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New Glenn Update

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Re: New Glenn Update

#151
post #65

I think Blue Origin's biggest problem is they don't currently have a planned or real Falcon 9 competitor. These expected and incremental updates (to a years late system that still needs to be proven) are putting the payload capacity in the Falcon Heavy range and there's roughly 1 Falcon Heavy launch per year. There are over 100 Falcon 9 launches per year. Yes a bunch are Starlink so you can exclude those when estimat…

Starship's maximum payload doesn't matter - it's cost per launch is all that matters, and with full reuse it will be cheaper to launch a medium payload on Starship than F9. SpaceX has already stated some of their launch contracts include the option to switch the launch vehicle to Starship from F9.

It really does matter because SpaceX has to recover the cost of developing the program. I have no idea what all these test launches cost (where they lose the vehicle) but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the $300-500M range. Plus development time for all the components, particularly the engines.

Starship is complex. The Raptor engines are complex. There are valid reasons to use Methane instead of Kerosene (ie to avoid coking and the ccost to reuse) but now you need two chilled propellants with everything that entails.

You need to do a lot of launches to become human-rated (like Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon is now). In-orbit refueling is going to take a lot of launches to perfect and prove and it's going to have fairly limited applications to boot.

Plus the entire program is a massive opportunity cost. SpaceX is in their Boeing 747 era now. The 747 was such a massive profit center for Boeing for decades, particularly when the program was paid for so it didn't need to be recovered on each plane delivered.

Ultimately that ends. Engines are so reliable that they don't make 4 engine commercial planes anymore. I read it's likely that the engine will never have to be replaced for the entire life of the plane, which is a vastly different situation to 50-60 years ago when the 747 was first developed.

The Falcon 9 is currently the most successful launch system ever made and it is a cash cow. But if SpaceX spends a decade or more delivering Starship and recovering the program cost, that's a long time for somebody else to come along with an even cheaper platform in the same class as Falcon 9.

Re: New Glenn Update

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I split my time between Europe and the US, and I am totally not convinced that metric is better. Some things are ridiculously better in the imperial system - like temperature: In Fahrenheit, 0 is roughly the coldest mean day in densely inhabited areas, and 100 is the hottest. In Metric, 0 is the freezing point of water at sea level in ambient temperatures and with a low barometer reading, 100 is boiling in the same c…

I've always found the weather argument somewhat unconvincing, because 0°C being the freezing point of water is very much a useful point of reference in weather contexts - it's roughly where one may expect iced-over pavements and rain to turn to snow! And then the higher temperatures are a question of getting used to it - 40°C instead of 100°F is very very warm, 30 is pretty hot, 20 is reasonably warm, etc. But then I…

In my area of the US 0 farenheit is useful to know as the point when salted roads start to refreeze.

Re: New Glenn Update

#153
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm never at exactly 1 atm plus the government dumps copious amounts of salt so water never actually freezes at 0°C plus so long as I memorize that 32°F is freezing it's exactly the same as memorizing 0°C is freezing. I would say the nice thing about the metric system is as long as you convert into a base unit (i.e. Meters, Seconds, etc) then you can easily convert stuff around. But you can't! Metric uses Kilogra…

> But you can't! Metric uses Kilograms not Grams all the time for things like Force (Kg *m/s^2) A gram is 1000 times a gram, it's written in the word. Are you serious when you say you can't easily multiply or divide by 1000? A mile is 5280 feet. I can't just convert 231 miles into feet like that, and that's assuming I remember "5280".

If we still used furlongs it would make more sense because there are 8 furlongs in a mile.

Re: New Glenn Update

#154
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I split my time between Europe and the US, and I am totally not convinced that metric is better. Some things are ridiculously better in the imperial system - like temperature: In Fahrenheit, 0 is roughly the coldest mean day in densely inhabited areas, and 100 is the hottest. In Metric, 0 is the freezing point of water at sea level in ambient temperatures and with a low barometer reading, 100 is boiling in the same c…

I am ready to bet big that you would never hear that kind of opinions from someone who learned the metric system first. Am I right in your case? As someone who grew up with metric, my opinion is that nothing that imperial people claim is unintuitive with metric is, in fact, unintuitive to me. Nothing. And I tried hard. We're used to what we're used to :-). > Some things are ridiculously better in the imperial system…

Fractional units do work much easier with 2, and 3 as common denominators, and I find metric natives are a bit less wieldy with fractional units overall, presumably because they aren't used as often. However the majority of people overall are bad with fractions anyways.
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