New Shepard In-Flight Escape Test [video] | Hacker News Reader

New Shepard In-Flight Escape Test [video]

blueorigin.com

124 pointsobi1kenobi50 comments

Crew capsule and booster both went up, seperated, came down and landed nominally. In fact, they made it look easy; everything worked as they predicted and there were no suprises.

A couple of points of interest:

1. The Crew Capsule pitched around quite a lot after it left the booster. This would have been quite 'exciting' for any passengers but was easily survivable. SpaceX had a similar problem in their Dragon LES test a while back. Indeed, the BO Capsule looked much more stable under parachutes than the Dragon did.

2. The commentators mentioned that the booster had flown and landed 5 times and would be retired to a museum. 5 times!? There was so little drama in the launch and landing that I expect they could probably launch it another 5 times with few problems. This is what a reliable system looks like. Good job!

3. The gantry tower at the West Texas launch site had what looked like walkways for accessing the Crew capsule. Does that mean crewed tests are imminent? Very exciting!

This is a fantastic result for Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin team; I'm hoping that their new orbital booster is as reliable. If it is, SpaceX and ULA will have some real domestic competition. At last!

1. I'd be interested if they have instrumented crash dummies inside for this sort of thing. I'd imagine they'd get some whiplash, but that's a lot better than blown up.

3. Not necessarily. Their first flight had the same tower. Presumably for engineering access to it when it's stood up. https://youtu.be/rEdk-XNoZpA?t=17s

If you're properly restrained, you can survive absolutely massive g-forces. John Stapp survived 46g on a rocket sled; Indycar and Formula 1 drivers regularly walk away from >100g crashes. Assuming they're using a proven seat and restraint design, the capsule's own sensors should provide satisfactory data on survivability.

Just to put some perspective on this, you are likely unable to survive >9g when experiencing it for more than a few moments, definitely so if you lack proper training for high Gs (there's a few techniques that help to avoid harm). The higher the G forces, the smaller the acceptable time scale is. In a crash, you will only experience such forces for a few milliseconds. Well-trained fighter pilots can handle ~9Gs for a few seconds. Apollo reentry had like 6Gs for ~50sec (take with a grain of salt, very rough numbers), which is brutal but manageable.

And – no matter what the designers/operators say – in a roller coaster, you will never experience more than 1.5Gs for more than a fraction of a second. If you ever thought you experienced G-forces comparable to a rocket launch, you haven't, unless you had the chance to test/train in a centrifuge.

> This is what a reliable system looks like.

Unlike SpaceX, BO doesn't publicize things as they happen, so it could have been the third attempt also.

Though having more money to play before launching commercial sats helps

To be fair, reporters were on site and they were broadcasting a live stream.

They used to be like that but over the last year they've switched to announcing all their flights in advance and live streaming them.

Hi-jacking top comment to point out that the actual launch is at 1h:06m.

In reference to your first comment, the Soyuz capsules pitch and roll a large amount too. With the crew capsule here, as long as the passengers are still alive at touch down it gets counted as a win. After all, would you care all that much about discomfort if it meant getting you away from an exploding rocket?

The booster was not rated to survive this emergency situation, and it was entirely possible that it would crash and explode during this test. I'm very happy that it survived to be retired!

T+2:41: "Phil, also as a reminder, we also have that retro-thrust system on the bottom of the crew capsule to make sure that the touchdown is even smoother for our astronauts."

T+2:54: "Just as a reminder, that's also going to kick up quite a bit of dust out here in Texas."

T+3:08: "It's going to come down at just about 3 miles an hour by the time it touches down."

T+4:15: Capsule smacks into the desert at 16mph, with no sign of retro-thrust or dust kick up before impact.

Yeah, I was curious about that part too...

That's what I thought as well, but watching some other videos on their site, they say the boost happens in "the last second" https://youtu.be/xYYTuZCjZcE?t=2m34s. Any sign of thrust before landing really isn't visible in that video either. So unless they've never actually fired it successfully and we just don't know what it looks like, it's possible that it's just so close to touchdown that we can't distinguish the thrust from the landing.

I'm assuming that decelerating by 13mph over < 1s is still quite a bit better than by 15mph instantly? But I really don't know.

I thought 20mph was maximum survivable rate of decent?

I suppose that a last-instant firing is a plausible explanation, and would greatly reduce physical damage to the capsule. But then the talk of a "gentle" 3mph touchdown is conveniently ignoring the 16->13 deceleration a split second before. As you say, it's likely preferable to 15->0, but I suspect not a whole lot more pleasant to experience. The astronauts would probably not even notice the actual touchdown an instant later.

The goal is to stretch out the deceleration. Instead of going from 16 to 0 instantly (probably more like 1/10th of a second when you count the capsule deforming), it's going from 16 to 0 over a much larger fraction of a second.

It's probably the difference between running full speed into a brick wall and running full speed into a large foam pad.

The foam pad decelerates you in less than a second, but it's a whole lot more comfortable than the brick wall.

I'm sure there's no deceleration at all at the beginning of the last second, there's no slackening of the lines for example, but it does look as if there's some sort of thrust brake in the last tenth of a second or so, somewhat in lieu of a crumple zone I suppose.

http://rowvid.com/?v=bqUIX3Z4r3k&t=4232&s=0.25

Thanks. I always forget about RowVid...

In frame-by-frame, you can see that the capsule is still descending when the first dust appears. To my eye, seems to be about 1/3 to 1/2 second later that the capsule stops. So, ok, retro-thrust. (But still giving quite a jolt to the poor meat-bags.)

Seriously? You don't think that it could happen faster than you could see it with your eyes easily? Go watch a Soyuz capsule touchdown, same deal. Also, it's very hard to spot the retro-rocket firing unless you pause the video and go frame by frame. The New Shepard retro fire is even harder to spot. Which is why they tell you about it.

Here are some shots from the video:

First puff of dust from under the capsule: http://i.imgur.com/u055Gjs.jpg

Fully settled: http://i.imgur.com/u53t96Q.jpg

Between the first and second images, the capsule settles about 1/4 of its height. This is because the first image occurs when the capsule is still that high of the ground, and firing its retro thruster.

Note that in previous videos of landings, there was just a biggish last-second dust cloud -- people on HN guessed that there was no retro-thrust and that it landed hard, when actually there was retro-thrust and a nominal landing.

I don't know the specifics of when the Blue Origin capsule's rockets fire, but for the Soyuz capsule it's 70cm above the ground. The time between the rockets firing and impact with the ground is far too fast to see in real time.

The dust cloud that gets kicked up is kicked up by the rockets firing, not the capsule slamming into the ground (which is the point the commentators were trying to make).

This is its 5th launch and I love the way the logos and lettering on the outside of the rocket has not been retouched/repainted after the previous launches. You can see it's used space ship.

The actual launch is at 1h06 into the recorded video (there were several holds).

Really cool to watch! I didn't know the plan ahead of time and thought the thing blew up when the escape capsule fired. So cool to feel like a space race is warming up.

"Space race is warming up" - You verbalized perfectly what I've been feeling lately. So exciting!

Both landings successful, though the capsule didn't seem quite as stable as the booster at separation burn time.

Yeah, that tumbling didn't look like it was intended.

Still better than the alternative.

I'm not sure about Blue Origin, but the Apollo abort system intentionally introduced a tumble into the capsule as part of the abort process. The reason for this is that it was stable in two positions - nose first, and heat shield first. Only the latter was survivable on reentry.

It was more stable in the heat shield first position, so by introducing a tumble, they were able to avoid nose-first and ensure an abort followed by reentry was something that could be survived.

I don't know if Blue Origin is doing the same thing - but it's not impossible this was something they might have wanted.

Though this is not a reentry. You would not get the same heating effects when aborting a launch, during reentry you'd get all that lateral speed you need to decelerate from. Not the case during abort.

I believe they stated that the capsule intentionally fires off-center to get away from the booster laterally.

Glad to see a live video. Blue Origin had previously had a reputation of being extremely secretive - hopefully SpaceX has demonstrated the advantages of making things a bit more public, which ultimately benefits everyone.

It was probably about not getting too much attention before they knew the thing wasn't going to blow up or crash.

Now that it is shown to be reliable they likely want as much attention as they can get.

How many times did they mention "first reusable ...", it felt like jabs at Elon Musk.

They should be proud of that for sure, but they just go up really high, vs. putting a payload into orbit. It's got to be an order if magnitude easier for BO. Look at how long the booster hovers and corrects it way down so gently. SpaceX just can't carry that much extra fuel to land like that.

Yeah,spacex had similar hover landing long ago, the trick is handling the suicide burn. BO is grabbing attention.

The Falcon 9 also can't throttle low enough to be able to hover when empty. It could do it with extra fuel but that's only because the extra fuel would add more mass, it would have to land before it became light enough that it starts accelerating upwards again.

Might want to do something about that booster being on fire after landing.

SpaceX's Falcon does the same thing - paint on the landing legs burns a little after the landing. In fact, it's deliberately ablative (https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/24rnci/are_the_land...).

There's been a launch delay, so there are still ~8 minutes to go before launch!

Too late now!

Looks like SpaceX will have some catching up to do. Bezos seems to be getting ahead of Musk.

The Dragon Launch Escape System was successfully tested in May last year.

It is Blue Origin who are catching up.

But not on a rocket that flew five times.

This is a much simpler rocket than the Falcon 9. For one, it's suborbital. Its flights are so much simpler than the full orbital injections and hypersonic reentries the Falcon flies.

A quick list of things Blue Origin hasn't done yet:

- Sent anything to orbit (much less paying cargo)

- Sent anything to geosyncronous orbit

- Landed a ship coming back from orbit

- Docked with the ISS

Dragon hasn't done an in-flight test with a firing booster, though. They're each ahead and behind the other in different ways. What SpaceX is doing is for the most part more challenging, but I don't mind some competitiveness if it gets everyone pushing for greatness.

They haven't orbited anything yet, so not exactly. But it looks like the gap is narrower than some thought.

Musk said he hoped to ignite a new space race. He might have one.

I am not sure Musk has ignited anything. Weren't these competing companies already on this track?

Not quite yet, orbital missions are much higher energy than lobbing something to space. Specific energy of New Shepard booster at apogee: ~1000 KJ/kg Specific energy of Falcon 9 booster at MECO: 2500 - 3400 KJ/kg

Yeah, and Falcon 9 is several times the size of New Shepard. There are several nice graphics here that explain the differences between Falcon 9 and New Shepard: http://space.stackexchange.com/a/13188

Reply on news.ycombinator.com