Blue Origin vs. Space-X

[Kenny Phillips]

Having been born at the beginning of the space age, and with a father in the aerospace industry, I couldn't help but become a space geek. I keep track of, and watch, any launch that is streamed.
I just watched a Blue Origin New Shepherd launch, with NASA payloads. It was about as long a flight as Gordon Cooper's: suborbital, never left the tracking cameras. I can't believe that NASA had microgravity experiments that really needed that short of a flight (00:10:12 from lightup to landing) when they could have tagged along on a "real" rocket to orbit. I guess this one technically made it to space, at 65 miles. But it was gonna come back to earth, and soon.
Compared to Space-X [which some have called "Elon's hobby"], and its many payloads to the ISS and orbit (and occasionally oblivion) it really seems sort of like a toy. When I read "NASA payloads" I mistakenly thought Blue Origin had an orbital rocket. I'm not disappointed, it was a fun 15 minutes. But I never realized that their direct competitor is Virgin Galactic (silly name, that).
I can't see money being made.

 

[flhrci]

I can't see money being made.

You'll change your tune when Amazon can deliver to anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

You'll change your tune when Amazon can deliver to anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

I'm a Prime member, they can land a New Shepherd in my backyard to deliver dog food any time they want.

 

[Hacker]

I can't see money being made.

Aviation was expensive at the beginning, too. Air travel wasn't available to the WalMart crowd when it started. It always takes someone (or some organization) with a lot of $$ to spend before actual operational costs go down. IMHO, private space is the inevitable future of all non-military ventures beyond the Karman Line.

Regarding Blue Origin, the New Shepard, as the name implies, was only ever designed to be a sub-orbital tourist attraction. The technology developed in it, though, also applies to the New Glenn, which is the fully orbital payload-delivery system.

 

[Scrabo]

“Elon's hobby...”

If this is what he can do when he is playing with his hobby, then play on...

 

[Jim_R]

All of these "new space" companies have to learn to walk before they run, and they all have different resources in hand and different goals in mind. SpaceX wouldn't be where it is today if they didn't have NASA as a primary partner from the beginning. For a multitude of reasons Blue Origin is taking a different path, and without the resources and credibility with investors that come with a $1.6 billion contract with the US Gov't like SpX had, they are going to be walking for a while yet.

Still, it's a waste to launch any rocket with no payloads onboard, and there are plenty of payloads with small budgets that will take a risky flight for the right discount, including short suborbital flights. It's also possible these payloads were part of the BO's walk-before-run approach, and were integrated on the flight in part to allow BO to develop / gain experience with payload processing as they build up toward bigger rockets and more complicated payloads.

 

[Scrabo]

There are a bunch of small companies willing to join the market of smaller payloads to orbit,Vector launch as an example, Virgin has a old 747 test bed for under wing launches

 

[Tantalum]

I'm sorry but SpaceX and Elon Musk are the real deal

All the others are just toying around and imitating. He has a revolutionary design that works very well and was literally science fiction technology in the 1970s. I forget the movie but there's a movie with rockets landing like his

The man's a visionary, and honestly, he has the best of humanity in his interest. Where Jeff Bezos and other people are strictly driven by the bottom line, Musk routinely bets everything on his vision. Don't get me wrong, I love Amazon and I'm a proud Prime member, but Jeff Bezos vision is somewhat insidious

For all the Tesla naysayers out there, and personally I would not own one, but you have to admit that he's had a very real, dramatic, and positive impact on the world. He's also demonstrated good leadership and management in hiring the right people to seeing his vision come to reality. He's very interesting in interviews and has repeatedly said that he doesn't care if people even have a high school education, he looks at them as individuals, their accomplishments, and what they can bring to the table. He also doesn't do things by bureaucratic committee

Blue Origin, as a name, is also not particularly inspiring.. and to fire a rocket 65 miles up and back down personally is not that impressive.. same thing with this Virgin Galactic stuff, I want to think it's cool and like it, but it's been years

 

[Tantalum]

without the resources and credibility

I think the success of Amazon speaks for itself.. and there's a reason SpaceX won that contract from the US government.. for a long time Elon Musk was just the PayPal guy.. so I doubt either one had an unfair advantage or disadvantage

Air travel wasn't available to the WalMart crowd when it started.

true, but people and goods always had a need to travel and get from A to B and there was a clear progression and advancement in transportation whether we look at ship advancement, rail advancement, etc. I doubt we'll see that same kind of precipitous drop in costs with the space industry. Outside of a very finite market there isn't a large commercial reason to travel to space. It will be an exclusive hobby for the extremely wealthy and have some military and research purposes. But for similar reasond that supersonic air travel could never really survive commercial, such as the Concorde, I doubt we'll ever see the Walmart crowd traveling to space


I think Musk maybe onto something with traveling to Mars, we are a long time away from that, but if we do eventually colonize Mars now you've created an actual commercial transportation reason for space

I could be wrong, but we've been traveling to space pretty much since the jet age and costs are still astronomical (pun intended)

 

[Jim_CAK]

Having been born at the beginning of the space age, and with a father in the aerospace industry, I couldn't help but become a space geek. I keep track of, and watch, any launch that is streamed.
I just watched a Blue Origin New Shepherd launch, with NASA payloads. It was about as long a flight as Gordon Cooper's: suborbital, never left the tracking cameras. I can't believe that NASA had microgravity experiments that really needed that short of a flight (00:10:12 from lightup to landing) when they could have tagged along on a "real" rocket to orbit. I guess this one technically made it to space, at 65 miles. But it was gonna come back to earth, and soon.
Compared to Space-X [which some have called "Elon's hobby"], and its many payloads to the ISS and orbit (and occasionally oblivion) it really seems sort of like a toy. When I read "NASA payloads" I mistakenly thought Blue Origin had an orbital rocket. I'm not disappointed, it was a fun 15 minutes. But I never realized that their direct competitor is Virgin Galactic (silly name, that).
I can't see money being made.

Kenny - There is a local connection there. The young guy they were interviewing about the experiments is from Canton. He is an Electrical Engineering student and their experiment was selected to be on that rocket. He got his private and instrument rating recently. He flys out of KPHD. He just got selected for a pilot slot with the Air Force.

 

[wanttaja]

No one has come up with a way to "monetize" manned space...provide a clear path to profit, and investors will pay to build your systems. So far, it hasn't happened. There's no huge pent-up market for materials manufactured under microgravity, maybe improved pharmaceuticals can be made in space, and no one (save governments) has shown themselves willing to pay for transport to another celestial body. Obviously, space is a boon to communications and Earth observation, but those functions are easy to accomplish with robots.

Columbus didn't sail west for the joy of exploration, they were trying to find a quicker route to the riches of the Orient. Weren't that many people settling in California, until the gold rush. Or Alaska, for that matter.

Space needs a "gold rush"...a definitive path to great riches. Haven't found it yet.

Heinlein talked about this in one of his stories..."The Man Who Sold the Moon," I think. Prior to the first moon rocket takeoff, the promoter hands the pilot a bagful of diamonds and the instructions to show them on his return, claiming they'd been lying around on the moon surface. When he returns, he hands the promoter FOUR bags of diamonds. And the rush is on.

So far, the only perceived market for manned spaceflight is tourism. But the target market of millionaires willing to spend big bucks for the sake of brag is limited. And, of course, there's the heightened chance the space tourism business will violate Monty Python's Rule #1 of Business: "Never kill a customer." First fried billionaire, and that market will dry up.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[Jim_R]

I think the success of Amazon speaks for itself.. and there's a reason SpaceX won that contract from the US government.. for a long time Elon Musk was just the PayPal guy.. so I doubt either one had an unfair advantage or disadvantage

Not sure what your point was. Blue Origin never competed for the NASA contracts that SpaceX did.

The two companies are not really in direct competition with each other. My point was simply that the two companies are taking different paths and it's not really reasonable to say one is "the real deal" and one should be dismissed. It's sort of like saying Lockheed's the real deal and Cessna's a pretender because Cessna's never built a supersonic airplane. Kinda doesn't really make sense to even make the comparison.

 

[Hacker]

I'm sorry but SpaceX and Elon Musk are the real deal

All the others are just toying around and imitating.

The real difference is that Blue Origin is quite secretive about what it is doing, while Space X chooses to promote and PR everything it does. My college roommate was formerly an engineer with Kistler Aerospace before it went under and now works at Blue Origin. He was quite free to talk about what he was working on when he was at Kistler, but since going to Blue Origin over a decade ago it is like he has gone to work at Area 51.

Blue Origin is working on things that are every bit as innovative and ambitious (and realistically achievable) as Space X...they're just not out there trumpeting it all over.

 

[Hacker]

Blue Origin, as a name, is also not particularly inspiring.. and to fire a rocket 65 miles up and back down personally is not that impressive.. same thing with this Virgin Galactic stuff, I want to think it's cool and like it, but it's been years

The New Shepard is not Blue Origin's only project underway.

 

[Kenny Phillips]

Kenny - There is a local connection there. The young guy they were interviewing about the experiments is from Canton. He is an Electrical Engineering student and their experiment was selected to be on that rocket. He got his private and instrument rating recently. He flys out of KPHD. He just got selected for a pilot slot with the Air Force.

I took my first lessons out of KAKR, lived 0.6 NM from the end of 25, and have used KCAK for company business flights; my old man worked for Goodyear Zeppelin/Aircraft/Aerospace. (Well, not in the Zeppelin era!)

 

[skier]

I'm sorry but SpaceX and Elon Musk are the real deal

All the others are just toying around and imitating. He has a revolutionary design that works very well and was literally science fiction technology in the 1970s. I forget the movie but there's a movie with rockets landing like his

Not true at all. Blue Origin beat SpaceX to landing rockets and reusing them. They’re hardly “toying around and imitating”.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sp...e-origin-historic-private-rocket-landing.html

Blue Origin may not get the publicity that SpaceX does, but they are a really cool company doing some great and innovative work.

 

[Tantalum]

Blue Origin may not get the publicity that SpaceX does, but they are a really cool company doing some great and innovative work.

Cool! Ultimately any kind of space activity that is cool and worthwhile in my book.. but fwiw SpaceX does appear to be ahead of the pack... in the meantime that six engined beast that recently took flight is going to be worth keeping an eye on as well

 

[Jim_CAK]

I took my first lessons out of KAKR, lived 0.6 NM from the end of 25, and have used KCAK for company business flights; my old man worked for Goodyear Zeppelin/Aircraft/Aerospace. (Well, not in the Zeppelin era!)

I have seen you reference AKR before. I thought you were still in the area. I soloed at AKR many years ago. I also spent a few years at Goodyear Aerospace durning the transition to Loral>ABS. It is a shame the jobs lost there.

 

[Matthew Rogers]

Not true at all. Blue Origin beat SpaceX to landing rockets and reusing them. They’re hardly “toying around and imitating”.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sp...e-origin-historic-private-rocket-landing.html

Blue Origin may not get the publicity that SpaceX does, but they are a really cool company doing some great and innovative work.

But still the comparison is BO’s rocket going straight up at low altitude and speed (60 miles and 2200 mph Max and SpaceX rocket going two stages 250-25,000 miles high and traveling 20,000 mph. First stage still goes to 60 miles high and is traveling 3000 mph in a much harder orbital trajectory. It is an order of magnitude different in terms of energy, size, and forces involved.

Not quite the same as RC model aircraft to GA certified planes, but close.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

No one has come up with a way to "monetize" manned space...provide a clear path to profit, and investors will pay to build your systems.

I think the clearest one I've heard yet was Elon's suggestion of long-distance travel via suborbital spaceflight. Want to go from NYC to Sydney in an hour, or to London in 25 minutes? That's how to do it, and that's how to monetize it.

 

[wanttaja]

I think the clearest one I've heard yet was Elon's suggestion of long-distance travel via suborbital spaceflight. Want to go from NYC to Sydney in an hour, or to London in 25 minutes? That's how to do it, and that's how to monetize it.

Well, the key point there is the economics. The Concorde couldn't make money on being the fastest way across the Atlantic, despite high airfares. ISTR it was pretty heavily booked, too.

A Falcon 9 payload is about 50,000 pounds, which is roughly the empty weight of a Gulfstream 650. The Gulfstream can carry 19 passengers. We'll ignore the rise in empty weight (e.g., reduction in passenger capacity) required for configuring the aircraft to fly at Mach ~10 (including reentry at those speeds), and whether the rocket can physically accommodate an aircraft-styled payload that can carry 19 passengers. SpaceX charges around $60 million for a Falcon 9 launch, and a suborbital flight halfway around the world is going to need ~90% of the rocket's capacity. Let's be generous, though, and assume recurring cost of the launch is going to be half the orbital value, or $30M.

So the fare would be roughly $1.5M per flight. One way. More likely around twice or even three times that, once the real-world considerations come into play.

Versus...what, $10,000 for an Emirates flight-class ticket? Sure, it'll take 12 hours more to get there, but......

Ron Wanttaja

 

[wanttaja]

...So the fare would be roughly $1.5M per flight. One way. More likely around twice or even three times that, once the real-world considerations come into play.

Versus...what, $10,000 for an Emirates flight-class ticket? Sure, it'll take 12 hours more to get there, but......

Another factor is the *frequency* of the flights.

Getting from New York to Sydney in 45 minutes is great, but if that sub-orbital flight only flies once a week, you'll get there sooner by booking a conventional flight. All the rocket buys you is a shorter flight time. Unless it's on stand-by for you, though, you'll never see an advantage to it.

Lest we forget: Infrastructure. They're starting to scrap Airbus A380s, twelve years after they first entered service. There are a lot of reasons, but one factor that inhibited acceptance was the need to modify the airport and terminals to accommodate them. You might be able to land your sub-orbital shuttle conventionally at the airport in Sydney, but you're going to need a whole spaceport built there if you intend to fly it back.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[steingar]

Suborbital rockets aren't all that useful for travel, never have been. Scramjets, skipping along the edge of the atmosphere, are really good for travel. They've been built and successfully deployed too, prototypes were launched off Pegasus rockets about a decade ago. The airframes were somewhat less than successful, but the engines worked.

 

[wanttaja]

Suborbital rockets aren't all that useful for travel, never have been. Scramjets, skipping along the edge of the atmosphere, are really good for travel. They've been built and successfully deployed too, prototypes were launched off Pegasus rockets about a decade ago. The airframes were somewhat less than successful, but the engines worked.

Yes, exactly. There's not a lot of overlap between a scramjet-based transportation system and manned space flight, so even if there IS a market for rapid terrestrial travel, it doesn't monetize manned space travel.

It's ironic that the symbol of space travel...the rocket...is the very thing holding it back. Rockets give one heck of a short-term boost, but quickly use up their propellant. We need something that provides thrust for a much longer period of time. Larry Niven put it best: "The entire universe is waiting for us to invent anti-gravity...."

Rather than silly moon-buggy competitions, I'd love to see the next X-Prize competition slanted towards replacement of rockets. Something along the lines of "Lift a 100 kg payload off the Earth's surface to an altitude between ten and 100 meters, and remain within that band for a least 30 minutes, using a system that does not operate by displacing atmospheric air and does not require external propellant or oxidizer." Allow external supply of electrical power, if needed, but no propeller, fans, rotors, fuel lines, etc.

First phase of the contest would be to demonstrate a sub-scale version of the concepts. Those who are successful become finalists, and receive seed money to help them built the full-scale versions.

There are enough crackpot ideas out there...but maybe one of them will work.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[wayne]

Or a competition for a good beanstalk (aka - space elevator).

 

[flyingcheesehead]

@wanttaja - No argument with any of your facts and figures, but Elon did suggest that SpaceX would do this. And while he didn't offer details, he doesn't tend to say things like that without knowing a possible path to get there. He's well known for not hitting his timelines, but regardless of how fantastical his predictions are, he has shown that it's not wise to bet against him, because while it tends to take longer than he initially says, he makes some absolutely crazy stuff happen.

The only thing I would take issue with is the cost. Currently, the $60 mil figure has plenty of profit and R&D amortization built in. They're doing launches fairly regularly now, but still not often. If you had flights between the world's major cities - NYC, Chicago, LA, London, Paris, Sydney, Rio, Shanghai, Tokyo, etc - happening maybe 2x/day, with rockets that are reusable, that changes things a lot. Currently, they're only launching about once a month. Even with only six cities, you're talking about well over 1,000 launches per month, which means the share of R&D, overhead, etc is much much smaller and the incremental costs like fuel, pilots, etc are what really matters. I have no idea what those numbers look like, but Elon sure does... And again, I'm sure he sees those costs divided by the number of passengers to be something sellable vs. the airlines.

Suborbital rockets aren't all that useful for travel, never have been. Scramjets, skipping along the edge of the atmosphere, are really good for travel. They've been built and successfully deployed too, prototypes were launched off Pegasus rockets about a decade ago. The airframes were somewhat less than successful, but the engines worked.

That's a possibility. Use the BFR to boost a scramjet-powered craft to the far reaches of the upper atmosphere and the speed at which they need to go to light off the scramjets. Then, the biggest issue is how to go around at the other end if necessary.

I have no idea how they'll do it... But as long as Elon is around, I don't doubt that they'll do it eventually.

 

[Jim_R]

The real difference is that Blue Origin is quite secretive about what it is doing, while Space X chooses to promote and PR everything it does. My college roommate was formerly an engineer with Kistler Aerospace before it went under and now works at Blue Origin. He was quite free to talk about what he was working on when he was at Kistler, but since going to Blue Origin over a decade ago it is like he has gone to work at Area 51.

Blue Origin is working on things that are every bit as innovative and ambitious (and realistically achievable) as Space X...they're just not out there trumpeting it all over.

This may be about to change: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/tech/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-rocket-company/index.html

 

[ebetancourt]

It's not just space. In this insane fiat currency world we are living in Lyft went public without a profit and admitted that it might never make one. Uber is about to do essentially the same thing. Our money is based on debt, so the more the merrier. (Yeah, that's a slight exaggeration, but not much.)

Ernie