Blue Origin's New Shepard completed another successful mission... SpaceX Falcon GET REKT!
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Now this is tech I don't mind us working on. Someday we will need to leave this planet so yes we should be working on stuff like this. Thanks for sharing this video MAXXHEW.
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Yeah you're welcome. It seems like the people at Blue Origin are doing it right with their New Shepard... if it is affordable I'll be first in line to take that ride.
While I'm all for what Blue Origin is doing.....
Comparing what they are doing and have done to what Space X is and has has done is like trying to call a meal you've cooked on the exhaust manifold of a car five star gourmet French cuisine. I'll be much more impressed once blue origin slows their rocket down from orbital velocities versus suborbital velocities.
I'd rather eat a good ol' hearty meal off an exhaust manifold than a pile of crap that couldn't even make a decent presentation on a plate. Yeah... SpaceX Falcon is a fail. Blue Origin New Shepard is earning it's stars and succeeding. I wish both teams luck... but it sure looks like only one of them has a strategy that wins.
Apples and oranges man. Both companies are targeting different goals. Both should be praised.
Falcon is FAR from a failure. I'd like to see BO try to stick a landing on a moving sea platform while slowing down from orbital velocity. Only then will they "earn their stars" as you put it. Going straight up and then straight back down is neat, but hardly something to be considered a "winning strategy."
I'm a huge Space X fan....and I'm all for any and all competition, as it will only drive the cost to access space lower. However BO has quite a ways to go before they can be called a true success story. I tip my hat to their success and wish them the best of luck.
Er.. You realise that the Falcon 9 is a huge success?
Add to that, the reusable stage one has also made a successful landing and is being prepared for a second run.
New Shepard is doing a great job at what it does, but its job isn't anything like Falcon 9. One puts things into space and orbit (Falcon 9), the other just (by 1km) makes it into space going straight up (New Shepard).
The current issue that New Shepard has is that it just isn't usable for any commercially viable purpose yet. Going straight up doesnt get you into space, its not fast enough and your going in the wrong direction. Im fairly certain that this is on purpose so they can work on their launch and landing work, but it isnt that hard in the grand scheme of things, once/if they start making this rocket into something that makes it actually useful they will have a lot more challenges, and hopefully they find solutions to them that work well so we can get this space race really going.
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What no one has yet to discuss is scale. Just to give a somewhat anecdotal show of what can be down in comparison to Blue Origin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJdrlWR-yFM at the time it was supposedly the largest amatuer launched rocket to date, and wasn't much smaller then the Shepherd. The Falcon is a full size payload, they launched what 16 satellites this last launch and have a contract with NASA they are fulfilling now. You are comparing apples to oranges, plus if I am not mistaken the first stage engine is hydrogen powered for their larger vehicle, which has only been tested on land. Read up on low stage rocket engines, hydrogen tends not to be favored because of huge volume and low energy density. To this day NASA has no idea why the design choices for the F1-A ( the Saturn V first stage engines, a.k.a. Apollo ) were made, they have the blueprints ( supposedly ), yet still had to find a tested engine and 3-d model it and tear it down for a Rocketdyne project, the F1-B.