Blue Origin
I've been meaning to post for a while, but it's still holidays and all, and everyone's got better things to do than write and read blogs, right?
Anyhow, here's the new space race hotting up, with Jeff Bezos's startup Blue Origin dropping the veil of secrecy for long enough to show what they've been working on. It's called the Goddard, the first development vehicle of the New Shepard program.
As John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace posted in one his his updates, this thing is HUGE. I'd thought they'd be working on something barely a quarter of the size, a technology demonstrator of some kind. Perhaps the engineers don't want to go through the problems that come with upscaling a small vehicle to a big one, and thought they'd just start big and leave it there.
I've often thought with Bezos, though, that what makes his program different from the others, is that he's primarily interested in going to orbit, using suborbit as a stepping stone. Of course, all the others say they're doing that too, but in the mean time, they're most interested in making suborbit profitable. I've read elsewhere that Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing is the simplest way to build a reusable, orbital vehicle, rather than a spaceplane, because a spaceplane's wings create drag and weight, as well as making stability during reentry more challenging. A simple capsule like Goddard is relatively easy to reenter, and has minimal drag.
Of course, wings have other uses. But it looks like this is going to be a big future battle between the VTVL craft, and the spaceplanes.
Anyhow, here's the new space race hotting up, with Jeff Bezos's startup Blue Origin dropping the veil of secrecy for long enough to show what they've been working on. It's called the Goddard, the first development vehicle of the New Shepard program.
As John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace posted in one his his updates, this thing is HUGE. I'd thought they'd be working on something barely a quarter of the size, a technology demonstrator of some kind. Perhaps the engineers don't want to go through the problems that come with upscaling a small vehicle to a big one, and thought they'd just start big and leave it there.
I've often thought with Bezos, though, that what makes his program different from the others, is that he's primarily interested in going to orbit, using suborbit as a stepping stone. Of course, all the others say they're doing that too, but in the mean time, they're most interested in making suborbit profitable. I've read elsewhere that Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing is the simplest way to build a reusable, orbital vehicle, rather than a spaceplane, because a spaceplane's wings create drag and weight, as well as making stability during reentry more challenging. A simple capsule like Goddard is relatively easy to reenter, and has minimal drag.
Of course, wings have other uses. But it looks like this is going to be a big future battle between the VTVL craft, and the spaceplanes.
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