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Comment by wlesieutre | Hacker News Reader

The article glosses over what kind of rocket this is, so it's worth pointing out that New Shepherd is a suborbital booster. You can't launch satellites with it, only go up and fall back down.

Still cool though!

ADDENDUM - if you want to keep an eye on other projects, their reusable orbital booster is New Glenn. IIRC it's higher capacity than Falcon 9, maybe more toward Falcon Heavy. Last I heard they're shooting for a first test launch in 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn

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Note that New Glenn, like Falcon 9, is only partially reusable — the booster is recovered but the second stage is expended. Both companies have aspirations to reuse the second stage, but few tangible plans so far. New Shepard is in some ways a technology pathfinder for New Glenn's second stage, which will (as of January[0]) use a vacuum-optimized version of New Shepard's BE-3 booster engine.

New Glenn's payload is somewhat greater than reusable Falcon Heavy.[1] Falcon Heavy's is likely greater with a center core expendable or fully expendable mission, which Blue Origin says it will never opt to do.

[0] https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-switches-engines-for-new-g...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueOrigin/comments/5ygtaa/new_glen...

SpaceX's BFR is full reusable, and is currently the main engineering focus of the company.

SpaceX's BFR is planned but there's never been a BFR launch.

I don't think plans count.

New Glenn hasn't launched either. They're on similar schedules, BFR has suborbital testing scheduled for 2019.

The big difference being the SpaceX can use Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 launches to continue to pay the bills while they develop BFR and as yet Blue Origin is just being funded by Jeff's massive wealth.

Which to be fair, Bezos will die long before he runs out of money, even pouring several billion a year into Blue Origin.

Bezos’s “play money” is a far larger pile than SpaceX will accumulate from operations. Hopefully both can succeed.

No doubt Bezos has a deep pool to draw from, and the folks at Blue Origin always know that their investors are aligned with their goals.

Operationally though, I think the jury is still out on how much money SpaceX can pull in there. At 22 launches per year that would be nominally $2.2 billion in revenue per year. Make three of those launches Falcon Heavy and that takes it closer to $2.5 billion. How much of that ends up on the bottom line is a good question, I'm guessing we won't know for sure until the S-1 drops.

Is that on the same time scale as Falcon Heavy doing it's first launch in 2013?

In fairness Falcon Heavy was delayed as SpaceX managed to double the capacity of Falcon 9 making a business case for the heavy version less clear.

Both New Glenn and BFR are effectively paper rockets at this point. Seems reasonable to compare them.

BFR is the main engineering focus of the company. They've already started fabricating and testing many of the parts (including the engines, fuel tanks, and fuselage). It is far past the point of existing only on paper.

Seems reasonable to compare it with other rockets that have never been launched, then. I think it is a much more impressive concept than anything anybody else is seriously talking about building in the near future, but it really is next on SpaceX's "list". BO's next planned rocket doesn't get a pass on its non-existence just because it's less impressive (maybe a bit more impressive than what SpaceX has already flown to orbit).

Personally a lifetime of learning to be cynical makes me think that BFR is too awesome to be true and that it will never happen. Maybe BO's careful approach and Bezos' deep pockets will let them succeed where SpaceX will ultimately fail.

On the other hand, SpaceX has not yet given us any concrete reason to expect them to fail. Quite the contrary, in fact.

That sounds disingenuous to me. This was a reply to a comment for an upcoming rocket that is currently just a blueprint. I don't understand why people actively choose to discount Musk's blueprints but other companies' blueprints don't get the same responses.

And BFR is well past the blueprint stage anyway. They're doing actual fabrication and testing of many parts of that rocket already. It's the main engineering focus of the company -- Falcon 9 is effectively done and Falcon Heavy is a side project (also mostly done).

I am aware. I'm following r/spacex closely. But with lack of official confirmation of a test article I was taking the worst possible stand against SpaceX to still prove my point.

So basically, it's a very very expensive 10 minute amusement park ride with 10G's and a lot of danger? :-)

And a lot of pollution.

As with everything else, depends on where the energy came from. The rocket itself is burning liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, so the only exhaust is steam. You have to take a step back and look at the energy supplied to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and to cool and store it. Conceivably that could be done from renewable sources if customers are willing to pay for it.

What orbital rockets today are launching a 1st stage with liquid oxygen and hydrogen? I thought they are mostly used for upper stages where they are required for combustion in space. For example, the Falcon 9 uses LOX and refined kerosene in 1st/2nd stages. and the to-be New Glenn burns methane/LOX for it's 1st stage. It matters less what the 2nd/3rd/etc stages use as they are basically out in space at that point. Admittedly, the New Shepard booster from the article uses LOX/LH2, but, it's sub-orbital.

I was referring to the suborbital New Shepherd there. Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy are LOX/LH2 orbital rockets, though the light version of that is being phased out.

> I thought they are mostly used for upper stages where they are required for combustion in space.

Why are they required for combustion in space?

Well in my layman's understanding, rockets generally need a fuel and some kind of oxidizer since there is no free oxygen in space. Hence, the LOX?

Get that deadly dihydrogen monoxide out of my atmosphere!

Its true. I fell out of a boat once and got some of it in my lungs. You do not want to play around with that stuff. Even a little bit in the wrong place is very dangerous...

Seems like there's something profound to say about pollution in that joke somewhere.

Well, let's not forget that water vapor is a greenhouse gas[0] though not quite as serious as others since it will condense out in clouds and increase albedo.

[0] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhou...

what's the atmospheric half life of high altitude water vapor?

The 10Gs is only if the first stage blows up and they need to abort the launch.

New Glenn is not higher capacity than anything, it has never reached orbit.

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