Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Has Another Successful Launch And Landing

Megalith

Megalith

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Bezos has just demonstrated that his New Shepard rocket is perfectly capable of reuse. Is there anyone who can stop this madman?

The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.
 
Very nice, although simply going up and down is a long way from "living and working in space". Orbit is a lot more about going sideways *really fast* than it is about getting up there in the first place.
 
Mohonri said:
Very nice, although simply going up and down is a long way from "living and working in space". Orbit is a lot more about going sideways *really fast* than it is about getting up there in the first place.
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Quite right.

The only reason we see rockets take off vertically to start with is because straight up is the fastest way out of dense atmosphere, which is a real drag.
 
Seems like a huge waste of money since it can't achieve orbit. I'd rather take a high-altitude balloon up to 150,000 ft and enjoy the view for a while.

I find it really hard to believe that Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic can make a viable business out of these suborbital tourist flights.
 
I'm sure there are thousands of people who wouldn't mind paying big bucks and taking the chance of not surviving the trip back if they got to go into space. I'm not one of them though.
Makes me think of the first episode of Star Trek Enterprise TV Show:
Travis "I heard this platforms been approved for Bio transport."
Reed "I presume you mean fruits and vegetables."
Travis "I mean armory officers and helmsmen"
Reed "I don't think I'm quite ready to have my molecules compressed into a data stream"
 
I'm sure re-entry from vertical space trip will be a totally different story compared to orbit. In order to orbit you need to go around 20 000km/h and a free fall from 100km is not going to create that kind of speed, meaning you are not in the danger of burning up on re-entry and can probably launch parachuted escape capsules when close enough to the ground.

This is just a guess because I didn't do the math on how much speed a rocket would collect free-falling 80km. It must be way less than orbit speed however.
 
Mohonri said:
Very nice, although simply going up and down is a long way from "living and working in space". Orbit is a lot more about going sideways *really fast* than it is about getting up there in the first place.
Click to expand...

They don't talk much about the space programs in physics class anymore do they? It depends on the attitude. The higher the oribit the less velocity you need to stay in orbit. So above a certain point more energy goes in fighting gravity to get to the correct altitude than obtaining orbit velocity.
 
Kueller said:
Quite right.

The only reason we see rockets take off vertically to start with is because straight up is the fastest way out of dense atmosphere, which is a real drag.
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i see what u did there.
 
jpm100 said:
They don't talk much about the space programs in physics class anymore do they? It depends on the attitude. The higher the oribit the less velocity you need to stay in orbit. So above a certain point more energy goes in fighting gravity to get to the correct altitude than obtaining orbit velocity.
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Everything I know about orbital mechanics I learned by playing Kerbal Space Program :) Going from a 100x100km orbit to a 300x300km orbit is a fraction of the delta-v required to get from the surface to orbit.
 
Mohonri said:
Everything I know about orbital mechanics I learned by playing Kerbal Space Program :) Going from a 100x100km orbit to a 300x300km orbit is a fraction of the delta-v required to get from the surface to orbit.
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Quite right. Getting out of the "well" is a real bitch, we use a ton of energy with these beyond inefficient chemical rockets..Once you achieve even a low earth orbit, getting to a higher orbit is a TINY TINY bit of the initial energy required to get out of the "well"...
 
Although this is great for improving the overall push into space, it's still just an up-and-down rocket for tourism...but at least it can bring awareness to the need for reusable rocket technology.

blue-origin-new-shepard-150915a.jpg
 
Hi All
Nice to see I'm not alone in learning about orbital mechanics from Kerbal Space Program
 
jtm55 said:
Hi All
Nice to see I'm not alone in learning about orbital mechanics from Kerbal Space Program
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That game has probably done more to educate the public about spaceflight and physics than NASA has in the last decade.

Learning to fly, mastering docking/Mun/Minmus/Kerbin operations, and eventually flying missions out to Duna and Laythe were among the most challenging and fun gaming experiences I've ever had.
 
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