Comment by neaanopri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neaanopri | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure if I agree that New Shepard isn't a "serious rocket".

Falcon 1 has a low payload (small satellite) with medium energy (LEO).

New Shepard has a medium payload (crew capsule) with low energy (suborbital).

As far as "similar to a large orbital launch vehicle", you can rank them as:

New Shepard < Falcon 1 < Falcon 9 < New Glenn

BO is definitely trying to "skip steps", but I think that the US space industry as a whole is certainly better off for Blue Origin existing.

As far as the BE-4, the single largest technical risk for a launch vehicle is the engine, and using an engine which will already be in use (for Vulcan) looks smart to me. Yes there are delays, but aren't there always?

Manned suborbital launches are little more than glorified pogo-stick rides. This has been true ever since America tossed Alan Shepard into the air as desperate PR damage control after the Soviets put Yuri Gagarin into orbit.

If nothing else, "New Shepard" is appropriately named.

Wow that's pretty funny. I never knew Shepard's flight was suborbital. Just verified it on wiki. I guess that was pretty effective PR!

For anyone unaware: getting to orbit is 25 times harder than just getting to space.

*In propellant terms, for an equal payload, for a SSTO

These are important qualifiers. Realistically if you tightened up the mass fraction on New Shepard, abandoned reuse, and added a second stage, the technology could probably put a small payload into orbit just fine. I'm not sure what the point would be, since it would ruin all the useful things New Shepard is doing as a pathfinder.

New Shepard < Falcon 1 < Falcon 9 < New Glenn

Where does Falcon Heavy fit in that progression?

Falcon Heavy technically has a little more payload to LEO than New Glenn, but it's stuck with an extremely undersized fairing for that job, so really it's better treated as Falcon 9 that's able to go further out. For the bulk of the market, New Glenn is more capable.

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