Why Elon Musk's space rockets are much more promising than Jeff Bezos' right now

[Buster's Uncle]

Why Elon Musk's space rockets are so much more promising than Jeff Bezos' right now
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig  19 hours ago



(Blue Origin)



This year is shaping up to be an extremely exciting time for the future of commercial spaceflight, which will be built upon the backbone of revolutionary 21st-century rockets. The private American space companies Blue Origin and SpaceX are paving the way.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2000, successfully launched its "New Shepard" space vehicle for the first time on April 29. The vehicle was named after Alan Shepard, who became the second human and first American to enter space 44 years ago, and is designed to eventually boost a crew of six to space where they can experience weightlessness for 10 minutes before returning to Earth. The ride is for entertainment and therefore not exclusively for astronauts, however, these kinds of temporary spaceflights could become a new way for astronauts to train for upcoming space missions.

Two weeks earlier, on April 14, Elon Musk's SpaceX, founded in 2002, attempted to land one of its Falcon 9 rockets on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets are designed to boost spacecraft to greater heights than Blue Origin's and are therefore involved in other missions outside of commercial spaceflight, including supplying the International Space Station, launching satellites into orbit, and aspirations to reach Mars.

Although the rockets are designed for different things, both events in April were significant tests in the race to build a fleet of revolutionary reusable rockets. With such a fleet, companies could launch the same rocket many times over instead building rockets they use only once and crash-land in the ocean, which is common practice for many space companies such as Arianespace.

But, in the race to pioneer space, there's a major difference between Blue Origin's New Shepard and SpaceX's Falcon 9:



(Screen grabs from SpaceX and Blue Origin YouTube videos)


New Shepard generates about 10% the power of a Falcon 9, and it cannot transport humans — or anything else for that matter — to the International Space Station. SpaceX, however, has been transporting food, water, and other supplies to the ISS since May 2012. And we'll need to use powerful rockets as transportation vehicles if we ever want to reach and colonize other planets like Mars.



(SpaceX on Flickr) Falcon 9 rocket launch on April 14. You can see the second stage of the rocket starting at the divide where the American flag is painted on the rocket.
 

SpaceX's Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket — meaning it has two parts — whereas Blue Origin's is a single-stage rocket. The benefit of a single-stage rocket is that it is smaller, lighter, cheaper to build, cheaper to launch, and less complicated to fly.

Despite these advantages, they are also the reason Blue Origin's latest rocket will not be transporting supplies or astronauts to the ISS. Ever. (SpaceX is in agreement with NASA to launch astronauts in space by 2017.)

That is because a two-stage rocket generates far more power. To be specific: New Shepard generates about 110,000 pounds of thrust — the propulsive force a rocket uses to get to space. The latest Falcon 9 version, by comparison, generates 1.3 million pounds of thrust.

The current version of New Shepard is designed for what is called suborbital spaceflight, where the rocket reaches space but is not high enough or fast enough to place its spacecraft into a complete orbit around the Earth. That's something that must be done to dock with the ISS and to get to the moon.

Blue Origin is working on a more powerful engine that could boost future rockets into higher, orbital space, but that engine is still under development, according to Blue Origin's website.

During the April 29 Blue Origin rocket launch, the rocket was deemed unusable for another flight. But very little is known about what specifically destroyed the rocket except what Bezos describes in the company's blog:

Of course one of our goals is reusability, and unfortunately we didn't get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent.

Blue Origin would not provide more details to Business Insider in an email request.

To date, SpaceX has attempted to land its rockets designed for reuse twice. Unlike Blue Origin's rather secretive behavior, SpaceX is extremely open about its failed landing attempts; it even uploads videos of the events onto its YouTube account.

SpaceX's next rocket-landing attempt will be on June 19. Blue Origins' next attempt is unknown.

NASA has also commissioned the space company Boeing to contribute rocket technology for future spaceflights, but its approach to reusable space technology is very different from that of SpaceX or Blue Origin.

NOW WATCH: Watch the successful test of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft


http://news.yahoo.com/why-elon-musks-space-rockets-222700988.html

[Unorthodox]

What a moronic piece of drivel.


This is about like comparing a semi truck to a station wagon, then complaining that since station wagon can't haul as much as the semi, it's less worthwhile. 

Blue Origin is just fine, they're testing their new engine and have come up with this space tourism thing to pay for future developement, which includes plans to provide a fully modular rocket.   

It could/will (assuming the financial model holds up) eventually include a second stage and be able to ferry astronauts to the space station, not to mention they are in considerations for portions of the vulcan heavy and one of the engines being considered for general russian replacements in the industry. 

As for secretive or not, Blue Origin "lost hydraulic pressure" during the relanding phase.  Pretty much the same as the first Falcon "ran out of hydraulic fluid".  Betting for the same reason. 

Wish both of them would just say "ran out of fuel", since they are using fuel as their hydraulic fluid, running from a holding tank through the servos, down into the engines.

[Unorthodox]

I just noticed it's from a business magazine/site. 

Business wise, Blue Origin is probably more of a gamble right now, yes. 

However, there are a number of concerning things about Space X as well from a business perspective.  They are not mitigating their risk by selling the engines. 

By making everything in house, they are able to make rockets cheap, but they also assume all the risk.  History tells us eventually a Falcon 9 is going to fail.  Spectacularly.  Once that happens, the entire business will be put on hold while the investigation takes place. 

Blue Origin is setting itself up to both build rockets and provide engines to other companies.  When they have a rocket failure, they'll still be selling engines to other companies while that investigation is underway.