What's Up? Blue Origin Have Got It Down!
26/11/2015
Blue Origin's hopeful CGI ad sandwiched by actual footage of their latest milestone launch and landing
Blue Origin's less hype-ridden video of the capsule recovery test back in April 2015
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I don't think this news has been as prominent as it might. It seems to me to be a significant achievement in the history of rocketry and space travel.
A private company has managed to send a capsule to the very edge of space, return it safely, and simultaneously recover the booster rocket with a controlled vertical landing. Their principal achievement is the recovery of the booster stage rocket, as this practice has the potential to cut the cost of space flight by a factor of up to a hundred. Imagine how much air travel would cost if a (similarly priced) airliner were thrown away after each flight! Rather than having the noble goal of space exploration; "to boldly go where no man has gone before", Blue Origin have the more mundane goal of revenue from space tourism. There have been commenters who have downplayed the significance of this achievement, but I think it deserves applause. Even though this is a smaller, lighter rocket that has not gone to deep space, it has performed the first bare-bones cycle of launch-release-recover-land. I was born before space flight began, and grew up in the era of Government-run space programmes, where competition was a matter of national pride and security. In the modern world of commercial space ventures, competition is for dominance and dollars. Blue Origin have achieved a double-whammy of technical mastery and PR coup. To give credit to their competitors, below at left I have included some video of more deep-space oriented company SpaceX's trials with the same process. SpaceX are a significantly more successful player, having already conducted as of April 2015, 18 successful launches, including six to dock with and deliver supplies to the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. They have been trying vertical-landing booster recovery, but without success to date, and will be irked by this high-profile display by Blue Origin. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweets. Note the pace of development. These are heady days in the field of space missions! Update 01/2024: - To date SpaceX have achieved 302 full mission successes, two failures, and one partial success, and that's just with their Falcon 9 rockets. Falcon 9 first-stage boosters landed successfully in 269 of 280 attempts (96.1%), with 244 out of 248 (98.4%) for the Falcon 9 Block 5 version. A total of 242 re-flights of first stage boosters have all successfully launched their payloads. SpaceX launch and land vertically, not to space,
no capsule launch, April 2014 SpaceX Space Station resupply flight 5 successful,
failed attempt booster vertical landing, January 2015 SpaceX Space Station resupply flight 6 successful,
failed attempt booster vertical landing, April 2015 |