Jeff Bezos' thrusting cylinder makes Elon Musk's look minuscule Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin has revealed designs for its first orbit-and-beyond-capable boosters. The “New Glenn” rocket is named in honour of first United States astronaut to orbit the Earth, John Glenn. The 82m-tall, two-stage craft will pack 3.85 million pounds of thrust. If it lifted today, that would …
>As a hypothetical occupant would not be able to walk away I doubt a pointy end down rapid geometry adjustment would classify as a landing.
You just step off at the last moment - I saw Roadrunner do it on TV so it must be true.
(unless you are one of those cranks who thinks TV is faked in a sound stage somewhere)
82 metres, millions of pounds of thrust.
Consistent units (or Imp and met and Register's own) please. Makes calculations easier.
Now. If payload = 1.23 African elephants, take off at 3pm, altitude is 24923 London buses, divide by the number you first thought of. Carry the one. Does anyone else get an answer of 'a seal in a hat'?
"Now. If payload = 1.23 African elephants, take off at 3pm, altitude is 24923 London buses, divide by the number you first thought of. Carry the one. Does anyone else get an answer of 'a seal in a hat'?"
Damn, I got 'a seal holding a hat'.
I must have forgotten to carry the argyle sock.
"... named in honour of first United States astronaut John Glenn ..."
Excuse me? First US astronaut that went into orbit, yes, but third US astronaut to make a flight. (Not counting the apes.)
As Bezos already has a "New Shepard", he seems to be aware of that.
Which beckons the question whether there will be a "New Grissom". Or a "New Gagarin". Space still offers the opportunity to leave behind some petty, smallminded mindsets and develop something bigger, better for all mankind.
I hate to say it but I can never see an American firm creating a "New Gagarin". They'd be hounded as un-American and probably lose all government funding. The same goes for Russians creating a "New Armstrong" or whatever. It's just not going to happen.
Only ESA would be willing to do something like that. Hell in Germany we have Yuri's night every year (at least in cities where there is a bit of the space industry, like Bremen). I cant imagine a Yuri's night existing in the US or a "Neil's night" existing in Russia.
Pity. Maybe I'll be proved wrong one day, but I doubt it...
The same goes for Russians creating a "New Armstrong" or whatever.
Russians are usually quite good on the subject of "credit where credit is due" so I would not be so sure. They just may. You never know.
Though they have to run out of a fairly long list of names themselves: Titov, Leonov, Dzhanibekov, Korolev, Tsiolkovski, Komarov, Tereshkova just to start off with.
We actually do celebrate Yuri's Night here in the U. S. of A. I attended what can only be properly described as a nerd rave in a tent at Moffett Field, home of NASA Ame's Research Center. DJs, flashing lights, scientific and artsy displays, re-purposed Burning Man projects, and I suspect a few mind altering substances - all the hallmarks of a Bay Area party :)
They do it at Kennedy, and probably also at Johnson, but the one in Florida doesn't sound like anywhere near as much fun as what Ames has going on. At the same time I doubt you're going to see anything like that at Redstone, Vandenberg or White Sands considering who their operators are.
... that's stretching things...
...
After all, he first flew as an astronaut around 4 years after John Glenn.
Bezos may save that moniker for his first off-planet landing and return though. Or if he can get a flying bedstead into orbit.
"The first US astronaut to orbit" means the earlier flights were sub-orbital. They went straight up and straight back down.
Yes sub-orbital flights are important to do first for safety testing. But I guarantee it wasn't the main reason they were thinking of. At the time the Soviets were ahead of US in space race, president wanted to get an American "in space" as quickly as possible.
Getting your vehicle high enough and fast enough pointed in the right direction that you can go all the way around without crashing into the surface is a different feat altogether. The earlier flights were basically to make sure the rocket wouldn't explode.
Falcon heavy demo 1 is scheduled for early 2017. Senate launch System first test launch planned for November 2018, New Glenn before 2020 and Long March 9 in 2025.
Anyone want to bet on the next big rocket (after Saturn V) to have a successful launch?
Perhaps I didn't see the last man on the moon.
You likely did not. Perhaps the last state sponsored man on the moon (though probably not as China and India have something to prove), but probably not the last person on the moon.
My money's on Falcon Heavy and the Senate Launch System. SpaceX and ULA actually have experience. Blue Origin may have a bunch of money thanks to Bezos but they have nowhere near as much experience. And spaceflight is prone to failure before the people behind it get it right. Just how it is.
Well that New Shepard sure looked a bit puny in comparison, even if it was quite suggestively shaped. New Glenn is kinda too smooth by comparison. And I still wonder what Bezos wants to ej... er, I mean, what sort of payload he's planning to inject into what sort of orbit, if that's the word?
what sort of payload he's planning to inject into what sort of orbit, if that's the word
New Amazon Prime delivery - warhead to your chosen latitude, longitude and altitude. Delivered worldwide. Make sure that the chosen destination is ready to accept it, otherwise it may be left with the "friendly" neighbours. It is up to you to guarantee that the neighbour will not peruse your 10Mt package.
We'll see how it is when metal has actually been bent. Right now, the only existing part is engine prototypes. I've seen a LOT of rockets never make it out of Powerpoint. At least SLS has an assembled first stage fuel tank.
Speaking of which, it's interesting that's been left out of the diagram, since it's a very similar class rocket.
ESA's Concurrent Design Facility - where they mess around with mission options* - at Estec may still be driven by Excel. Last thing I'm pretty sure was done with Excel was LISA Pathfinder but I suspect it's still in use.
* Not enough power... bigger solar panels... stronger reaction wheels... not enough room... shrink the batteries... more cooling?... move to the outside... They trade off design options on-the-fly. It's Excel AND cool.
It must be a right bugger getting all the power / size / weight / redundency trade-offs "right" on these things. For a given value of right, as there's no correct answer. Then for all the different instrument teams to come back saying can they please just have a bit more. Then after months of back and forward with that, you go to a funding committee who tell you to change everything as you're now going on a different rocket with more/less payload. Or to build that bit in this other country/constituency. Or that they want it all painted purple and shaped like Barney the dinosaur...
OK, that last one probably hasn't ever happened.
It certainly make the kind of engineering I do look bloody easy. Which, to be fair, it is. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. Plus, if I do screw up, I can apologise humbly, run the calcs again, and we can send an engineer round to replace the part with the right one. Our service engineer call-outs start at about £300, less outside central London, not sure what it is once you go past the asteroid belt.
I did once try to sell a pink water storage tank for a bet, but failed. Never any purple ones.
>>Any rocket designed in Powerpoint should never get out.
>What about Excel?
Some of my first rocket simulations were done in excel (IIRC there was a macro pack called something like Watson??)
Some of those were where I spotted a fuel reporting error on the NASA website for one of their deep space probes (this is 20 years ago now) and asked them what the actual situation was. Got a nice reply, and the website updated.
Blue Origin so far has only launched and landed sub-orbital rockets, right? Seems to me he could announce a rocket capable of launching the Pentagon into orbit, but until it flies it's just an announcement.
Seeing as SpaceX has actually reached earth orbit and returned (although damaged), I'm not sure Musk is sweating just yet. Plus, if Musk's rhetoric is honest, competition is good, that's the whole reason he's doing what he's doing, to open up space to a greater audience.
The Rothschild monopolists set up US fronts Rockefeller and Morgan who then monopolized US banking, steel, rail and press. These elitists captured and controlled Edison, Westinghouse, stole patents to create Bell Telephone and noble fraud Marconi. All current monopolists were preselected.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
