falcon, for projects that were on the table then. (Like initial Starlink)

But that's a different timeline. Being a tad better than FH or SLS is not remotely good enough right now.

[deltaV]

Current New Glenn is ~7 t to TLI per NASA LSP. Extrapolating based on the 49% booster thrust increase bumps that to 10.5 t. There's a slight increase in performance from improved mass ratios from subcooling, and from increased upper stage thrust, but neither of those seem like they would get it to 20 t.

NASA LSP ground rules for Blue Origin includes "First stage recovery has been accounted for in the performance capability." As I noted in my last post the 9x4 figures appear to be expendable. This is probably why the high energy performance is much better for 9x4 than in LSP.

[leeloodallasmultipass]

Since Blue pitched it for constellation deploying and all future plans require much higher cadence, it is unreasonable to assume 94 will be expanded(would be too expensive). Honestly the claim smells cope.

[meekGee]

Since Blue pitched it for constellation deploying and all future plans require much higher cadence, it is unreasonable to assume 94 will be expanded(would be too expensive). Honestly the claim smells cope.

How they use it is up to them.  It still lifts off with only 9x 500 kLbf engines, and even if they find another 30% in engine upgrades, that's the basic limit.

It's an FH (5,000 kLbf) equivalent. A lot more elegant, no argument there, but still basically the same thing.

As for Starship, New Glenner is a 9x4, not a 35x9.

So the upshot is:  Full reusability is possible (like it was for FH) but not terribly alluring. Low altitude constellations don't benefit much from the high ISP second stage.

Maybe high altitude constellations (orbital compute) could use a high ISP second stage, but NG's too small for that.

The game has shifted a lot in the last few years. The only launcher ready for the new game is SS/SH.  NG, 7x2 or 9x4, is fighting an old war.

[jongoff]

Do we know if those figures are with the first stage reused or expended? (Companies sometimes quote expendable performance even for vehicles that are planned to be reused to make their vehicle look better.)

I checked with our contacts at Blue Origin when the news was released last month, and they confirmed that those 9x4 numbers assume first stage recovery. In fact, it sounds like they might not even be open to selling a fully-expendable mission. I was surprised because when they told me about 9x4 back at Space Symposium, they were targeting more like 45mT with first stage reuse.

~Jon

[deltaV]

I checked with our contacts at Blue Origin when the news was released last month, and they confirmed that those 9x4 numbers assume first stage recovery.

Thanks for that insider info. If that's the case why is 9x4 so much better at TLI than the NASA LSP figures for 7x2, as pointed out by envy887:

Current New Glenn is ~7 t to TLI per NASA LSP. Extrapolating based on the 49% booster thrust increase bumps that to 10.5 t. There's a slight increase in performance from improved mass ratios from subcooling, and from increased upper stage thrust, but neither of those seem like they would get it to 20 t.

[JEF_300]

Current New Glenn is ~7 t to TLI per NASA LSP. Extrapolating based on the 49% booster thrust increase bumps that to 10.5 t. There's a slight increase in performance from improved mass ratios from subcooling, and from increased upper stage thrust, but neither of those seem like they would get it to 20 t.

You also have to account for the square-cube law, meaning that as your rocket stage gets bigger, it also gets more efficient (in the payload fraction sense). So a 49% increase in thrust, with a matching tank stretch, will actually increase the payload by more that 49%.

Between the rocket equation being inherently exponential anyway, and the particulars of staging, this can (circumstantially) end up effecting the final payload numbers by a lot more than you'd intuitively think it would.

Also, keep in mind that the upper stage is growing more than the first stage is; a more than 100% increase in thrust from the current GS2, in fact. This means the ∆V split between the stages is probably different on 9x4 than 7x2, and the staging point is probably different, and that makes using 7x2 as a starting point for 9x4 calculations... dicey.

[deltaV]

Also, keep in mind that the upper stage is growing more than the first stage is; a more than 100% increase in thrust from the current GS2, in fact. This means the ∆V split between the stages is probably different on 9x4 than 7x2, and the staging point is probably different, and that makes using 7x2 as a starting point for 9x4 calculations... dicey.

I agree that the larger percentage growth in the second stage thrust than the first stage thrust will change things. But a larger second stage should make 9x4 good at LEO and 7x2 good at high energy. That's the opposite of what we're observing comparing Blue's 9x4 numbers with NASA LSP New Glenn.

[deltaV]

Cross post from the BE-7 thread:

It would really make sense to use this for a new 3rd stage on top of New Glenn 9x4, for high energy launches:

4 BE-3Us in the second stage give almost 400 tonnes of thrust, which gives very small gravity losses with huge second stage and allows lifting 70 tonnes to LEO, but the tanks of this huge second stage are quite heavy and the tank weight eats payload to higher orbits.

But, lets add a smallish third stage with single BE-7.

This stage would only stage at orbital speed, eliminating gravity loss, so the very weak engine would not matter much (only losing small amount of performance due to less oeberth effect)

70 tonnes of initial mass , 30 tonnes of propellant, 40 tonnes of final mass (something like 3.5 tonnes of mass for the stage  and 36.5 tonnes of payload) would get from earth to GTO.

Or for TLI, 28-tonne payload would give delta-v of 3 km/s for this stage. As the staging would happen slightly higher at slightly elliptic orbit due to only 61.5 tonnes of payload weight lifted by the second stage, this should be enough for TLI.

This is about the same than what SLS Block 1 can lift to TLI.

Or, towards Mars: 22-tonne payload would mean delta-v of 3.5 km/s for this stage.
the remaining 300 m/s is easily done be earlier stages, due to only 55.5 tonnes (instead of 70 tonnes) of weight lifted by the second stage.

This is much more than Falcon Heavys 17 tonnes towards Mars.

Could even launch decent-size probes towards outer solar system without slow complicated gravity slings, for example 5-tonne payload would get delta-v of 6.8 km/s.

and as the second stage would only need lift 38.5 tonnes, the staging would happen at considerably higher that LEO, total delta-v might be over LEO+8 km/s

And this is for mass about 6 times bigger than the Voyager probes.


The stage would have quite a long burn time (about 45 minutes)

This stage should also be quite cheap.

[Steve G]

My guess is that any third stage would be a derivative of something already under development rather than a clean-sheet design. Such as based on the Cislunar Transporter with 3 BE-7 engines, or the propulsion system of either of its two lunar landers. The Cislunar Transporter IS the upper stage for large lunar payloads, so a third stage would only find use for non-heavy lunar payloads.

[sstli2]

This discussion about capabilities is hard to do in the abstract. You really need to dig down into the details.

I've been working on a spreadsheet, that I first debuted on the New Armstrong thread, to try to put together an estimate of what the delta-V capabilities of New Glenn actually are. Indeed, there are plenty of assumptions baked into this spreadsheet, and changing any of them by even a bit moves the numbers substantially.

I've linked the latest version of my spreadsheet here. I don't want to put too much emphasis in the numbers I came up with, because there are huge error bounds around them. Instead, I'd highlight some general conclusions from this exercise:

- The current 7x2 is dominated by gravity losses, and it's hard to get the TWR or the TWR/gravity loss curve into a place where that wouldn't be the case¹. I think the current performance is probably severely limited by this.
- The 7x2 with engine upgrades reverses these gravity losses and brings the performance closer to nominal.
- No amount of tinkering with assumptions gets the 9x4 performance close to 70 tons. Best I can do is 50 tons. Therefore, I believe that the target capability of 70 tons to LEO is based on performance characteristics (engine thrust improvements, dry mass optimizations) that are beyond what has been publicly shared to date.

Feel free to play around with this spreadsheet or the assumptions, if you think you can do a better job than I did.

¹ Interestingly, underfilling the propellant tanks also eliminates much of these gravity losses, and also brings the performance closer to nominal.

[spacenut]

Huge rocket for the engine thrust and size.  How much do anyone think they can improve the thrust of the engines? 

[sstli2]

Huge rocket for the engine thrust and size.  How much do anyone think they can improve the thrust of the engines?

The RD-180, the prototypical ox-rich staged combustion engine, has almost exactly double the chamber pressure of the BE-4.

And while thrust depends on a whole host of other factors as well, there's a lot of room there for scaling. They are targeting 640,000 lbf in 2026, but even a thrust level of 750,000 lbf or more I think is well within feasibility.

That said, I don't think this is a matter of increasing thrust indefinitely. The 9x4 is by my estimate a TWR of ~1.3 and a hypothetical 750k lbf BE-4 would imply a TWR of over 1.6. You're well past the point of diminishing returns with respect to gravity losses and what New Glenn really needs at that point are larger tanks to hold more propellant and improve the mass fraction and thus payload to orbit.

[deltaV]

I've linked the latest version of my spreadsheet here.

Thanks for that spreadsheet.

IIUC your 9x4 GS2 model has a propellant mass fraction (PMF) of 244/(244+48) = 84%. That's a lot worse than usual for hydrogen stages, e.g. Centaur V is 54/59.4 = 91%, SLS core stage is 987/(987+98) = 91%, EUS is 129/(129+14)=90%, and Delta IV common booster cores were 1-27/226 = 88%. Why the low PMF?

[sstli2]

I've linked the latest version of my spreadsheet here.

Thanks for that spreadsheet.

IIUC your 9x4 GS2 model has a propellant mass fraction (PMF) of 244/(244+48) = 84%. That's a lot worse than usual for hydrogen stages, e.g. Centaur V is 54/59.4 = 91%, SLS core stage is 987/(987+98) = 91%, EUS is 129/(129+14)=90%, and Delta IV common booster cores were 1-27/226 = 88%. Why the low PMF?

I have a very high dry mass estimate (30 tons) to start with, and then I take the aft portion of that (15 tons) and double it for the 4 engines versus 2 engines. That might be overly conservative as some portion of the aft dry mass is the thrust structure and RCS thrusters.

I'll make two changes. I'm going to revise down the base stage dry mass to 25 tons. And I'll revise the aft dry mass scaling factor to 1.75 instead of 2 from 7x2 to the 9x4. After doing so, I have a PMF of 87%, which should be less of an outlier. The URL should auto-update with these changes.

Edit: Also fixed a formula issue with recovery propellant estimate. This counter-acts the above changes, so the broader themes still hold.

[DreamyPickle]

Are there any near-term payloads that don't fit on 7x2?

For a very long time a big problem for the development of larger rockets was the lack of demand. Falcon Heavy only flies once or twice a year and is comparable to 7x2.

What is the business case for Blue investing in a larger rocket?

[sstli2]

Are there any near-term payloads that don't fit on 7x2?

For a very long time a big problem for the development of larger rockets was the lack of demand. Falcon Heavy only flies once or twice a year and is comparable to 7x2.

What is the business case for Blue investing in a larger rocket?

It's not a question of "doesn't fit", it's a question of how much fits. Both Amazon LEO and AST SpaceMobile would benefit from it. Artemis refueling ops would also benefit from it.

Falcon Heavy presumably doesn't fly often because the logistics of launching and recovering it were too onerous for the regular cadence of Starlink.

[DanClemmensen]

Falcon Heavy presumably doesn't fly often because the logistics of launching and recovering it were too onerous for the regular cadence of Starlink.

For constellations, the metric is cost per satellite for identical satellites. F9 with ASDS recovery is cheaper per-satellite than FH for Starlink V2 mini. If FH were more effective for V2 mini, they would have improved the logistics.

Do we know the cost for 7x2 and 9x4 for Amazon LEO sats?

To normalsize, you must factor in the delivered user data rate per satellite. If a V3 delivers 20x the BW of a V2 mini, a Starship delivering 60 Starlink V3 would be about 40 times the delivered BW of an F9 delivering 30 V2 mini

[ZachF]

This discussion about capabilities is hard to do in the abstract. You really need to dig down into the details.

I've been working on a spreadsheet, that I first debuted on the New Armstrong thread, to try to put together an estimate of what the delta-V capabilities of New Glenn actually are. Indeed, there are plenty of assumptions baked into this spreadsheet, and changing any of them by even a bit moves the numbers substantially.

I've linked the latest version of my spreadsheet here. I don't want to put too much emphasis in the numbers I came up with, because there are huge error bounds around them. Instead, I'd highlight some general conclusions from this exercise:

- The current 7x2 is dominated by gravity losses, and it's hard to get the TWR or the TWR/gravity loss curve into a place where that wouldn't be the case¹. I think the current performance is probably severely limited by this.
- The 7x2 with engine upgrades reverses these gravity losses and brings the performance closer to nominal.
- No amount of tinkering with assumptions gets the 9x4 performance close to 70 tons. Best I can do is 50 tons. Therefore, I believe that the target capability of 70 tons to LEO is based on performance characteristics (engine thrust improvements, dry mass optimizations) that are beyond what has been publicly shared to date.

Feel free to play around with this spreadsheet or the assumptions, if you think you can do a better job than I did.

¹ Interestingly, underfilling the propellant tanks also eliminates much of these gravity losses, and also brings the performance closer to nominal.

I've done calcs and seen similar things, my guess is that the 7x2 and 9x4 performance numbers of 45t and 70t both need prop densification to reach those goals. This will increase first stage propellant by ~8%.

[JEF_300]

Has Blue ever clarified exactly which propellants they are going to supercool? Because I had been assuming just the LOX and LNG, but "densified" LH2 could pick up a fair bit of the slack here, especially when compounded with everything else.

[ZachF]

Has Blue ever clarified exactly which propellants they are going to supercool? Because I had been assuming just the LOX and LNG, but "densified" LH2 could pick up a fair bit of the slack here, especially when compounded with everything else.

Hydrogen melts at 14K and boils at 20K which is a pretty tiny temp window so my guess is probably not

[jongoff]

Has Blue ever clarified exactly which propellants they are going to supercool? Because I had been assuming just the LOX and LNG, but "densified" LH2 could pick up a fair bit of the slack here, especially when compounded with everything else.

Hydrogen melts at 14K and boils at 20K which is a pretty tiny temp window so my guess is probably not

Some of my ex-NASA KSC friends used to work on LH2 densification. It's hard, but you can get an even bigger density increase (up to 20% IIRC) than you can with LOX or Methane, and given LH2 tanks typically being >3x the size of the LOX tank, the juice may very well be worth the squeeze.

~Jon

[deltaV]

I'll make two changes. I'm going to revise down the base stage dry mass to 25 tons. And I'll revise the aft dry mass scaling factor to 1.75 instead of 2 from 7x2 to the 9x4. After doing so, I have a PMF of 87%, which should be less of an outlier. The URL should auto-update with these changes.

Edit: Also fixed a formula issue with recovery propellant estimate. This counter-acts the above changes, so the broader themes still hold.

Thanks for those updates.

If we add 4267 m/s (that’s the delta vee from a 200 km 28.5 degree inclination LEO to GEO) to the target delta vee in sstli2’s updated spreadsheet it gives a 9x4 payload of *negative* 9 tonnes to GEO. It’s possible to tweak the spreadsheet to get a positive payload but I don’t see a plausible way to get the 14 tonnes that Blue claimed without also getting much more than the 70 tonnes to LEO Blue claimed. I reached the same conclusion using my own back-of-the-envelope calculations, so this isn’t just a bug with sstli2’s spreadsheet.

The best way I see to resolve this discrepancy is if the 9x4 numbers Blue quoted are for a vehicle with more than two stages. The most natural third stage for 9x4 would be something similar to Vulcan’s Centaur V but using BE-7s (probably based on cis-lunar transporter and/or Blue Moon tech) (see also hkultala's post that I recently cross-posted), but such a stage would likely give us the opposite problem of performing too well direct GEO relative to LEO. So maybe they’re assuming a lower performing but easy to develop third stage such as something hypergolic using Blue Ring tech, a lightly modified Blue Moon mark 1 (which is smaller than optimal), or Impulse Space’s Helios.

[deltaV]

Are there any near-term payloads that don't fit on 7x2?

For a very long time a big problem for the development of larger rockets was the lack of demand. Falcon Heavy only flies once or twice a year and is comparable to 7x2.

What is the business case for Blue investing in a larger rocket?

It's harder for outsiders to estimate business cases than mass to orbit but here are some guesses anyway.

1. In-space assembly is possible but inconvenient and expensive. It's often easier for customers to launch fewer bigger payloads. This helps with Blue's internal projects such as Artemis and moon base. It also helps encourage external customers with a big payload to design for both 9x4 and Starship instead of targeting Starship alone.

2. Many space use cases such as Starlink-style constellations require hundreds of launches of a 7x2-sized rocket. That's definitely possible - Falcon did it - but cutting the number of launches is likely helpful, especially if non-space folks get annoyed about rocket launches closing airspace all the time and pass new laws or regulations to limit airspace closures.

3. Full reuse will inevitably substantially reduce performance. So they may be building a slightly bigger rocket than they need today so that it will be the right size once they get full reuse working.

[sstli2]

I've done calcs and seen similar things, my guess is that the 7x2 and 9x4 performance numbers of 45t and 70t both need prop densification to reach those goals. This will increase first stage propellant by ~8%.

My spreadsheet includes densified LNG, although it does not include densified LOX. I updated it to include densified LOX at 1.225 mt/m3. I also refined the gravity loss/TWR curve. Payload figures look a little better, but still same overall theme.

[sstli2]

I went ahead and modeled a third stage. Spreadsheet URL updated. All of this remains assumption dependent, so here are the key assumptions:

- BE-7 at 460s specific impulse
- Mixture ratio of 5.8-to-1, comparable to the RL10
- Very mass efficient with a 91% PMF, comparable to the Centaur V (consistent with the prior leaked render of a carbon composite + truss third stage)
- 3 tons of LH2, 17.4 tons of LOX (similar in footprint to Blue Moon MK1), and a dry mass of only 2 tons

As expected, this does wonders for the 9x4 high-energy performance. I have about 28 tons to GTO, 17 tons direct-to-GEO, and 22 to TLI.

It also improves the LEO performance, bringing it to 67 tons. Granted, a 2 ton GS3 might have some issues with in-space propulsion such a large payload. At least on the ground, they could use a special payload adapter to run the payload structural loads around the GS3 and to GS2 tank walls.

As always, I provide the caveat to take all these numbers with a grain of salt, as minor changes in assumptions can affect them greatly. But this exercise is useful to identify broader themes. And one of the main themes here is that it would appear all 3 payload figures for the 9x4 - LEO, GEO, and TLI - are dependent on a 3rd stage.¹

¹ There are other possibilities, but they do not seem likely. The two ways to significantly improve the payload of all versions would be to increase specific impulse and to reduce dry mass on the upper stage. The former is not likely because they are increasing thrust on the BE-3U and specific impulse would run counter to that. The latter is not likely because well, it's difficult, and it's not clear that moving to monocoque would be more mass-efficient than orthogrid. Balloon tanks might, and carbon fiber tanks might, but it's not obvious either of those are in the plan for GS2 (unlike GS3).

[greybeardengineer]

Some of my ex-NASA KSC friends used to work on LH2 densification. It's hard, but you can get an even bigger density increase (up to 20% IIRC) than you can with LOX or Methane, and given LH2 tanks typically being >3x the size of the LOX tank, the juice may very well be worth the squeeze.

Is the 20% end of density increase still pure liquid or is the liquid/ice mixture called "slush LH2" involved? If so, what is the high end of subcooled liquid LH2?

[sstli2]

Some of my ex-NASA KSC friends used to work on LH2 densification. It's hard, but you can get an even bigger density increase (up to 20% IIRC) than you can with LOX or Methane, and given LH2 tanks typically being >3x the size of the LOX tank, the juice may very well be worth the squeeze.

Is the 20% end of density increase still pure liquid or is the liquid/ice mixture called "slush LH2" involved? If so, what is the high end of subcooled liquid LH2?

FWIW NASA has a whitepaper that covers LH2 densification: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20180000059/downloads/20180000059.pdf

[greybeardengineer]

FWIW NASA has a whitepaper that covers LH2 densification: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20180000059/downloads/20180000059.pdf

No that paper describes LH2 subcooling to reduce/delay boil off and extend mission duration. No density increase figures or graphs are included and no mention of that at all as a goal.

[deltaV]

And one of the main themes here is that it would appear all 3 payload figures for the 9x4 - LEO, GEO, and TLI - are dependent on a 3rd stage.¹

For GEO I definitely agree. For LEO you're likely right but I'm not yet convinced we've proven it. I don't see how to rule out the possibility that the LEO figure is with two stages and GEO is with a third stage that's not optimized. Many changes in assumptions affect LEO and GEO performance roughly proportionally so the GEO/LEO ratio is a lot harder to reconcile with modeling than LEO alone is.

¹ There are other possibilities, but they do not seem likely. The two ways to significantly improve the payload of all versions would be to increase specific impulse and to reduce dry mass on the upper stage.

The other other possibility that seems at all plausible to me is if the second stage is actually using some form of parallel staging, e.g. something similar to what's commonly done in first stages such as Falcon Heavy or asparagus staging. (Of course such an arrangement would arguably have 3+ stages depending on your definition of "stage".) Edit: but this is inconsistent with the renders on https://www.blueorigin.com/es-MX/new-glenn/9x4 which show a traditional second stage.

[sstli2]

For GEO I definitely agree. For LEO you're likely right but I'm not yet convinced we've proven it. I don't see how to rule out the possibility that the LEO figure is with two stages and GEO is with a third stage that's not optimized.

The main assumption that moves the needle is dry mass. I start at 25 ton GS2 dry mass and with the 2 extra engines and ~8m of extra tank I end up at a 36 ton dry mass. Have to get rid of about 17 tons somewhere there. Maybe, but I'd need some kind of more precise color on GS2 dry mass to try that. Everything I've seen and heard so far point to it being an inherently heavy stage.

But what really intrigues me is this anecdote:

I was surprised because when they told me about 9x4 back at Space Symposium, they were targeting more like 45mT with first stage reuse.

And one fitting explanation for this is that they originally were targeting a quasi-50 ton vehicle with two stages - which jives just fine with the current estimates - and that the introduction of a GS3 is what changed the math. Besides, if you're Blue Origin, and you're marketing high-energy payload capability contingent on a GS3, why wouldn't you make the numbers look nice and do it on LEO too? After all, Falcon Heavy did something similar with their advertised 63 tons to LEO.

[hkultala]

This discussion about capabilities is hard to do in the abstract. You really need to dig down into the details.

I've been working on a spreadsheet, that I first debuted on the New Armstrong thread, to try to put together an estimate of what the delta-V capabilities of New Glenn actually are. Indeed, there are plenty of assumptions baked into this spreadsheet, and changing any of them by even a bit moves the numbers substantially.

I've linked the latest version of my spreadsheet here. I don't want to put too much emphasis in the numbers I came up with, because there are huge error bounds around them. Instead, I'd highlight some general conclusions from this exercise:

- The current 7x2 is dominated by gravity losses, and it's hard to get the TWR or the TWR/gravity loss curve into a place where that wouldn't be the case¹. I think the current performance is probably severely limited by this.
- The 7x2 with engine upgrades reverses these gravity losses and brings the performance closer to nominal.
- No amount of tinkering with assumptions gets the 9x4 performance close to 70 tons. Best I can do is 50 tons. Therefore, I believe that the target capability of 70 tons to LEO is based on performance characteristics (engine thrust improvements, dry mass optimizations) that are beyond what has been publicly shared to date.

Feel free to play around with this spreadsheet or the assumptions, if you think you can do a better job than I did.

¹ Interestingly, underfilling the propellant tanks also eliminates much of these gravity losses, and also brings the performance closer to nominal.

Couple of things noticed:

1) There is clearly something wrong with your mass numbers if you think current 7x2 variant has T/W ratio of only 1.05 on liftoff. Based on the video footage of the launch it was somewhere close 1.1 or slightly over 1.1, but much more than 1.05.

Maybe your stage 1 empty mass is too high?

2)
Your specific impulse for the updated BE-3U is too low.
Current BE-3U is already supposed to be 445s instead of 440s and I don't expect to see the upgraded variant to have smaller isp

with 445s for the updated BE-3U, LEO payload of 9x4 rises by 4 tonnes.

3) Assuming that uprated BE-4 would have smaller isp than current version is a bad assumption. Typically, when the pressure increases, also the isp increases slightly.

So, keep the updated BE-4 isp the same as the original and LEO payload of 9x4 rises by another 4 tonnes, now it is at 66 tonnes.

4) Your propellant mass for second stage of 9x4 is clearly not enough.

Increase the length of second stage to 36 meters and LEO payload goes up up 7 tonnes.
Make it 40 meters and LEO payload goes up by another 3 tonnes.

Now we are at 76 tonnes LEO for the 2-stage 9x4 and 48 tonnes for the uprated 7x2.

[sstli2]

Couple of things noticed:

1) There is clearly something wrong with your mass numbers if you think current 7x2 variant has T/W ratio of only 1.05 on liftoff. Based on the video footage of the launch it was somewhere close 1.1 or slightly over 1.1, but much more than 1.05.

Maybe your stage 1 empty mass is too high?

2)
Your specific impulse for the updates BE-3U is too low.
Current BE-3U is already supposed to be 445s instead of 440s and I don't expect to see the upgraded variant to have smaller isp

with 445s for the updated BE-3U, LEO payload of 9x4 rises by 4 tonnes.

3) Assuming that uprated BE-4 would have smaller isp than current version is a bad assumption. Typically, when the pressure increases, also the isp increases slightly.

So, keep the updated BE-4 isp the same as the original and LEO payload of 9x4 rises by another 4 tonnes, now it is at 66 tonnes.

4) Your propellant mass for second stage of 9x4 is clearly not enough.

Increase the length of second stage to 36 meters and LEO payload goes up up 7 tonnes.
Make it 40 meters and LEO payload goes up by another 3 tonnes.

Now we are at 76 tonnes LEO for the 2-stage 9x4 and 48 tonnes for the uprated 7x2.

Thanks for all the feedback. I'm trying to improve this spreadsheet as more info comes out.

1 - I agree it's a questionable number, but there aren't many ways to fix this. One way would be reduce dry mass as you said, but how would you anchor this number to something objective? It's definitely a heavy stage, but how heavy? I went back and forth on this, compared to some other stages, and concluded that it's probably quite heavy. The strakes, fins, BE4s, high number of landing legs, HTP thrusters, structure, etc. Happy to change this from 125 tons but I don't have a great sense of what it should be instead and why another value would be better.

Another consideration is that there's 5.6 seconds of burn before the hold downs release. By the time NG clears the tower it's burned off quite a bit of propellant and that very low TWR probably creeps closer to 1.10 by then. Napkin math is almost 50 tons of propellant or almost +.04 TWR by then.

The possibility that I like better than an overestimated dry mass is underfilling the tanks, which is why I added an input for GS1 propellant level percent. If you underfill the tanks you do improve TWR/grav loss and payload a lot. I wanted to avoid this because there's not much evidence for it, but of the options to get to a 1.10 TWR, this seems like the best bet.

2/3 -  I think that's fair. I wanted to haircut the specific impulse a bit because I figured that what's being marketed is under optimal conditions at the test stand, but perhaps that's too conservative.

4 - I think I'm going to have to do some pixel counting on the renders, as I would like to anchor the estimate of GS2 tank stretch to something real. But I agree it's worth a look.

Edit: Here are the changes I just made:
- Updated the specific impulse to the nominal level as stated above.
- Set the minimum TWR to 1.10 and set GS1 propellant level to 95% to meet that threshold.
- Did a pixel analysis of the 7x2 / 9x4 render:
  - I have the GS1 being 311 pixels tall previously, and 343 after, or 10% taller.
  - I have the GS2 being 74 pixels tall previously, and 136 after, or 83% taller.
- Reduced GS1 tank volumes slightly to match Dave Limp's tweet.
- Added notes for citing volume/density inputs and rationalizations for other assumptions like dry mass.

After applying these, indeed the 9x4 looks a lot better. As was previously pointed out, the high-energy numbers are still too far from feasibility, but the LEO numbers are more plausible.

[deltaV]

If you underfill the tanks you do improve TWR/grav loss and payload a lot.

Ignoring practical issues like damage to the pad from a slow liftoff, as long as the initial thrust-to-weight ratio is at least 1 I don’t think underfilling the tanks can ever improve performance. To see why, consider the following thought experiment. Launch a rocket fully fueled, let it run for a minute or so until its thrust-to-weight ratio is better, and then magically teleport it back to the launch pad with zero velocity (but its propellant loading is unchanged) and launch it a second time. This magical teleportation step is clearly counter-productive since it removes valuable velocity and altitude. But the rocket after the magical teleportation is in exactly the same state as a rocket that was launched underfilled with no magic and hence will perform as well. So underfilling doesn’t help performance (assuming T/W > 1).

The fact that your spreadsheet predicts that underfilling the tanks substantially improves performance suggests that your gravity loss model could be improved. I unfortunately don’t know the right fix. There’s a loss model at https://silverbirdastronautics.com/LaunchMethodology.pdf but I have no idea how good it is. The nuclear option would be writing a simple trajectory simulation and optimization tool.

[meekGee]

If you underfill the tanks you do improve TWR/grav loss and payload a lot.

Ignoring practical issues like damage to the pad from a slow liftoff, as long as the initial thrust-to-weight ratio is at least 1 I don’t think underfilling the tanks can ever improve performance. To see why, consider the following thought experiment. Launch a rocket fully fueled, let it run for a minute or so until its thrust-to-weight ratio is better, and then magically teleport it back to the launch pad with zero velocity (but its propellant loading is unchanged) and launch it a second time. This magical teleportation step is clearly counter-productive since it removes valuable velocity and altitude. But the rocket after the magical teleportation is in exactly the same state as a rocket that was launched underfilled with no magic and hence will perform as well. So underfilling doesn’t help performance (assuming T/W > 1).

The fact that your spreadsheet predicts that underfilling the tanks substantially improves performance suggests that your gravity loss model could be improved. I unfortunately don’t know the right fix. There’s a loss model at https://silverbirdastronautics.com/LaunchMethodology.pdf but I have no idea how good it is. The nuclear option would be writing a simple trajectory simulation and optimization tool.

Yup! With the exact caveat that you specified, but noting that that's what bit them on the first launch.

[sstli2]

If you underfill the tanks you do improve TWR/grav loss and payload a lot.

Ignoring practical issues like damage to the pad from a slow liftoff, as long as the initial thrust-to-weight ratio is at least 1 I don’t think underfilling the tanks can ever improve performance. To see why, consider the following thought experiment. Launch a rocket fully fueled, let it run for a minute or so until its thrust-to-weight ratio is better, and then magically teleport it back to the launch pad with zero velocity (but its propellant loading is unchanged) and launch it a second time. This magical teleportation step is clearly counter-productive since it removes valuable velocity and altitude. But the rocket after the magical teleportation is in exactly the same state as a rocket that was launched underfilled with no magic and hence will perform as well. So underfilling doesn’t help performance (assuming T/W > 1).

The fact that your spreadsheet predicts that underfilling the tanks substantially improves performance suggests that your gravity loss model could be improved. I unfortunately don’t know the right fix. There’s a loss model at https://silverbirdastronautics.com/LaunchMethodology.pdf but I have no idea how good it is. The nuclear option would be writing a simple trajectory simulation and optimization tool.

Good point, and it's a byproduct of my non-linear gravity loss estimate that grows more quickly as TWR falls than the corresponding improvement in delta-V due to better PMF. At the same time, I want to make sure that the model embeds a non-trivial credit to performance for improvements in thrust. The model you linked looks simple enough; I'll explore using it. A full-blown trajectory analysis would be a bit beyond the scope of a spreadsheet.

Edit: I decided to remove gravity losses from my model entirely. It's very hard to come up with something that's defensible and well-grounded, and likewise hard to come up with a way to quantify what the impact of future improvements in thrust will be on that value. Instead, I'll anchor the required delta-V to particular orbits as inclusive of gravity losses, setting LEO to a conservative 9,700 m/s.

Edit 2: I re-introduced delta-V losses into the model. I first derived burn times for the other variants based on the NG-2 burn times (notes on how in the spreadsheet) and used the above delta-V penalty estimation to calculate losses.

[deltaV]

The model you linked looks simple enough; I'll explore using it.

Cool. See also https://silverbirdastronautics.com/LVperform.html for a tool using that model.

A full-blown trajectory analysis would be a bit beyond the scope of a spreadsheet.

Agreed, a spreadsheet is not the right tool for non-trivial programming tasks like trajectory optimization. We'd need either a mainstream programming language like python or C++ or something like MATLAB.

[seb21051]

The model you linked looks simple enough; I'll explore using it.

Cool. See also https://silverbirdastronautics.com/LVperform.html for a tool using that model.

A full-blown trajectory analysis would be a bit beyond the scope of a spreadsheet.

Agreed, a spreadsheet is not the right tool for non-trivial programming tasks like trajectory optimization. We'd need either a mainstream programming language like python or C++ or something like MATLAB.

Might be interesting to try your hand(s) at one of the AI Coder programs. You just tell it what you want in the language of your choice. I have tried a few simple ones and been impressed with the results.

[deltaV]

According to https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-glenn-upgraded-engines-subcooled-components-drive-enhanced-performance 9x4’s first stage thrust is 640*9/(550*7)-1=50% more than old 7x2’s. For the second stage the increase is 400*4/(320*2)-1=150%. So why are they increasing the second stage thrust so much, i.e. why not have 2-3 engines instead of 4? I think the answer is with a third stage (at least for high energy orbits) the second stage will always be pushing a relatively heavy mass so its burnout mass matters less so a larger second stage optimizes better.

[Brigantine]

why are they increasing the second stage thrust so much

2nd stage is where all the ISP advantage is - and the faster your 1st stage goes the more prop you need to reserve for the re-entry burn (by another name) or possibly a boostback burn.

A high TWR is important for a hydrogen 2nd stage to LEO, and yes the CLT/GS3 has removed (de-emphasized?) high energy destinations from GS2's requirements so makes sense that it becomes a more LEO-focussed design.

I wish we had numbers about how much the GS2 tank stretch is

[sstli2]

I wish we had numbers about how much the GS2 tank stretch is

If the render is to scale, and you count pixels, the stretch is roughly 80%, or going from 23.4m to ~42m (as tall a Falcon 9 booster).

[sstli2]

According to https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-glenn-upgraded-engines-subcooled-components-drive-enhanced-performance 9x4’s first stage thrust is 640*9/(550*7)-1=50% more than old 7x2’s. For the second stage the increase is 400*4/(320*2)-1=150%. So why are they increasing the second stage thrust so much, i.e. why not have 2-3 engines instead of 4? I think the answer is with a third stage (at least for high energy orbits) the second stage will always be pushing a relatively heavy mass so its burnout mass matters less so a larger second stage optimizes better.

Since your last comment, I implemented the gravity loss / penalty delta-V model you had linked to, which is based on an actual ascent time and an adjustment to account for the fact the original Townsend model assumes 3 stages each with equal thrust and specific impulse. This also required an estimate of burn time on the other variants (have some notes on this derivation in the spreadsheet, but it's based on ratios of thrust / specific impulse / dry mass / wet mass).

Edit: See the latest spreadsheet, I had to make some fixes as my I had an error in my GS2 dry mass formula. Also reduced BE-4 sea level ISP to 310.

Excel version is located here and read-only web version is located here.

[ZachF]

2)
Your specific impulse for the updated BE-3U is too low.
Current BE-3U is already supposed to be 445s instead of 440s and I don't expect to see the upgraded variant to have smaller isp

with 445s for the updated BE-3U, LEO payload of 9x4 rises by 4 tonnes.

With an open expander cycle, increasing thrust probably will lower ISP some, as increasing thrust requires increasing turbine power, which requires increased flow to the turbine, which will decrease net isp as a larger percentage of the remass will exit the turbine instead of the nozzle.

[deltaV]

Since your last comment, I implemented the gravity loss / penalty delta-V model you had linked to, which is based on an actual ascent time and an adjustment to account for the fact the original Townsend model assumes 3 stages each with equal thrust and specific impulse. This also required an estimate of burn time on the other variants (have some notes on this derivation in the spreadsheet, but it's based on ratios of thrust / specific impulse / dry mass / wet mass).

...

Excel version is located here and read-only web version is located here.

Thanks! Two issues with your latest spreadsheet (after importing into my own Google sheets) from a quick (incomplete) look:
1. The formulas for GS1 delta vee for all 4 vehicles seem to be missing several masses inside the log. Payload mass, payload adapter, payload fairing at least are missing from both numerator and denominator, and GS2 initial mass is missing from the numerator.
2. There's apparently a circular reference involving "GS1 Sea-Level Ascent Duration". Switching the settings to resolve the circular dependency iteratively doesn't help - it results in divide by 0.

[sstli2]

Since your last comment, I implemented the gravity loss / penalty delta-V model you had linked to, which is based on an actual ascent time and an adjustment to account for the fact the original Townsend model assumes 3 stages each with equal thrust and specific impulse. This also required an estimate of burn time on the other variants (have some notes on this derivation in the spreadsheet, but it's based on ratios of thrust / specific impulse / dry mass / wet mass).

...

Excel version is located here and read-only web version is located here.

Thanks! Two issues with your latest spreadsheet (after importing into my own Google sheets) from a quick (incomplete) look:
1. The formulas for GS1 delta vee for all 4 vehicles seem to be missing several masses inside the log. Payload mass, payload adapter, payload fairing at least are missing from both numerator and denominator, and GS2 initial mass is missing from the numerator.
2. There's apparently a circular reference involving "GS1 Sea-Level Ascent Duration". Switching the settings to resolve the circular dependency iteratively doesn't help - it results in divide by 0.

1) GS1 Initial Mass and GS2 Initial Mass are poorly named, these mean wet mass of GS1 plus everything above it, and wet mass of GS2 plus everything above it. I used to have these named "Lift-Off Mass" and "Staging Mass", perhaps I should have stuck with that so it's less misleading. Given this, I believe the delta-V formula should be correct as is.

2) The circular reference is intentional, as re-entry and landing propellant are calculated off of re-entry and landing burn times, and the burn times are calculated off of the GS1 mass prior to re-entry and landing, which references re-entry and landing propellant. I've seen the issue you are describing where the solver gets stuck on a divide-by-zero before, but I thought it was gone. It usually can be solved by putting a dummy term (very small decimal) into the denominator, which I will look into doing. Excel behavior and Google Sheets behavior sometimes differs here.

P.S. Feel free to PM for anything else specific, as I don't want to crowd this thread too much with the quirks of my model.

[deltaV]

Cross post from New Glenn Thread 2:

Job posting from yesterday: Technical Designer III - GS3

A third stage is clearly more than just an idea.

The new GS3 may be available for 7x2 too so it's probably best to continue discussion of GS3 in that thread. I'm mentioning it here just to inform people who read about third stage speculations in this thread.