Over eleven years after Blue Origin patented landing a rocket on a barge, and nearly ten years after SpaceX's first "ASDS" (barge) landing, Blue Origin has finally successfully landed a rocket on a barge.
We should be impressed they did it before their patent expired.
Congrats to the Blue Origin team! That's a heck of a milestone (landing it on the second attempt). It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship[1] but it certainly could handle all of the current GEO satellite designs. I'm sure that the NRO will appreciate the larger payload volume as well. Really super glad to see they have hardware that has successfully done all the things. The first step to making it as reliable as other launch platforms. And having a choice for launch services is always a good thing for people buying said launch services.
Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on.
[1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.
Vaporware is "late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled" [1].
Starship is late, so you're pedantically correct. But so is New Glenn, and it started being developed when Falcon 9 made its first trip to the ISS. (2012.)
"a computer-related product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become available"
It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available, but only thing it'll share with original announced product is a name. Nowhere close on the cost/features/scale/etc.
Only things that were shown so far are prototypes that are many iterations away from being anywhere close to a product.
New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps.
> It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available
Did you miss Falcon 9 and Heavy? (New Glenn competes with them, not Starship. Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than New Glenn, currently, for cheaper.)
> New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps
This is literally the first time they've successfully recovered New Glenn. Recovered. No reuse. It's the second time they've every flown the damn thing. It's impressive. But it's not "just going through final validation."
I have a background in aerospace engineering, specifically astronautics. It's wild to see armchair engineers shoot shit at major accomplishments like this.
> nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship
If it can get its mass into orbit, it delivers what it sold. I'd currently put my money on a successful orbital launch of Starship before New Glenn re-flies a booster for a paying customer.
US government didn't pay for getting its mass into orbit.
Getting Starship to the orbit means that they have something called Starship in the orbit. It doesn't mean product that they sold isn't vaporware - what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit.
I worked under Dave Limp for multiple years in Amazon's Consumer Devices group (like way under, I think he was my manager's skip manager?). I like him personally. But:
(1) His management in the Consumer Devices group did not lead to success, I feel we (and especially the consumer robotics group) basically floundered for 7 years :(
(2) He only left CoRo to join Blue Origin like 2 years ago. 2 years is a decent length of time, but far too short for us to credit this success to him -- there have been many other forces building Blue Origin to what it is today. Maybe he gets 30% credit?
p.s. no offense to Mr. Limp, I must emphasize that he was a kind, polite, caring person, and certainly had the capacity for great decisions. It is unfortunate that Consumer Devices and CoRo hasn't had great success, and success may yet be just around the corner.
Landing (the booster) on their second launch is nice...but I'm more impressed by them being (probably...) 2-for-2 on their very first couple orbital launch attempts.
(Yes, SpaceX's Falcon reached that milestone back in 2010.)
Over eleven years after Blue Origin patented landing a rocket on a barge, and nearly ten years after SpaceX's first "ASDS" (barge) landing, Blue Origin has finally successfully landed a rocket on a barge.
We should be impressed they did it before their patent expired.
Congrats to the Blue Origin team! That's a heck of a milestone (landing it on the second attempt). It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship[1] but it certainly could handle all of the current GEO satellite designs. I'm sure that the NRO will appreciate the larger payload volume as well. Really super glad to see they have hardware that has successfully done all the things. The first step to making it as reliable as other launch platforms. And having a choice for launch services is always a good thing for people buying said launch services.
Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on.
[1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.
Doesn't ULA use Blue Origin's rocket engines?
Yes, for Vulcan [1].
[1] https://spacenews.com/evolution-of-a-plan-ula-execs-spell-ou...
> It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship
Starship is vaporware, so there's nothing to compete with.
> Starship is vaporware
Vaporware is "late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled" [1].
Starship is late, so you're pedantically correct. But so is New Glenn, and it started being developed when Falcon 9 made its first trip to the ISS. (2012.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vaporware
"a computer-related product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become available"
It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available, but only thing it'll share with original announced product is a name. Nowhere close on the cost/features/scale/etc.
Only things that were shown so far are prototypes that are many iterations away from being anywhere close to a product.
New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps.
> It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available
Did you miss Falcon 9 and Heavy? (New Glenn competes with them, not Starship. Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than New Glenn, currently, for cheaper.)
> New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps
This is literally the first time they've successfully recovered New Glenn. Recovered. No reuse. It's the second time they've every flown the damn thing. It's impressive. But it's not "just going through final validation."
I have a background in aerospace engineering, specifically astronautics. It's wild to see armchair engineers shoot shit at major accomplishments like this.
SpaceX is only space company that does hardware rich development. Blue Origin takes much more traditional approach of linear design.
Blue Origin may fail (I couldn't care less about them or SpaceX), but yes, they're in final validation steps, as that's just how they develop things.
Starship is at the stage of putting random ideas on the rocket and seeing if it explodes.
</sarcasm>? If not, why do you think Starship is vaporware?
There are prototype that are called Starship.
There's nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship.
It's Duke Nukem Forever.
> nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship
If it can get its mass into orbit, it delivers what it sold. I'd currently put my money on a successful orbital launch of Starship before New Glenn re-flies a booster for a paying customer.
US government didn't pay for getting its mass into orbit.
Getting Starship to the orbit means that they have something called Starship in the orbit. It doesn't mean product that they sold isn't vaporware - what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit.
> what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit
...what was it? Are you talking about HLS? Propellant transfer? (The latter is absolutely "getting its mass into orbit.")
Which of those has been either officially cancelled or had its delays materially impact the customer's timeline?
Insane that it took a decade for another company to do it, but better late than never. Great to see. Next up: China.
The Zhuque-3 attempt should be a few weeks away,
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... ("China's 1st reusable rocket test fires engines ahead of debut flight")
I bet the next 5 companies/entities that do it are Chinese.
Interesting to see how many are using methlax now as well.
Maybe it tells you a lot about the real commercial demand for this.
SpaceX launches 90% of the payload of the entire world to orbit now.
I’m not sure how that’s relevant? Or do you think it’s typical for valuable markets to field no other competitors for a decade in the 21st century?
Wild! Does that count their own Starlink payloads? Curious what this number looks like when you only look at the launch customer market.
> Curious what this number looks like when you only look at the launch customer market
...did you try to look it up?
SpaceX makes 50%+ margins on its launches, which are booked out years in advance, for a reason.
Video of the launch if anyone was looking for it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iheyXgtG7EI&t=14220s
Full launch video and images of the landing: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
Go Limp Go!
For all the engineers that say management doesn't matter, I give you David Limp.
Management doesn't matter until it does.
I worked under Dave Limp for multiple years in Amazon's Consumer Devices group (like way under, I think he was my manager's skip manager?). I like him personally. But:
(1) His management in the Consumer Devices group did not lead to success, I feel we (and especially the consumer robotics group) basically floundered for 7 years :(
(2) He only left CoRo to join Blue Origin like 2 years ago. 2 years is a decent length of time, but far too short for us to credit this success to him -- there have been many other forces building Blue Origin to what it is today. Maybe he gets 30% credit?
p.s. no offense to Mr. Limp, I must emphasize that he was a kind, polite, caring person, and certainly had the capacity for great decisions. It is unfortunate that Consumer Devices and CoRo hasn't had great success, and success may yet be just around the corner.
Competition is good. SpaceX is de-facto Amazon of space logistics.
Beautiful launch and landing.
I still can't stand the public relation heavy official stream... but even with all that static the rocket itself cut through.
Anyone know more about the explosive landing feet anchors at T+9:55?
Potentially welding the feet to the deck detailed in this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240124165A1/en
What do you think they’ll call the next barge? I’m hoping for Wernher. Or Kurt.
After von Braun and Debus? Who were both members of the SS? (Yes, that SS.)
There's a LOT of important people who worked on space programs who were not also literal Nazis.... Why are you hoping for those two, specifically?
Landing (the booster) on their second launch is nice...but I'm more impressed by them being (probably...) 2-for-2 on their very first couple orbital launch attempts.
(Yes, SpaceX's Falcon reached that milestone back in 2010.)