Blue Origin, the private space firm owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has just dropped a huge, unexpected gauntlet in the race to develop a reusable rocket. It just launched its New Shepard space vehicle (video, below) consisting of a BE-3 rocket and crew capsule to a suborbital height of around 100.5 kilometers (62 miles). The capsule then separated and touched down beneath a parachute, but more importantly, the BE-3 rocket also started its own descent. After the rockets fired at nearly 5,000 feet, it made a a controlled vertical landing at a gentle 4.4 mph.

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http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue ... t-landing/

Son of a bitch

That's the biggest vibrator I've ever seen.

I hate that video, can't even decide how real it is. If real, it mixes cgi with actual video, muddying up what can be gleaned from the footage. The over-dramatic music and overall hype feel to it just makes it that much more appalling. Is it full scale? If it's what it appears to be, it is pretty damn cool. I was thinking it must have some massive gyros inside. The endgadget piece contrasts it with Musk's rocket, implying the much greater speed and height makes this kind of touchdown much more problematic, but this I don't really understand. Surely the hard part is the actual touchdown, not getting down to where this guy ended its ascent. And why is a vertical landing so hard anyway? They have robots that can walk now, this is harder?

Yeah, the Musk comment is a bit silly, the high altitude speed doesn't really make that much of a difference for the actual touchdown, although it would be more difficult to get the rocket landed at an exact position (e.g. a floating barge). Then again, Musk is seen as some sort of holy saint of rocket science nowadays, so if he says it doesn't count it doesn't count right (just paraphrasing the interweb)..

OK, the video is partly promotional, but it apparently works.

The Blue Shepherd launch vehicle was built with the intention of being a reusable vehicle that soft-lands back on Earth after propelling its payload to 100 Km or more. Soft-land back on Earth is apparently what it does, for real.

Now all we need, is for this success to be transplanted to LEO launchers.

My understanding is this is only a test article. SpaceX have already completed their test phase (albeit with lower altitude tests), and are now trying to get it to work with actual commercial flights. Blue Origin's achievement is impressive; now let's see them to do with a real launch scenario.

They have robots that can walk now, this is harder?

Much ......it's vectoring thrust in a controllable manner that is very hard .....watch how well that thrust angles out to correct just near the ground.

Lot of energy engaged that needs to be controlled ...gravity's a bitch.

I'm liking this Heinlein-like commercial space race scenario. It doesnt seem that long to me since a commercial space industry was a pipe dream.

Macdoc wrote:

They have robots that can walk now, this is harder?

Much ......it's vectoring thrust in a controllable manner that is very hard .....watch how well that thrust angles out to correct just near the ground.

Lot of energy engaged that needs to be controlled ...gravity's a bitch.

Do you think they have any gyros to assist that, and of course I don't mean the measuring kind, but actual massive ones to get torque from? What makes the control so difficult? Is is angular momentum, thrust instabilities/non-uniformity. ..? I'm just curious, not trying to argue, I'm basically clueless about it all.

There is so much of the fuel used in the first few miles, is anyone working on some kind or rail launch off a mountain? I've seen discussions on this, many many years ago, and it's been in some science fiction i read, also a long time ago. It's like the way some early tests were done on I think Musk's rocket, where they used a 747 to launch from. It seems like it should be something people would be working on. For supply runs, you could launch small vehicles at extremely high velocities, maybe even obviating the need for much of a propulsion system for LEO.

crank wrote:

Macdoc wrote:

They have robots that can walk now, this is harder?

Much ......it's vectoring thrust in a controllable manner that is very hard .....watch how well that thrust angles out to correct just near the ground.

Lot of energy engaged that needs to be controlled ...gravity's a bitch.

Do you think they have any gyros to assist that, and of course I don't mean the measuring kind, but actual massive ones to get torque from? What makes the control so difficult? Is is angular momentum, thrust instabilities/non-uniformity. ..? I'm just curious, not trying to argue, I'm basically clueless about it all.

It's basically like balancing a broomstick on your palm, small balancing errors require fast and big corrections.

Actually I suspect it is more like balancing a pencil on your palm. That is, even harder.

Not if you stab it into the palm a ways. I guess no one knows about the gyros? I'm pretty sure they're routine in satellites and were used in at least early rockets, but that memory is really old and may be bogus.

100% in satellites and likely for guidance damping for rockets but as for stabilizing something that big would require seriously large amount of mass for the gyro.