Blue Origin Helps Humanity Set a New Record for Spaceflight (cnbc.com) 53
Blue Origin successfully completed a 10-minute suborbital spaceflight this morning.
But with SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and the space agencies of Russia and China, Blue Origin also helped humanity achieve another milestone Saturday. The Washington Post explains how it will push us far past a record set in 1985 when America's space shuttle made nine flights into space: Saturday's launch will be the 13th human spaceflight of the year, two more than in 1985, when NASA carried out those nine shuttle flights, and the Russian Soyuz vehicle carried astronauts on two launches.
All of those flights reached orbit, while several of the flights this year barely scratched the edge of space in relatively short suborbital jaunts. Still, this year is "the busiest year in human spaceflight," Jennifer Levasseur, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said in an interview. "We're entering a new phase of activity that we've never, frankly, seen before. And it creates a lot of excitement."
Saturday's Blue Origin flight will also carry Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of space exploration firm Voyager Space; Evan Dick, an investor; Lane and Cameron Bess, the first parent-child pair to fly to space; and Laura Shepard Churchley, a daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space...
China, which is building a space station in low Earth orbit, flew two crewed missions this year, and Russia has flown three, including the flight this week. The flurry of activity is reminiscent of 1985, Levasseur said, a time when NASA was optimistic that it would fly dozens of times a year, carrying all sorts of people to space.
The Post ultimately calls 2021 "one of the most remarkable years for human spaceflight."
But with SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and the space agencies of Russia and China, Blue Origin also helped humanity achieve another milestone Saturday. The Washington Post explains how it will push us far past a record set in 1985 when America's space shuttle made nine flights into space: Saturday's launch will be the 13th human spaceflight of the year, two more than in 1985, when NASA carried out those nine shuttle flights, and the Russian Soyuz vehicle carried astronauts on two launches.
All of those flights reached orbit, while several of the flights this year barely scratched the edge of space in relatively short suborbital jaunts. Still, this year is "the busiest year in human spaceflight," Jennifer Levasseur, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, said in an interview. "We're entering a new phase of activity that we've never, frankly, seen before. And it creates a lot of excitement."
Saturday's Blue Origin flight will also carry Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of space exploration firm Voyager Space; Evan Dick, an investor; Lane and Cameron Bess, the first parent-child pair to fly to space; and Laura Shepard Churchley, a daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space...
China, which is building a space station in low Earth orbit, flew two crewed missions this year, and Russia has flown three, including the flight this week. The flurry of activity is reminiscent of 1985, Levasseur said, a time when NASA was optimistic that it would fly dozens of times a year, carrying all sorts of people to space.
The Post ultimately calls 2021 "one of the most remarkable years for human spaceflight."
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Re: What about spy planes? (Score:1)
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Surely we aren't debating whether there are any reconnaissance assets that go higher and further than the Blue Origin? Obviously that's no contest.
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Re: What about spy planes? (Score:1)
So,, (Score:4)
A suborbital big bottlerocket is now spaceflight?
Yawn
If you can't make it to the goal posts. (Score:2)
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Old Standard (Score:2)
It was for Alan Shepard in 1961. While they've adjusted the standard for what counts as entering space, the Blue Origin launches meet the standard set back then as well as today's standards.
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the Blue Origin launches meet the standard
set back then as well as today's standards.
There is only one standard that matters:
Did this launch complete at least one orbit?
If so, this qualifies as space flight.
Otherwise, not space flight.
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Search on "First American in Space" and you'll get an answer that clearly disagrees.
I'll agree that today suborbital is a different class than orbital, but saying it's not space flight is not how most people would separate those classes.
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Technically, yes. So they claim a record, but that's purely a matter of the record being defined in broken way. You can't compare a manned sounding rocket to an orbital vehicle, it's orders of magnitude easier and cheaper.
It's actually more impressive to do a single orbital flight in a year than it is to do a dozen suborbital ones.
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I watched the flight from beginning to parachute deployment, and it did leave the impression of a super-carnival ride, a ten minute vertical sounding rocket with people on it.
But it is better than the Virgin Galactic scheme that fails to reach the internationally recognized space boundary (100 km, the Blue Origin NS system goes up to about 106 km, VG a mere 86 km), and a more sensible approach to doing so (just build the darn rocket, not this overly complex VG spaceplane scheme that killed its first pilot).
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Blatant shilling (Score:5, Insightful)
For a company that can't even get to orbit, they sure get a lot of publicity. Apparently that's the one thing Bezos is good at.
Re:Blatant shilling (Score:5, Insightful)
Given he owns the WaPo, this is hardly surprising.
It's the new guilded age (Score:2)
Re: It's the new guilded age (Score:2)
Re: It's the new guilded age (Score:2)
Sorry, this is killing me - it's gilded, like coated in gold. Gilded age.
Also, I agree. The original gilded age was driven by the enormous wealth gap, allowing insanely rich people to feel comfortable flouting their wealth. As then, the wealth gap is expanding now.
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News isn't what it used to be. (Score:1)
"The rocket launched from Blue Origin’s private facility in West Texas, and reached above 100,000 kilometers ..."
I don't think so! The writer doesn't understand the difference between meters and kilometers.
"Suborbital" used to mean a significant portion of the Earth's circumference. I guess I can now claim to throw baseballs on "Suborbital" flights.
Re: News isn't what it used to be. (Score:2)
The ego-to-competence ratio is a useful quantity. Absolute quantification of both is of course useful too, but if you're objectively smart but believe you're the second coming of Newton, Einstein, and Shakespeare rolled into one, you're still a pathological case of limited real-world utility.
I trace the problem to at least the early 90s when it started to become fashionable to humor people's delusions of competence to the point of handing out high school diplomas to half-literate kids in rich white suburban
How long until their Booster boofs? (Score:2)
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Every time that thing comes in for it's insanely wasteful hover landing...
What on Earth are you complaining about? The cost of fuel on a rocket flight is round off error, over 99% of the cost is the hardware and if you can recover it that is insanely not wasteful. There is semi-informed space fanboisitis around "all the energy" being used which grossly misstates the economics and engineering of spaceflight. Even an orbital launch like SpaceX's only uses about as much energy getting its payload into orbit as the most efficient airliner flying from the U.S. to India. Fuel spent bri
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Every time that thing comes in for it's insanely wasteful hover landing and has to bobble around and miss the center of it's pad, the above is what I'm thinking. It looks like it's under manual control by someone who's not that good at flying RC craft.
I think hovering is basically the only technical feat they can do that SpaceX cannot, so might as well flaunt it.
they forgot another record... (Score:1)
the one for the most money wasted on useless people in one year
Blue Origin Helps... (Score:5, Informative)
Blue Origin Helps Humanity Set a New Record...
Well, yes, there is a new record, but it comes from all actors involved: Blue Origins (5 suborbital flights), SpaceX (3 flights), Russian Soyuz (3 flights), and Chinese Shenzhou (2 flights). You can find the complete list (except for the most recent flight covered in this article) in this Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org]. Note that green rows (meaning "suborbital flight") correspond to Blue Origin, which has the dubious honor of being the only one not reaching orbit.
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This was the third Blue Origin flight, not the fifth. The other two suborbital flights were by Virgin Galactic.
Re: Blue Origin Helps... (Score:2)
You are correct, sorry for the mistake. The 5 suborbital flights correspond to Blue origin (only 3, not 5) and Virgin Galactic (2).
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If they're going to count Virgin flights it's not a record. In 1965 there were 12 X-15 flights that reached 200,000 ft or more, plus 6 orbital flights.
Remember most people are horribly uninformed (Score:2)
When it comes to spaceflight, I'm always quite shocked about how little people actually know, and we need to keep that in mind with stuff like this. Many easily equate Shatner's brief zero-G flight with landing on the moon, and some people would be surprised to realize we haven't landed people on Mars yet. This isn't a new phenomena... years ago when the space shuttle was in constant use, a classmate at university said, "you mean the space shuttle doesn't go to the moon?"
A couple days ago I returned a bad
Most flights, not people (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1985 over 60 people went to space. In 2021 it was only 42, and that's even counting "space tourism flights" that weren't even orbital and basically glanced into space and back down. So you can reduce that down to the low 30s for 2021 for orbital manned spaceflight.
So in that metric it's still way off pace for 1985 (only about half as many people). Of course it was January 1986 that the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed, bringing an immediate halt to that pace (and one could argue the accident was a direct result of that pace).
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Why was this modded down? Is it inaccurate or off topic in some way? WTF. I guess someone that works for Blue Origin had mod points today.
Why so fast? (Score:3)
Blue Origin is doing the absolute minimum effort to get these headlines. If they don't orbit around the earth at least one time, no one should pay for this supposed trip to space. Compared to what Space-X has done, Blue Origin is the punchline to any number of jokes.
Re: Why so fast? (Score:2)
Record Tied (Score:3)
The Virgin Galactic flights didn't cross the Karman line, so while the US has a lower definition for the start of space (mostly so that we can use that altitude for spying and say we're not violating airspace), by the international definition, we've just tied the record on manned spaceflights in a year.
We probably set the record for the most different designs of manned spacecraft reaching space in a year.
Blue Origin Slashvertisement (Score:2)
$28M for a suborbital 5 minutes of weightlessness is spaceflight?
At least better than Virgin Galactic (Score:2)
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Headline... (Score:2)
The headline originally read, "Jeff Bezos' magnificent & powerful space shaft thrusts its way into space yet again. All hail Jeff Bezos & his mighty thrusting shaft!"
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Well, it does look like a giant--
Johnson!
Yes, sir!
Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this!
Just an advertisement for Bezos (Score:1)