Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
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Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#2I'm curious which one will launch first, BFR or New Glenn. My money is on the BFR, so far with 1200 s Raptor engine fire and full size cryo tank they seem to be making progress. It's good to have Blue Origin breathing down SpaceX's neck though, hopefully it will provide them with sustained motivation.
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#3Anyone know the price to low-earth orbit using New Glenn? (perhaps can be inferred from Eutelsat or OneWeb's financial disclosures to regulators?)
With Jeff Bezos selling $1 billion worth of Amazon shares a year to fund Blue Origin, will he choose to sell below cost for significant periods of time to stay competitive with the Falcon 9 and Heavy?
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#4A few frames of the video caught my eye: https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica...
It looks like there's some sort of harmonic wave in the blast. Does anyone have any insights on why the design would result in that?
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#5A few frames of the video caught my eye: https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica... It looks like there's some sort of harmonic wave in the blast. Does anyone have any insights on why the design would result in that?
Its supersonic shock waves.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#6A few frames of the video caught my eye: https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica... It looks like there's some sort of harmonic wave in the blast. Does anyone have any insights on why the design would result in that?
I believe those are Mach/Shock diamonds, which are common in rocket engine exhaust. It wouldn't surprise me if the propellant and the time of the test made them more visible.
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#7A few frames of the video caught my eye: https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica... It looks like there's some sort of harmonic wave in the blast. Does anyone have any insights on why the design would result in that?
They are called shock diamonds and are caused by standing shock waves in the exhaust plume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_diamond
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#8Off-Topic: But it's not exactly brain surgery, is it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#9I'm curious which one will launch first, BFR or New Glenn. My money is on the BFR, so far with 1200 s Raptor engine fire and full size cryo tank they seem to be making progress. It's good to have Blue Origin breathing down SpaceX's neck though, hopefully it will provide them with sustained motivation.
Just imagine what things would look like if SpaceX has a serious failure again. It could drop them back six months, and Blue Origin would get that much closer.
Must be a really good motivator for SpaceX.
Re: Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time
#10Anyone know the price to low-earth orbit using New Glenn? (perhaps can be inferred from Eutelsat or OneWeb's financial disclosures to regulators?) With Jeff Bezos selling $1 billion worth of Amazon shares a year to fund Blue Origin, will he choose to sell below cost for significant periods of time to stay competitive with the Falcon 9 and Heavy?
It would be interesting to see how the market share affects the profits and how these two companies plan to compete in long term.
If Blue Origin and SpaceX compete in the same segment and divide the market, development and manufacturing costs per launch will increase for both. Assuming each will price the launch price so low that they get roughly 50 percent of the market they would get without the other, both lose half of the volume to the competition.
SpaceX aims for moderate 3% ($55 million) operating profit margin. Bezos has deeper pockets, so if he perceives financial weakness in Musk/SpaceX, he can decide to absorb the losses for a decade and steal launches and drain profits from SpaceX driving it to the ground.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/05/how-profitable-is-...