Jeff Bezos's Space Company Reveals Some Secrets 240
An anonymous reader writes "Jeff Bezos's commercial spaceflight company, Blue Origin, has kept its plans secret to better compete with rivals such as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. But in order to build its launch facility in West Texas, it has revealed some details of its future operations: Blue Origin's Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) will carry three or more passengers on suborbital, ballistic trajectories to altitudes in excess of 325,000 feet above sea level. It will launch vertically and land vertically, and will use hydrogen peroxide and kerosene as propellants. It will operate autonomously under control of on-board computers, with no ground control. Blue Origin plans a maximum rate of 52 launches per year."
What an increibly underwhelming site (Score:3, Interesting)
Price? (Score:4, Interesting)
not as safe as Virgin Galactic? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Cue the unmanned spaceflight mob (Score:3, Interesting)
I think something like "Nobody onboard would care." is more appropriate, but that's just me.
Good trick (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't know anyone had systems relable enough for civilian passengers (i.e. not NASA, military, etc.) to do this yet (or maybe it's all in the disclaimer you have to sign beforehand
with no ground control during nominal flight conditions[...]
So they will have ground control during less than nominal flight conditions?
No ground control? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Space Vomit (Score:4, Interesting)
Ballistic trajectory? (Score:2, Interesting)
Another thing I'd like to know is, where does it land? If it's a water landing, that makes passenger safety and training more complex (they have to learn how to stay afloat if something goes balls up). If it's a land based touchdown, who's land is it going to land on? They'll have to buy a pretty big slab of dirt if they're going to guarantee it always lands on their property.
Sand Crash? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prediction... (Score:5, Interesting)
spacecraft accident ground crew
spacecraft accident occupant
spacecraft accident person (non-crew)
falling in a spacecraft (I guess that means floating into something)
and the generic spacecraft accident
Being almost too young to remember Challenger we'd kid around about these at work until Columbia.
Unfriendly competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Commercial manned space travel still seems like quite a lofty goal - lofty enough, and expensive enough, that trying to ensure competition in the marketplace at this very early stage seems counterproductive. One would think that everyone could benefit from open cooperation between Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, at least until they both get a revenue stream going (read: customers actually in space).
Unless, that is, Bezos and/or Branson think the first-mover advantage will really translate into significant profits. I suspect, however, that those profits are in the pretty distant future, and the best way to bring the profits closer would be to cooperate.
A Pilot: There is no substitute (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, from what I hear, jet airliners basically fly themselves. It's not a major problem for a pilot to land or take off in one of these things, and once you get it up, it's basically cruise control. Of course, as they say, when you need an experienced airline pilot, there is no substitute.
What happens when something goes wrong? If this thing isn't built to have some human control when things are out of the ordinary, no one in his right mind would go up in one of these things.
(Just my two cents.)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
IAAAE (I Am An Aerospace Engineer)
-philski-
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
What I'm asking is this: besides being a *very* expensive roller coaster, what practical applications does this have right now? It would be great if there were somewhere for us to *go* other than up and then down.
The good news is that if/when we can live on another planet we'll know how to get there.
Re:Landing vertically (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuel isn't the cost driver for this kind of venture. VTOL is a great way to save on operational costs, since you can pick your exact landing spot instead of landing wherever the wind takes you. The technical challenges of vertical landing aren't insurmountable, as they've been overcome by at least three groups I can think of (Armadillo, JSA, and USAF).
The real problem with vertical landing isn't cost, it's weight. You have to carry all the fuel you plan to use in you landing throughout every stage of the flight. For a sub-orbital shot that's no big deal, but building a VTOL orbital rocket that has any sort of reasonable payload is quite a technical challenge. This [jerrypournelle.com] is the best discussion of the topic I'm familiar with.
Re:No problems here (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can get high concentration peroxide (85%+), there are no catalyst quenching problems. We started out with 90% peroxide, and we would still be using it (and would have saved a year of work...) if we had a willing supplier. The original supplier we used went out of business, and the remaining domestic supplier didn't want to do business with us, even for >$100,000 orders.
We did a number of peroxide / kerosene biprop tests back in August / September 2002 before we ran out of high concentration peroxide.
We are pretty happy with liquid oxygen now, but if Bezos is sure that supply won't be an issue, peroxide/kerosene is certainly not a bad choice. The sole drawback I would note is that it will put a lower limit on his operating expenses, and a LOX based system could potentially undercut him, although that would only be an issue when ticket prices are getting down towards $10k.
John Carmack