A bit of math for anyone wondering what makes SpaceX’s achievement so much more significant than Blue Origin’s.
The Blue Origin New Shepard delivered a capsule to 100.5 km with no significant lateral velocity. Although they have not given the mass of the capsule, we can guess that it’s around 5000 kg (based on similar capsules). This corresponds to a delivered payload energy of 4.9 GJ.
The SpaceX booster delivered the second stage of the rocket as its payload. At separation the payload was moving at about 1.67 km/s and 75 km altitude. It weighed ~105,000 kg. The sum of potential and kinetic energy delivered to the payload is thus about 224 GJ.
That’s a factor of over 45x. Although Blue Origin’s efforts are respectable, there’s just no comparison in scale.
It’s hard to say where this stacks up in terms of historical achievements. Maybe it’s like breaking the sound barrier: a tremendous technical and scientific breakthrough, with a lot of military applications, but so far not very useful for commercial transportation. Or maybe it’s like the Ekranoplans: impressive beasts that were a technological dead end.
In any case, it’ll be fascinating to watch SpaceX and all the other new and reinvigorated aerospace development in the coming decades.
I think that’s not at all fair. Yes, the landing of the Falcon 9 booster is far more impressive than landing the New Shepherd suborbital launch vehicle. However, Blue Origin is playing a longer game, and certainly won’t stop with the world’s greatest amusement park ride.
For instance, for the New Shepherd they designed a state-of-the-art cryogenic engine fueled by liquid hydrogen. It is needlessly complicated and hard to develop for just a few suborbital hops. But it is exactly the sort of high-performance engine that will be useful for upper stages, and it may end up in the second stage of ULA’s Vulcan next-generation heavy lift vehicle. Similarly, Blue Origin is also developing a much larger methane-powered engine suitable for heavy lift vehicles, and it has been selected for the Vulcan first stage. In the long term, Blue Origin also plans to develop their own reusable heavy lift launchers, in direct competition with the Falcon 9 (and oddly enough the Vulcan).
Suborbital hops for tourists will just be a side business for Blue Origin to help fund further development. Blue Origin and SpaceX are both advancing the state of the art at least as much as any other aerospace company in the last few decades.
Reading the Wiki on the “Vulcan”*, it seems like vaporware.
Once SpaceX raised the bar, they came up with their own “reusable” scheme (can’t make this up):
“A later feature is planned to make the first stage partly reusable. ULA plans to develop the technology to allow the engines to detach from the vehicle after cutoff, descend through the atmosphere with a heat shield and parachute, and finally be captured by a helicopter in mid-air…”
“and then a giant eagle will grab us and we’ll fly away!”
It seems ULA can’t get Congressional funding for more than a year or so at a time, but it is now going to “co-develop” the methane engine with Blue Origin.
They think they might fly in 2019.
This is not a “long” game - it is a SLOW game (IMHO).
Can’t make this up - “Vulcan” was chosen by “an on-line poll”; an organization called, oddly enough, Vulcan Inc., objected. How the Hell do you announce a name without even googling it first?
Not as far fetched as it sounds. The Corona spy satellites of the 1960s ejected a film canister that was meant to be snagged in mid-air. It’s been tried a few other times as well.
ULA is comprised of Boeing and Lockheed Martin - the guys who made the NASA rigs back when NASA had unlimited budget.
Why did they pair up, and why are they dependent on Congressional Budgets?
I take it neither wants to fund the “Next Generation” rocket out of their own pockets (they just bought another 20 engines FROM Russia) and it is simply budget constraints that make them pair up with Blue Origin and hope the methane engine is ready before Congress prohibits buying more engines from Russia.
Meanwhile, their launches are slated to use Atlas V rockets.
I think their argument was that they were splitting a small market: neither Boeing nor Lockmart was competitive for commercial markets, and government launches were limited to the US. They couldn’t both survive on this, so they merged.
Of course they ended up with a temporary monopoly, which they seem to have taken advantage of. No one was particularly happy about it, but the DoD also didn’t want to see either company collapse, so they saw a merger as the least worst option.
They also simply don’t have the in-house expertise to develop their own engine. Of course, this is their own doing–they could have anticipated the possibility that business with the Russians might come to an end, and formed a propulsion group, but they didn’t. SpaceX went from zero to a working orbital engine in 6 years; Blue Origin took perhaps a decade, depending on how you count it (which is still respectable, since the BE engine is more advanced than SpaceX’s). Regardless, had ULA set this as a goal when formed, they could have had an alternative by now.
So yeah, it’s the usual. Don’t do anything until you absolutely have to, and certainly not unless someone else is picking up the tab. Great strategy in the pre-SpaceX days. At least they still have the heavy launch market, though that won’t likely keep until 2019, even if Falcon Heavy is delayed a bit more.
So ULA is going to keep making clones of ‘Glory Days’ rockets and let SpaceX have the bulk of commercial launches.
They are following in the footsteps of the Big 3 US automakers - just ignore the good-and-getting-better imports until you are bankrupt, then run to Congress for protection.
But, for about 3 launches/decade, they have the market all to themselves. For now.
To be fair to ULA, do you get something for the money: incredible reliability. Conservative engineering does have certain advantages. It just happens to be a dying business model.
It’s also not guaranteed that Congress will come in and save the day. The Russians are the bad guys again. It doesn’t look good to the constituency when you have to go hat-in-hand to them to buy your engines.
I dunno. Maybe Tory Bruno will pull something out of his sleeve. Maybe they’ll genuinely reinvent themselves into a more nimble company. I’m not optimistic, but they certainly have plenty of talent left, so it’s not utterly impossible.
The next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for 10:42 AM PST from Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying the Jason3 NOAA ocean monitoring satellite. For this launch the first stage will attempt another barge landing (I’ve heard that SpaceX doesn’t yet have approval to land at Vandenberg). The launch should be streamed by both NASA and SpaceX, though with a barge in the middle of the ocean there probably won’t be any live streaming of the landing.
During the Jason3 press conference, someone mentioned that the landed first stage from the previous launch completed a successful static fire. It seems to have had minimal refurbishment, as it’s been photographed by [del]space paparazzi[/del] reporters being towedand erected on the launch pad in all its scorched glory.
In related news, NASA has awarded the contracts for the next round of commercial resupply missions, supplying the ISS between 2019 and 2024. SpaceX and Orbital ATK, which are currently flying resupply missions, were selected. More surprisingly, Sierra Nevada was also selected, and it will use a cargo variant of the Dreamchaser spaceplane launched on Atlas 5. This means there will be three very different spacecraft launched on three different rockets. Each supplier was awarded a guaranteed 6 missions, but after that it seems that NASA will have the flexibility to select whichever can give them the capability they need at the best price.
If I can motivate myself to wake up at 5:30 in the goddamned morning (4 hr drive to make 10:42 AM launch + margin), I’m going to try to visit Vandenberg for the launch. Despite several attempts, I have yet to view an actual rocket launch. Too bad it won’t be a return to launch site, but should be cool nevertheless.
Pretty cool that the static fire was successful, though not hugely surprising. The center engine already restarted itself successfully three times in flight after the main burn. Still, it’s good to know that there was no additional damage after the final burn.
I really like this shot of the landed stage. Sooty, flecked paint, and obviously through a rough ride–and yet ready to go again.
Apparently, some combination of the rocket coming in too fast and the choppiness of the water affecting the landing platform resulted in one of the lander legs breaking. Not sure if this resulted in the rocket itself tipping over or not (there isn’t any video of the landing itself yet for whatever reason, even though they have a camera right on the landing platform), but they’re making it sound like the landing was not a success.
Do they not have permission to land on ground? It is my understanding that the ground landing created a sonic boom. One more sonic boom in the middle of a desert isn’t going to be a big deal, so why the increased risk?
Is there some long-range plan to make their rockets able to launch from anywhere in the world, and the go-anywhere-there’s-water barge would provide flexibility?
SpaceX tweets indicate that there was a soft, on-target landing, but the lock mechanism on one of the landing leg failed and the rocket tipped over. Looks like most of the business end is still on the barge! No official indication that the rough seas caused the failure. Future versions of the Falcon 9 are supposed to have upgraded legs.
But the most important thing, if not the most exciting, is that the payload made it to orbit. Even if SpaceX achieves economical reusability, they’re reducing costs of expendable rockets and shaking up the entire launch industry.
This launch almost certainly had the ability to land back at the launch site, given that the payload was only 550 kg. The latest version of the Falcon 9 should be able to return to the landing site with more than a 10,000 kg payload to low earth orbit. However, SpaceX didn’t yet have approval to land at Vandenburg Air Force Base, and it appears that approval has to be granted by the FAA and the Air Force or NASA for each site. After all, each landing attempt can have a different trajectory with different property risks.
In the future, SpaceX is still planning to do barge landing whenever the payload is too heavy to allow return to launch site. This will be the case for the upcoming launch of the SES-9 geosynchronous communications satellite. It’s a fairly heavy satellite, at 5,330 kg, and is going to a much higher orbit than Jason3. While there aren’t any up-to-date official payload figures, some people have estimated that the Falcon 9 should be able to return to landing site with geosynchronous satellites less than 4,500 kg. Also, with the Falcon Heavy the central core will almost always be to far down range and traveling too fast to return to the landing site.
Just got back from Vandenberg. Sadly, I am now zero for three in getting to see launches. We heard the launch just fine–which was still very impressive–but we were fogged out and didn’t even see an engine glow. Oh well.
There’s a video of the landing out now. Pretty clearly a soft touchdown, but the one leg collapsed and it tipped over.
Elon is speculating that the heavy fog resulted in ice buildup around a steel collet that locks the leg into place. Seems… plausible.
The latest attempt did not succeed because a landing leg failed, causing the rocket to fall over. Why not keep it from hitting the deck of the ASDS with a net? I have in mind something in the shape of an inverted conical frustum. Off the top of my head, I guess it is because they would worry that the danger of it entangling the rocket is worse than having it salvage abnormal landings.
However, it seems like you could have the net be flat, or even at a downward angle from the deck of the ASDS. Then the Falcon would only tangle with the net when it completely misses the barge, so nothing is lost in the bargain (assuming the F9 is not able to increase its height and maneuver back to a height above the deck in case it reached this position). You would only erect the saftey net when the Falcon 9 is over the deck. It would be like the reverse of a flower opening.
The height of an F9 is such that it can fit lengthwise on the ASDS, so the idea can’t work simply with rectangular pieces folding up from the sides, but …? Maybe there could be several nets embedded in the deck and you hoist up the right one based on where the F9 is landing.
Elon, will you co-list me on the patent application ?
