Serious question: I Blue Origin actually doing anything else but celebrity joy-rides? If not, this has to be the most grotesque waste of resources I can think of.
They haven’t contributed to spaceflight advancement in truly innovative ways. At least SpaceX manages to catch some of their rockets when falling back to Earth. Blue Origin’s only claim to fame is that it’s a slightly more advanced vomit comet, which we’ve had for decades at this point.
It’s the old nickname for an airplane that basically flies up high, then nosedives for a while. They originally set it up so astronauts could train in free-fall (since they’re, y’know, falling for a few minutes), though it seems like you can just hire them for whatever now. OK Go did a music video featuring a ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWGJA9i18Co
Their first orbital rocket, New Glenn, had its inaugural flight earlier this year. IIRC, it performed rather well in the “launch to orbit” aspect, but they lost the booster as it was coming back to land on a drone ship. It’ll take them time to iron out the kinks, but as long as they don’t scrap the project, I don’t see why it couldn’t become a contender in heavy lift.
Suppose we’ll see. Not unusual to have a long gap between the early launches, lots of data to analyze for the first time. Was 8 months between the first and second launch of Ariane 6, for example.
At this point they seem like joy rides. To start I remember them claiming they were using the data from New Shepard to learn how to best control and land the much larger and more expensive New Glenn rocket, which made sense. It’s not like SpaceX is going to share how they manage to nail the landings so repeatedly, it’s the secret to their success.
Serious question: I Blue Origin actually doing anything else but celebrity joy-rides? If not, this has to be the most grotesque waste of resources I can think of.
They haven’t contributed to spaceflight advancement in truly innovative ways. At least SpaceX manages to catch some of their rockets when falling back to Earth. Blue Origin’s only claim to fame is that it’s a slightly more advanced vomit comet, which we’ve had for decades at this point.
I’m gonna pirate this.
It’s the old nickname for an airplane that basically flies up high, then nosedives for a while. They originally set it up so astronauts could train in free-fall (since they’re, y’know, falling for a few minutes), though it seems like you can just hire them for whatever now. OK Go did a music video featuring a ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWGJA9i18Co
They also filmed some of the zero-g scenes for Apollo 13 in the Vomit Comet.
It’s a bucket list item of mine to fly on and folks reaction to the name is never not funny
Their first orbital rocket, New Glenn, had its inaugural flight earlier this year. IIRC, it performed rather well in the “launch to orbit” aspect, but they lost the booster as it was coming back to land on a drone ship. It’ll take them time to iron out the kinks, but as long as they don’t scrap the project, I don’t see why it couldn’t become a contender in heavy lift.
So in about 30 years at their current peace?
Suppose we’ll see. Not unusual to have a long gap between the early launches, lots of data to analyze for the first time. Was 8 months between the first and second launch of Ariane 6, for example.
At this point they seem like joy rides. To start I remember them claiming they were using the data from New Shepard to learn how to best control and land the much larger and more expensive New Glenn rocket, which made sense. It’s not like SpaceX is going to share how they manage to nail the landings so repeatedly, it’s the secret to their success.