Blue and Mars...

[Steve G]

I'm being childish? Seriously? Kindly review the previous infantile snippets about Blue. Blue must launch next August for Mars EscaPADE, and neither NASA nor Blue would commit to this if they didn't have confidence that New Glenn could deliver. They will ramp up launches in 2025 and by 2026 all things Blue will converge. But, not Mars.

[lightleviathan]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

4-6 flights per year is just okay, which is what I said. That's what Electron was at for a while, and it's comparable to ULA for the past couple years.

[deadman1204]

I'm being childish? Seriously? Kindly review the previous infantile snippets about Blue. Blue must launch next August for Mars EscaPADE, and neither NASA nor Blue would commit to this if they didn't have confidence that New Glenn could deliver. They will ramp up launches in 2025 and by 2026 all things Blue will converge. But, not Mars.

NASA won't comment. They regularily carry water for every launch company they contract with.

[meekGee]

I'm being childish? Seriously? Kindly review the previous infantile snippets about Blue. Blue must launch next August for Mars EscaPADE, and neither NASA nor Blue would commit to this if they didn't have confidence that New Glenn could deliver. They will ramp up launches in 2025 and by 2026 all things Blue will converge. But, not Mars.

Yes you are.
Nobody here wants to see NG not fly.
There are lots of us that have lost patience with BO continuing their "we're so secret"  attitude.
NG was supposed to go up against F9/FH, many many many years ago.
It's 2023 and all they have are pieces.
You're just angry at the messengers, who've been messaging this for over 5 years now.

When BO make orbit, everyone will be happy

However 2024 is far from being in the bag. NASA always supports new companies with small contracts, and if Escapade is late, then so be it.

[whitelancer64]

Don’t be so childish. It’s not hating BO but rather being so disappointed with them. Expected so much more from them but I’m still waiting for that first orbital attempt to happen and will be happy to see them finally get there. But it’s 10 years later than I expected.

Get to orbit, then get better at it, then think about the moon. Mars is a long long way off.

There is going to be a collective nervous breakdown of Blue haters once they launch into orbit next summer.

How can it be 10 years later than you expected? New Glenn wasn't publicly announced until late 2015. Ten years ago was 2013, when New Shepard was still in development.

[whitelancer64]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

[trimeta]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

And they've now taken longer for their failure investigation (over eight months) than Rocket Lab did after any of their launch failures (just under eight months after the first launch failure, under two months after the second, 2.5 months after the third launch failure) or SpaceX did after its Falcon 9 failures (around six months after the first failure, a little over four months after the second). I know, it's a "human-rated system," but it can fly uncrewed (this is in fact its greatest strength in comparison with Virgin Galactic's vehicles), and taking this long to Return To Flight doesn't exactly suggest they've figured out the cadence issue.

(Oh, and if you think "over eight months" and "just under eight months" sound pretty similar, that was after Rocket Lab's very first launch. New Shepard should have a slightly better cadence (and Blue Origin should have a slightly better understanding of its systems) than a rocket with exactly one attempt under its belt, one would think.)

[Starmang10]

I think Blue has a genuine chance of getting to Mars by 2040. Sure, they're imfamous for "Sue until the landers are two", but that doesn't mean they aren't rapidly innovating. Infact, they are going from a simple suborbital hop vehicle to a heavy lift launch vehicle. SpaceX followed a very similar path to Blue Origin when it was younger, so why shouldn't we believe Blue will do the same? They are doing alot better than alot of aerospace companies right now, and have a genuine chance of changing how people see space for the better. But yes, I do believe they can get to mars. They are developing necesary hardware inorder to do that. Give these guys a chance, people! 

[meekGee]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

Rumor has it that BO is working on a revolutionary new method to ascertain whether a person may have the Covid infection.  But it's secret, they'll announce it when they're ready.

Seriously, are you saying NS is barely flying because of COVID?  People willing to sit on top of a rocket, but worried about that?

Even the city bus system is working you know.

 

[whitelancer64]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

Rumor has it that BO is working on a revolutionary new method to ascertain whether a person may have the Covid infection.  But it's secret, they'll announce it when they're ready.

Seriously, are you saying NS is barely flying because of COVID?  People willing to sit on top of a rocket, but worried about that?

Even the city bus system is working you know.

Blue Origin was working on doing the first crewed New Shepard flights when the pandemic hit. There was even a kerfuffle in 2020 because some Blue Origin employees didn't want to travel to Van Horn. Look it up.

[Starmang10]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

Rumor has it that BO is working on a revolutionary new method to ascertain whether a person may have the Covid infection.  But it's secret, they'll announce it when they're ready.

Seriously, are you saying NS is barely flying because of COVID?  People willing to sit on top of a rocket, but worried about that?

Even the city bus system is working you know.

Good point, Covid is pretty much gone at this point, with only a couple thousand cases everyday. That's not the reason why NS is flying. The reason why NS is barely flying is because it usually takes awhile to find passengers, or ones who are willing to buy. Later on, when Space Tourism is the norm, spacecrafts like NS will be practically flying every day.

[whitelancer64]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

Rumor has it that BO is working on a revolutionary new method to ascertain whether a person may have the Covid infection.  But it's secret, they'll announce it when they're ready.

Seriously, are you saying NS is barely flying because of COVID?  People willing to sit on top of a rocket, but worried about that?

Even the city bus system is working you know.

Good point, Covid is pretty much gone at this point, with only a couple thousand cases everyday. That's not the reason why NS is flying. The reason why NS is barely flying is because it usually takes awhile to find passengers, or ones who are willing to buy. Later on, when Space Tourism is the norm, spacecrafts like NS will be practically flying every day.

In 2021, Blue Origin said they have sold over $100 million in tickets for New Shepard launches. It's not lack of interest.

[Starshipdown]

I'm being childish? Seriously? Kindly review the previous infantile snippets about Blue. Blue must launch next August for Mars EscaPADE, and neither NASA nor Blue would commit to this if they didn't have confidence that New Glenn could deliver. They will ramp up launches in 2025 and by 2026 all things Blue will converge. But, not Mars.

NASA won't comment. They regularly carry water for every launch company they contract with.

Sweet mother of.... Okay, it was just weeks ago when the NASA head of the ESCAPADE mission commented that he was confident in New Glenn launching the two spacecraft next year after he'd toured the Exploration Park factory:
https://spacenews.com/escapade-confident-in-planned-2024-new-glenn-launch/

“It hasn’t launched yet and we are concerned about that,” he said during a presentation at an April 11 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. “But, having seen the Blue Origin facility at Cape Canaveral, I was much less concerned after seeing all the work they’ve done. I’m confident they will likely be ready for the launch of ESCAPADE.”

[Robotbeat]

I am not that confident in a 2024 New Glenn launch, BUT “carry water” is a needlessly pejorative phrase.

[Starshipdown]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

Rumor has it that BO is working on a revolutionary new method to ascertain whether a person may have the Covid infection.  But it's secret, they'll announce it when they're ready.

Seriously, are you saying NS is barely flying because of COVID?  People willing to sit on top of a rocket, but worried about that?

Even the city bus system is working you know.

What do you mean "barely flying"? The NS-23 accident really threw things off, but before that, New Shepard RSS First Step/PM 4 was flying every two months on average beforehand, and flew 8 times in a year, which was a huge improvement over RSS H.G. Wells/PM 3 which took nearly 5 years.

Also, you're being anti-chronological here. The pandemic did massively slow things down in 2020 for Blue Origin into 2021. It also affected other aerospace firms, Sierra Space, Astrobotics, and more suffered 6-12 month setbacks. Far more in some cases.

[Starmang10]

New Shepard has a disappointing launch cadence for a fully reusable suborbital vehicle that has had many years to mature.

Pandemic threw a big wrench in those plans. Six strangers in a small confined space, anyone?

Rumor has it that BO is working on a revolutionary new method to ascertain whether a person may have the Covid infection.  But it's secret, they'll announce it when they're ready.

Seriously, are you saying NS is barely flying because of COVID?  People willing to sit on top of a rocket, but worried about that?

Even the city bus system is working you know.

What do you mean "barely flying"? The NS-23 accident really threw things off, but before that, New Shepard RSS First Step/PM 4 was flying every two months on average beforehand, and flew 8 times in a year, which was a huge improvement over RSS H.G. Wells/PM 3 which took nearly 5 years.

Also, you're being anti-chronological here. The pandemic did massively slow things down in 2020 for Blue Origin into 2021. It also affected other aerospace firms, Sierra Space, Astrobotics, and more suffered 6-12 month setbacks. Far more in some cases.

Also a good point, lets try to not turn this into an argument though. This is supposed to be a discussion thread, not an argument starter hangout!   

[trimeta]

What do you mean "barely flying"? The NS-23 accident really threw things off, but before that, New Shepard RSS First Step/PM 4 was flying every two months on average beforehand, and flew 8 times in a year, which was a huge improvement over RSS H.G. Wells/PM 3 which took nearly 5 years.

Also, you're being anti-chronological here. The pandemic did massively slow things down in 2020 for Blue Origin into 2021. It also affected other aerospace firms, Sierra Space, Astrobotics, and more suffered 6-12 month setbacks. Far more in some cases.

An average of six launches a year isn't terrible, but their unusually long time in getting back to launching after the NS-23 failure (especially if said failure was caused by an improperly tested change in film cooling -- at the very least, that should have significantly expedited fault tree investigation) points to their success-oriented mindset and makes one wonder what happens if the first New Glenn launch isn't a complete success.

[Robotbeat]

6 launches would be about the bare minimum in profitability for an expendable launcher. For partially reusable one, you need 10-20 per year minimum. For fully reusable, you need 40 per year really for full reuse to make sense. Those rules of thumb are largely for orbital launch, but I think it works fairly well here as well. 6 launches per year is not enough for a reusable launch vehicle to make economic sense, even a suborbital one. At best, you’re doing risk reduction for larger scale orbital RLVs. But it’s not a path to profitability, let alone affordable access to space. I honestly think they’d need over 100 launches per year to do that.

Applies to Virgin Galactic, too.

To get the cost down to an accessible level, say $250k (what suborbital ticket prices used to go for), you get only $1.5M per launch, and 6 launches per year is just $9M. Not nearly enough to pay for the system. $150M/year might be enough to break even just barely (if we use Virgin Galactic’s spending as a stand-in).


They really need to get launch rate up to be viable as more than just a risk reduction effort for New Glenn and Blue Moon. (Granted, it probably is better than not having NS at all, since it’s the only part of Blue actually serving customers with a real service as opposed to development… BE-4 will meet that level once Vulcan launches.)

[Starshipdown]

What do you mean "barely flying"? The NS-23 accident really threw things off, but before that, New Shepard RSS First Step/PM 4 was flying every two months on average beforehand, and flew 8 times in a year, which was a huge improvement over RSS H.G. Wells/PM 3 which took nearly 5 years.

Also, you're being anti-chronological here. The pandemic did massively slow things down in 2020 for Blue Origin into 2021. It also affected other aerospace firms, Sierra Space, Astrobotics, and more suffered 6-12 month setbacks. Far more in some cases.

An average of six launches a year isn't terrible, but their unusually long time in getting back to launching after the NS-23 failure (especially if said failure was caused by an improperly tested change in film cooling -- at the very least, that should have significantly expedited fault tree investigation) points to their success-oriented mindset and makes one wonder what happens if the first New Glenn launch isn't a complete success.

Six for NS4, and only one for NS3. And keep in mind that the loss of NS3 didn't happen until nearly two dozen flights in and the ninth flight of that vehicle. There's a lot worse rocket track records out there.

[Robotbeat]

Yeah, but that’s partially because they’ve been really conservative with their rockets and that was an old rocket. Failures in the first dozen or two lunches is not uncommon. Even some of the most reliable rockets like falcon 9 and Ariane 5 had such things.

BE-3 is not yet a mature engine. Dozens of engines need to be built before you reach maturity.

I’m very hopeful that blue origin will snap out of it and achieve higher launch rates (and therefore maturity and ultimately affordable reliability) but I don’t think a crewed vehicle is really the best way to do that.