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After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

arstechnica.com

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Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#41

Post by teractiveodular »

Retric wrote: post #11
teractiveodular wrote: post #2

We're at 12 years of design and 5 years behind the originally announced first launch of 2020 now. Space is hard, rocketry is harder and I wish them luck, but Blue Origin has an awfully long way to go if they want to catch up to SpaceX: this was meant to be the Falcon 9 killer, but odds are Starship will be fully operational before New Glenn completes testing.

It’s got more than twice the payload capacity of Falcon 9 to LEO and a 7m payload fairing vs 9m for Starship. The real question is if there’s going to be enough demand to justify these systems. With enough reusability it might make sense to fly these things 2/3 empty, but that’s only going to be so profitable.

New Glenn's main customer will be Kuiper, Amazon's answer to Starlink.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#42

Post by starik36 »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #37
zizee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?

Starship is heavy lift / heavy expense. If you want to put 1 small-sat in orbit, you don't use Starship, you use a Rocket Lab Electron. It's MUCH cheaper. Or you wait until you find 600 other small sat users who want to launch into the same / similar orbit. The talk I heard was that New Glenn was supposed to be BO's answer to Starship (or more likely Falcon Heavy) that could launch a bunch of Project Kuiper satellite…

I am going out on a limb and say that Project Kuiper satellites themselves are nowhere near ready. Amazon is supposed to launch 50% of the constellation of ~6000 into orbit by July 2026 or risk losing frequencies. So you would think there would be some urgency.

Amazon purchased pretty much all remaining Atlas 5 launches from ULA. This is a proven rocket and ready to fly. Why aren't the satellites being launched? The only thing I can think of is that they are not ready yet.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#43

Post by OhMeadhbh »

timewizard wrote: post #26
jiggawatts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does if it's still cheaper than any other rocket.

Your launch price may somehow be cheaper; although, that's incredibly unlikely. Anyways as your insurance underwriter I'm going to jack up the rate on you so high for that launch it will no longer be cheaper.

It's also a bit of a straw-man to assume people will only fly on the cheapest lift option. Virgin Orbit lasted as long as it did only because there was one (maybe two) customers who were willing to pay a premium for being guinea pigs for a new technology. Their reasoning was something like "if this pans out, it'll be very cool long term" so they were willing to put their small-sats on a largely untested platform.

The same could be said about some of the entrenched players in earth observation. They're willing to pay a bit of a premium for a reasonable amount of time to ensure there's not a monopoly player (which definitely looks like it will be SpaceX.)

How much of a premium they're willing to pay and for how long seems like anyone's guess.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#44

Post by OhMeadhbh »

teractiveodular wrote: post #41
Retric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s got more than twice the payload capacity of Falcon 9 to LEO and a 7m payload fairing vs 9m for Starship. The real question is if there’s going to be enough demand to justify these systems. With enough reusability it might make sense to fly these things 2/3 empty, but that’s only going to be so profitable.

New Glenn's main customer will be Kuiper, Amazon's answer to Starlink.

But also whatever Amazon's equivalent of NanoRacks is 'cause Amazon also wants to feed their GSaaS (Ground-Station as a Service) play. I think long-term Kuiper is going to be BO's main customer, but selling lift capacity to a NanoRacks-alike could reduce the impact of a Kuiper schedule slip.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#45

Post by OhMeadhbh »

wombatpm wrote: post #20
reitzensteinm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some references of New Glenn being positioned as a Falcon 9 killer by any industry professionals, commentators or press with credibility (at the risk of no true Scotsman)? This was certainly thrown around with Tesla, but it's not something I've personally come across with SpaceX. Regardless, if semiconductors have taught us anything over the last decade, strong competition is essential for a healthy marke…

Boeing will probably buy one of the also rams to improve their offerings

The moment SpaceX is sold to Boeing is the moment Musk doesn't get to go to Mars. And while he may never be able to have the martian colony he seems to covet, he still seems to believe he can do it, so there's zero motivation to sell.

Also... Boeing? They've been having some issues lately.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#46

Post by OhMeadhbh »

Novosell wrote: post #8

How much data do you guys reckon they gather during this 24-second window? Gigabytes? Terabytes? I imagine they have redundant sensors for every measurement, if possible. The LHC generates 1 PB/s, though it filters it down to roughly 200MB/s[0]. I wonder how this compares. 0: https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.lhc_...

The system I worked on in the 2010s was pretty meager: 192kbits-per-second for the bus and about 54kbits-per-second (BITS, not BYTES) for the propulsion module. This is without video and doesn't count payload. It was also before we got the license for the beefy GHz S-Band, so we were sort of forced to make due.

But... you CAN get a lot of decent info from a low bandwidth link.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#47

Post by OhMeadhbh »

timewizard wrote: post #23
Novosell wrote: post #8

How much data do you guys reckon they gather during this 24-second window? Gigabytes? Terabytes? I imagine they have redundant sensors for every measurement, if possible. The LHC generates 1 PB/s, though it filters it down to roughly 200MB/s[0]. I wonder how this compares. 0: https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.lhc_...

You can fly to space with a 40ms control loop. It's a surprisingly low accuracy affair especially compared to particle physics. You're more likely capturing some actuator positions and discrete outputs and ensuring that everything sequences and responds to limits correctly, more on the level with an automobile CAN bus capture than it is anything else, and likely less than even 1 gigabyte. There's likely more data sto…

I'm just remembering that the images we got from Doves @ PlanetLab DWARFED the telemetry from the bus.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#48

Post by OhMeadhbh »

klysm wrote: post #28
Novosell wrote: post #8

How much data do you guys reckon they gather during this 24-second window? Gigabytes? Terabytes? I imagine they have redundant sensors for every measurement, if possible. The LHC generates 1 PB/s, though it filters it down to roughly 200MB/s[0]. I wonder how this compares. 0: https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.lhc_...

I would wager the actually important data is far smaller. A single camera would probably dominate throughput

can confirm.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#49

Post by OhMeadhbh »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #39
bryanlarsen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship should be able to put 10t into LEO significantly cheaper than New Glenn can. Why would anybody pay more?

I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Mu…

Dudes. You don't have to down-vote me 'cause I'm just asking for where you got your numbers. I'm not saying you're a horrible person and that SpaceX sucks. I'm saying I have numbers that don't match yours. Let's compare numbers / sources and see what the most likely values would be near-term and long-term.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#50

Post by zizee »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #39
bryanlarsen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship should be able to put 10t into LEO significantly cheaper than New Glenn can. Why would anybody pay more?

I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Mu…

Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles?

An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which will cut costs considerably.

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