Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

So this was just a vertical hop?

It would seem that SpaceX remains in a totally different league. By only going vertical, this is a very limited "spacecraft", more akin to the Virgin spaceplane than SpaceX's launch vehicles. For proper access to space, rather than tourist hops, everyone wants to see a reusable launch vehicle --> a craft to actually boost something towards orbit rather than an altitude record. That means returning to some sort of landing after huge downrange progress. So while this is an impressive achievement for space tourism (roller-coasters for billionaires) I still see SpaceX's efforts as the more revolutionary.

View on HN

It's a demonstration vehicle. The company is planning to scale it up: http://www.space.com/30543-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-florida-ro...

Essentially, it's the same goal as SpaceX' Falcon9, just a different approach (prove reuseability first, then make an orbital rocket). We'll see which turns out to work better in the long term.

I don't see the same goals. SpaceX never talked about about this sort of suborbital tourism. The problem with "space" tourism as a source of funding is that nobody has ever made a go of it. There are only so many people capable of dropping 200,000$ on an hour-long thrill ride. And only a very few of those are young enough (say under 60?) to enjoy a 5g return to earth. It just isn't a reliable source of funds ... but it does get the press coverage needed to trap naive investors.

Pretty sure nobody would enjoy a 5g return to earth...

Depends on how long 5g needs to be endured.

> There are only so many people capable of dropping 200,000$ on an hour-long thrill ride.

You obviously haven't been hanging around wealthy people. Even just being a student in London you witness nights out costing spoiled kids more than that.

Ok, slight hyperbole. But there is no shortage of nouveau riche in this world ready to spend on some high-status thrill.

Highest altitude followed by a powered landing by SpaceX: 1,000 m

Highest altitude followed by a powered landing by Blue Origin: 100,500 m

Moreover, SpaceX has gotten close to a powered landing from space a half dozen times, but has mostly failed in the last 100m. You could argue that Blue Origin just did the hard part that SpaceX hasn't been able to do. Obviously the difficulty doesn't really scale linearly like that, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this accomplishment.

What Kerbal does teach users is that altitude is irrelevant for space travel. Speed is what matters. The "hard part" is pushing something to a useful velocity before attempting a landing. Returning a booster from to near-zero velocity from a near-orbital velocity is far more of an accomplishment than returning from altitude.

As far as I know, the Falcon 9 first stage has never gotten close to orbital velocity. 2km/s is better than 0 km/s, but is a long way from 7 km/s.

It's probably worth mentioning that the SpaceX Falcon 9 can carry a 13,000kg payload, vs a 770kg payload for the Blue Origin New Shepard.

> You could argue that Blue Origin just did the hard part that SpaceX hasn't been able to do.

You missed one critical difference. New Shepard (and Grasshopper) can hover. The fact that Falcon 9 (during its landing phase) has a thrust-to-weight ratio > 1 means that their "hard part" is _much_ harder than New Shepard's "hard part".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com