Blue Origin Aerospace (updates)

[+John. Subscriber¹]

4 minutes ago, Beittil said:

Ow my...

 

 

[Beittil]

More info:

 

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Our mascot is the tortoise. We paint one on our vehicles after each successful flight. Our motto is “Gradatim Ferociter” – step by step, ferociously. We believe “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” In the long run, deliberate and methodical wins the day, and you do things quickest by never skipping steps. This step-by-step approach is a powerful enabler of boldness and a critical ingredient in achieving the audacious. We’re excited to give you a preview of our next step. One we’ve been working on for four years. Meet New Glenn:

Introducing New Glenn: Reusable, vertical-landing booster, 3.85 million pounds thrust
Building, flying, landing, and re-flying New Shepard has taught us so much about how to design for practical, operable reusability. And New Glenn incorporates all of those learnings.

Named in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, New Glenn is 23 feet in diameter and lifts off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from seven BE-4 engines. Burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, these are the same BE-4 engines that will power United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket.

The 2-stage New Glenn is 270 feet tall, and its second stage is powered by a single vacuum-optimized BE-4 engine. The 3-stage New Glenn is 313 feet tall. A single vacuum-optimized BE-3 engine, burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, powers its third stage. The booster and the second stage are identical in both variants.

We plan to fly New Glenn for the first time before the end of this decade from historic Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space. The 3-stage variant – with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage – is capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO missions.

Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step. It won’t be the last of course. Up next on our drawing board: New Armstrong. But that’s a story for the future.

Gradatim Ferociter!

Jeff Bezos

 

[DocM]

4 hours ago, John. said:

The 7 meter core and extra height are because the first stage uses methane instead of RP-1, which has a higher bulk density. Methane simply requires a larger tank for a similar effect. 

 

Vulcan will use a 5.4 meter core, and SpaceX's BFR most likely a 15 meter core. Both methane fueled.

 

Going with smaller diameter cores would mean a 450-550 foot rocket to have the same tank volume, which is not practical WRT ground support equipment.

 

Not pixel accurate, did this on my phone, but close enough for perspective. I cut the 15m BFR stand in off because it's height isn't public - yet. If there'll be an intermediate Raptor powered vehicle is unknown - SpaceX has said no.

 

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by DocM

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Nice launcher, great to have re-usability, but a lot of articles are judging by size only.

 

New Glenn    

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It lifts off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from seven BE-4 engines

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazons_chief_Jeff_Bezos_unveils_new_rocket_design_999.html

 

Falcon Heavy

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5,130,000 lbf thrust

http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy

 

Falcon Heavy will still be the big gun until SLS, then BFR takes over.

 

Unless I'm missing something...

[DocM]

You're no missing anything.

 

New Glenn will be a really nice launcher, but it's size is governed by necessity not its power.

 

It's lower stage tank size is governed by the BE-4 engines methane propellant, which has a lower bulk density (less mass/volume)  than RP-1 lower stages. The same reason Vulcan uses a 5.4m lower stage vs Atlas V's 3.81m or Falcon 9's 3.77m. 

 

It's upper stage is likewise larger tanked because it's BE-3U engine is fed liquid hydrogen, which has an even lower bulk density.

 

[Beittil]

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

SpaceX and Blue Origin, the ones who need to test stages at high velocity....backwards........way too cool.    

[DocM]

I'm hearing the older KSC types are enjoying the hell out of all this new activity and excitement, especially rockets landing as God and Robert A. Heinlein intended.

 

Ad Astra!!

 

[Beittil]

Set your alarms for next Tuesday

 

 

 

[DocM]

Good luck to them. This should inform as to the LAS for the orbital SV, a biconic with flipperons.

 

 

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

 

 

 

Blue Origin to test New Shepard abort system Wednesday 

 

Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle lifting off on a Jan. 22 test flight. An Oct. 4 flight will test the crew capsule's abort system. Credit: Blue Origin 

 

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GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Blue Origin plans to test the abort system on its suborbital New Shepard vehicle Wednesday (Oct. 5) as the company trickles out additional details about its New Glenn orbital launch vehicle.

 

The company announced last week that the test would occur Oct. 4 from the company’s test site in West Texas. The company did not release a launch time, but said a webcast of the event would begin at 10:50 a.m. Eastern.

 

On Monday, however, the weather outlook at the West Texas site prompted Blue Origin  to reschedule the test for Wednesday.

 

The liftoff will be similar to several previous New Shepard test flights, but 45 seconds into the flight the abort motor in the crew capsule of the vehicle will fire, sending it away from the propulsion module. The crew capsule will then parachute to a landing similar to that on a normal flight, when the crew capsule separates after main engine burnout.

 

Blue Origin warned, though, that the propulsion module is not likely to survive the abort test. “The booster was never designed to survive an in-flight escape,” Bezos wrote in a Sept. 8 message discussing the upcoming test, citing “70,000 pounds of off-axis force delivered by searing hot exhaust” slamming into the module from the crew capsule’s escape motor.

 

Bezos, though, did not rule out being able to land the module safely, saying there’s “some chance” it will be able to survive the aerodynamic forces from the abort event and land safely. “If the booster does manage to survive this flight — its fifth — we will in fact reward it for its service with a retirement party and put it in a museum,” he wrote.

 

The announcement of the New Shepard test comes days after the company offered a bit more information about the New Glenn vehicle that Bezos announced Sept. 12. Bezos, in a pair of tweets Sept. 26, said that Blue Origin had completed three weeks of wind tunnel tests of a model of the large orbital launch vehicle. One photo showed a module of the full rocket, and another of the “descent configuration” of the first stage as it returns for a landing.

 

The tests, Bezos said, studied the performance of the rocket at transonic and supersonic speeds. “Validated our CFD,” he wrote, referring to computational fluid dynamics modeling of the rocket.

 

The company has yet to release many details about New Glenn beyond its physical size and number of engines. The first stage uses seven BE-4 engines that Blue Origin is currently developing, and the second stage has one BE-4. An optional third stage uses a BE-3 engine based on the one used by New Shepard.

 

In an interview during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here Sept. 27, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson said that the company will provide more details about New Glenn in the coming months. “The beginning of next year is when we hope to release more information about New Glenn,” he said.

 

The timing of the wind tunnel tests announce came the same day that SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk announced a successful test of his company’s new Raptor engine. It was also a day before Musk’s major announcement of his Mars mission architecture at the IAC.

 

Meyerson said the announcement of the wind tunnel testing was not meant to “one-up” SpaceX. “This is not what we think about when we put out an announcement,” he said. “For the wind tunnel tests, three weeks of testing were completed. It’s significant and tied to the New Glenn announcement from the 12th, so it went out.”

 

He also sought to downplay any competition between Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s launch vehicles, arguing that a future with an expanded human presence in space requires multiple providers. “We really believe in the success of all the other launch companies,” he said. “We’re going to need that to enable that future.”

http://spacenews.com/blue-origin-to-test-new-shepard-abort-system-next-week/

 

[DocM]

Reinforcing: they expect the boost stage to crumple when the capsule does the abort. The aero loads on the flat end of that stage wont be pretty.

[Draggendrop Veteran]

I will have my "fingers crossed" for it.

 

It would be real cool to have it land, and if so, she goes to a museum. A requirement when one takes their grandchild to see the pioneering reusables, many decades in the future. ( decades later.....In my day, we were crashing and blowing them up all over the place...great days indeed!)

 

[Blue-Vision]

Me too, DD ... but I'm with @DocM on this one. I personally expect something approaching a train collision on the top 1/5th of the Booster in terms of damage when they hit the "Abort" button to begin the test. Hope it doesn't happen like that, and I don't wanna see anything like that either; but it's physics. Hope they've got a way to mitigate or minimize.

[Beittil]

Livestream here... counting down already:

 

 

[+John. Subscriber¹]

Short hold, reason unknown so far

[+John. Subscriber¹]

If the only purpose is to test the crew capsule, why strap it to a booster? Seems a bit of a waste of money. Can they not launch it from ground like the Dragon test?

 

Or are they saying that because they don't expect the booster to survive

 

[+John. Subscriber¹]

Maybe someone should have written "This Way Up" on the capsule. Good escape but I'd hate to be inside that thing 

[+John. Subscriber¹]

Well, congrats to Blue Origin for that. Nice to have both parts back in one piece. That booster looks hella stable once under control, very impressive.

[PGHammer]

On 9/13/2016 at 7:52 PM, DocM said:

You're no missing anything.

 

New Glenn will be a really nice launcher, but it's size is governed by necessity not its power.

 

It's lower stage tank size is governed by the BE-4 engines methane propellant, which has a lower bulk density (less mass/volume)  than RP-1 lower stages. The same reason Vulcan uses a 5.4m lower stage vs Atlas V's 3.81m or Falcon 9's 3.77m. 

 

It's upper stage is likewise larger tanked because it's BE-3U engine is fed liquid hydrogen, which has an even lower bulk density.

 

Also, by using methane, you can get that from one of the largest manmade sources of methane - landfills.  (Another source is sewage treatment plants.)

 

You don't need to drill - just collect.  (Methane is very much a "lemonade from lemons" fuel - regardless of how you use it.)

[DocM]

That bulk density vs kerosene is also why SpaceX's ITS is so huge, but making it from composites helps cut the mass by a lot.

[DocM]

Successful touchdown of capsule and booster.

 

That booster flyback was highly doubtful. Good job on making a durable structure!!

The data on the gyrations should be interesting, but it likely won't be as severe as it looks from the outside.

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

I actually had a different take on the test. The booster handled it well with the only observations that I saw were... a 1 second lapse to clear up thrust prior to landing, slight flame travel up one leg and web on landing as well as a slight lean on landing which may have been uneven ground. Overall the capsule took a few seconds for stabilization but behaved itself.

 

The media have been blowing it out of proportion, some even expecting a "flaming ball of desert wreckage". The MSM have exaggerated more as the week went on. Jeff Bezos even erred to the side of non committal of success, for PR, in case of failure. SpaceX has done the same on numerous occasions

 

Last week it was leaked that the simulations from the engineering team were at 50/50...unverified, but that states a lot for these reasons. Blue Origin has a very stable financial base and vision. This also attracts the best and brightest of engineers. This was the 5th flight of this launcher and it was already known that it would be retired and placed in a museum if landed. Launcher and capsule were traveling at the same velocity and same acceleration prior to abort, meaning a rest state prior to turbulence. The abort fired for two seconds and was "gimbled" to clear the launcher. The launcher was also throttled back to compensate for capsule mass.The upper section of the launcher contains the speed brake housing which helps to beef it up and we may see pictures later of the launcher thrust shield later.

 

Bottom line. There was no way this engineering team was going to allow this booster to toast itself unless it had a fighting chance. This booster is everything, so far, that Blue Origin stands for. It has made 5 flights, carried out all required tests and "quietly", just beat SpaceX for the first commercial in flight abort test. If I was part of this engineering team, I also would have spent countless hours making sure this launcher had a fighting chance and survived her final flight, making it to the museum podium.   A 50/50 engineering estimate, err's on the side of caution.

 

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]

 

 

 

[Draggendrop Veteran]