Blue Origin

[Beati Dogu]

It seems Blue Origin have already bought a landing ship for New Glenn to land on. They're fitting it out now.

Jeff Bezos' plans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxPgw1A9R8Q

I like this guy's videos in general.

[Cold]

Passenger prices for the first 62 mile high flights predicted to be from $200k-$300k. That's almost inexpensive.

Reuters link

[Beati Dogu]

They should get plenty of takers at that price.

[Beati Dogu]

Blue Origin are doing the 9th New Glenn launch on Wednesday and they'll be live streaming it.

Edit: 3 pm UK time - Live webcast begins at T-20 minutes on http://BlueOrigin.com .


This is an unmanned high altitude test of the capsule's escape motor.

They're building an initial 6 New Glenns for commercial use and hope to have the first manned test flight by the end of the year.

Edited by Beati Dogu on Tuesday 17th July 21:12

[Eric Mc]

Live coverage coming up -

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/abpic-media-pro...

[Beati Dogu]

Well that went well. A 10g kick in the pants as it tore off the top of the booster, but it did the trick.

It got up to about 390,000 feet / 74 miles / 119 km too.

Edited by Beati Dogu on Wednesday 18th July 21:21

[anonymous-user]

Blue origin live feeds are great. The last one has a bit about the town in Texas, a history of the launches so far. It’s all done in a nice understated style.

Seems like a manned flight isn’t that far off for them now.

[RobDickinson]

They've just bought this roro ferry...

[Beati Dogu]

Interesting. So I guess that'll be converted into a landing ship. Seems a little small at the moment.

[RobDickinson]

Afik they already have the landing ship this is possibly transport but who knows

[MartG]

RobDickinson said:

Afik they already have the landing ship this is possibly transport but who knows

Yes - I'd guess it'll be used to transport launchers around

[Beati Dogu]

Do they really need a ship for mere transport though? All the big parts like the stages & fairings will be built at their new factory just outside the gates of Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The BE-4 engines will be made in Alabama, but they're not that big that they can't be moved by truck.

I suppose if they want to be able to launch from Vandenberg they're going to need to ship it round through the Panama canal.

[MartG]

Where will it be landing ?

[Beati Dogu]

As I understand it, they're just going to use landing ships



As the picture indicates, the ship will be moving at the time.

Since a ship will be quicker (and more stable) than a towed barge, they can probably get away with just one of them. Or one in each ocean anyway.



More Blue Origin news:

It what'll be a major win for Blue Origin, the word is that they've won the contract with ULA to supply their BE-4 engine for use on their forthcoming Vulcan rocket. This will replace both the Atlas V and Delta 4 rockets.

Vulcan's first stage will use two BE-4s and the idea is that the engine section is jettisoned and recovered for reuse.

New Glenn’s first stage by comparison will be powered by seven BE-4s

[RobDickinson]

Yeah not unexpected given the competition basically saying they've stopped investing in the engine development.

The recovery plan isn't going to be tried at all until 2025 or so with current plans..

[Beati Dogu]

It's official now:

"BE-4 engine to power the booster of our next-gen #VulcanCentaur rocket, which is nearing design completion."

https://www.ulalaunch.com/about/news-detail/2018/0...


Celebratorily burn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyn2gOimRfM

Edited by Beati Dogu on Thursday 27th September 22:05

[RobDickinson]

I've ordered 2.

[Beati Dogu]

RobDickinson said:

I've ordered 2.

You forgot the link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00137QS28/ref=dm_ws_tlw...

[Beati Dogu]

The New Glenn's latest paint job looks good:



Although it makes it look more like a giant Harpoon anti-ship missile than it already did.

[Kccv23highliftcam]

It will be awesome to have two private companies opening up space research and exploration, just awesome.