Hacker News Reader

Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't find total mass for Blue Moon but could they just put it on top of Falcon Heavy and call it done? This article about using Falcon Heavy for Orion seems to imply it's at least plausible.

https://hackaday.com/2019/03/25/could-orion-ride-falcon-heav...

View on HN

This also implies New Glenn won't be ready in time, or human rated in time, for 2024. New Glenn is supposed to be even more powerful than the Falcon Heavy.

That said, even if they could have New Glenn ready , it's probably super smart to tie themselves to some of the legacy aerospace companies.

It aligns a whole lot of lobbyists behind Blue Origin's bids, and brings with it a lot of expertise on the bidding process.

Blue Origin's relationship with legacy aerospace feels a lot like Microsoft and IBM.

This proposal doesn't involve launching humans on New Glenn.

I bet it'll be ready but par for the course is to lose 2 out of the first 10 launches on a new system. I'd guess that Blue will be flying insurable commsats at that point but not irreplaceable payloads.

Blue Origin's timelines have been even more inspirational than Musk's. Like.. Blue Origin hasn't even reached orbit yet.

But to Blue Origin's credit, they're less shy about working with others. They're developing the engine for ULA's new rocket (presumably their own competition!), and I doubt they'd have major qualms about launching Blue Moon on a ULA or even SpaceX rocket, once congress is finally able to admit that SLS isn't happening.

Blue Origin's stuff is intended to optionally launch on Vulcan, which probably means it could also launch on FH.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com