Blue Origin

[wjfox]

I guess we should have a thread for this, since it's emerging as a potential competitor to SpaceX.

As most of you probably know, Blue Origin is the space company established by Amazon boss (and world's richest person) Jeff Bezos in 2000.

https://www.blueorigin.com/

Its current rocket, New Shepard, is just 18 m (59 ft) tall and has only a tiny payload, falling into the sub-orbital class of rockets. However, Blue Origin is developing a much larger rocket, the New Glenn, standing 95 m (313 ft) and designed to carry 45,000 kg (99,000 lb) into low-Earth orbit (LEO) or up to 13,000 kg (29,000 lb) to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). New Glenn will be partially reusable and is scheduled for a first test flight in 2022.





Additionally, the company has longer-term plans for a lunar lander, known as Blue Moon. This could deliver 4,500 kg (9,900 lb) to the Moon's surface and potentially astronauts too, using a New Glenn as the launch vehicle.

In related news, the smaller New Shepard rocket will attempt its first crewed flight tomorrow (20 July), after 15 uncrewed tests. A seat on the rocket was auctioned for $28 million and given to Oliver Daemen, son of millionaire businessman Joes Daemn.

18-year-old Daemen will be the youngest person to go into space... if all goes well.

https://news.yahoo.com/oliver-daemen-mi ... 57662.html

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[raklian]

What the heck at the very end?

[raklian]

[caltrek]

Jeff Bezos Reaches Space on Blue Origin’s First Crewed Launch
by Michael Sheetz
July 20, 2021

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/20/jeff-be ... aunch.html

Introduction:

(CNBC) VAN HORN, Texas — For 10 minutes and 10 seconds on Tuesday, Jeff Bezos wasn’t the richest man on Earth.

His Blue Origin company launched him into spaceflight history on Tuesday. Its first crewed New Shepard rocket blasted off from the Texas desert for the brief flight, also carrying his brother and the oldest and youngest people to ever have flown in space.

“Best day ever!” Bezos said after touchdown. “My expectations were high and they were dramatically exceeded.

The capsule carrying the Blue Origin crew accelerated to more than three times the speed of sound before it reached beyond the 80 kilometer boundary (about 50 miles) the U.S. uses to mark the edge of space. The crew capsule reached an altitude of 107 kilometers (66 miles), and the rocket hit a top speed of 2,233 mph during the launch.

The crew floated in microgravity for a couple minutes, before the capsule returned and landed under a set of parachutes to end the mission after 10 minutes and 10 seconds

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of ecommerce company Amazon.com Inc, his brother Mark Bezos, a private equity executive, pioneering female aviator Wally Funk and recent Dutch high school graduate Oliver Daemen pose in an undated photograph, ahead of their scheduled flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket near Van Horn, Texas, U.S.
Blue Origin | Reuters

[caltrek]

Welcome to the Age of Billionaire Joyrides to Space
by Rebecca Heilweil
July 20, 2021

https://www.vox.com/recode/22583997/bil ... ce-tourism

Extract:

(Vox) ...At a pre-launch mission briefing on Sunday, Blue Origin’s director of astronaut sales Ariane Cornell said two more flights were anticipated this year and that the company had “already built a robust pipeline of customers that are interested.” Analysts at the investment banking firm Canaccord Genuity have estimated that tourism to suborbital space could be an $8 billion industry by the end of the decade.
Blue Origin hosted a live feed on its website.
…
To reach space, New Shepard moves incredibly quickly: faster than Mach 3, or more than three times the speed of sound. A few minutes into the flight, the capsule separated from the booster, which then headed back toward Earth and landed vertically (ensuring it’s reusable for future flights).

Meanwhile, Blue Origin’s capsule headed to the apex of its flight path and crossed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized border between Earth’s atmosphere and space. That’s about 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, about 10 miles higher than Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight earlier this month. Like that flight, those traveling on Blue Origin’s New Shepard were given a stunning view of Earth and had the chance to experience weightlessness.
…
Bezos was joined by his brother, firefighter and charity executive Mark Bezos. The flight also carried both the oldest and youngest people to ever visit space: Wally Funk, an 82-year-old American aviator, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch teenager. Funk, the Federal Aviation Administration’s first female flight inspector, was one of the first women to train to become a NASA astronaut, but was ultimately denied the chance to travel to space because of her gender. Daemen is joining the flight as Blue Origin’s first paying customer; he’s taking the place of a still-unnamed bidder who paid $28 million for a seat (that person reportedly had a scheduling conflict and will travel on a later flight).

[caltrek]

Bezos Beats Branson in Space Billionaires' Battle for Attention
by Neal Rothschild, Sara Fischer
July 25, 2021

https://www.axios.com/bezos-branson-spa ... 82ea1.html

Introduction:

(Axios) Jeff Bezos' flight into space generated more interest from the public than Richard Branson's, and both billionaires overshadowed their respective space companies.

Why it matters: Data shows an outsized public interest in the personalities at the center of the space trips, compared to the companies behind them — which could reinforce public suspicion that the ventures were partly vanity plays.

The big picture: Branson's launch happened first, and Virgin Galactic put together a slick livestream stuffed with celebrity cameos. But the world's richest man still commanded more attention a few days later.

• Bezos' launch-day Google searches were 38% higher than Branson's and generated 19% more mentions on social media, according to data from Keyhole.

• There were nearly twice as many stories written about Bezos around his launch compared to Branson nine days earlier, according to NewsWhip data.

[caltrek]

While I am as excited about the recent breakthroughs by the private sector in space travel as anybody else, I do think we need to ask some hard questions such as the one posed below.

How Bad is Space Tourism for the Environment?
By Rebecca Heilweil
July 25, 2021

Extract:

(Vox) The emissions of a flight to space can be worse than those of a typical airplane flight because just a few people hop aboard one of these flights, so the emissions per passenger are much higher. That pollution could become much worse if space tourism becomes more popular. Virgin Galactic alone eventually aims to launch 400 of these flights annually.

“The carbon footprint of launching yourself into space in one of these rockets is incredibly high, close to about 100 times higher than if you took a long-haul flight,” Eloise Marais, a physical geography professor at the University College London, told Recode. “It’s incredibly problematic if we want to be environmentally conscious and consider our carbon footprint.”

These flights’ effects on the environment will differ depending on factors like the fuel they use, the energy required to manufacture that fuel, and where they’re headed — and all these factors make it difficult to model their environmental impact. For instance, Jeff Bezos has argued that the liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel Blue Origin uses is less damaging to the environment than the other space competitors (technically, his flight didn’t release carbon dioxide), but experts told Recode it could still have significant environmental effects.

There are also other risks we need to keep studying, including the release of soot that could hurt the stratosphere and the ozone. A study from 2010 found that the soot released by 1,000 space tourism flights could warm Antarctica by nearly 1 degree Celsius. “There are some risks that are unknown,” Paul Peeters, a tourism sustainability professor at the Breda University of Applied Sciences, told Recode. “We should do much more work to assess those risks and make sure that they do not occur or to alleviate them somehow — before you start this space tourism business.” Overall, he thinks the environmental costs are reason enough not to take such a trip.

[caltrek]

When are Customers Following Bezos Into Space

by Jon Kelvey
July 23, 2021

https://www.inverse.com/science/when-ar ... sts-flying

Extract:

(Inverse) Blue Origin says it is taking orders for future flights from the company's Launch Site One in Van Horn, Texas. The company tells Inverse it has no details to share yet as to what the schedule for sending tourists to space looks like, but the firm’s leadership has let slip some clues about what’s next.

Blue Origin’s next crewed flight could come as soon as the end of September or the beginning of October 2021. That’s according to comments by Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith, made during a July 18 media briefing.

At the same event, Blue Origin Director of Astronaut and Orbital Sales Ariane Cornell said there will be two more Blue Origin crewed trips to space in 2021. So it is feasible that if Blue Origin launches a flight in September or October, then the second flight could launch closer to the holiday season.

Blue Origin will make cargo launches in addition to crewed flights this year, according to Cornell. So far, the company has made nine cargo flights so far.

Unlike SpaceX, these cargo flights are sub-orbital, rather than missions designed to place payloads in orbit.

Blue Origin also plans to work with NASA on the space agency’s Suborbital Crew program, according to Cornell.

[Time_Traveller]

Bezos’s Blue Origin sues US over Nasa’s decision to award contract to SpaceX

Mon 16 Aug 2021

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has sued the US government over Nasa’s decision to award a $2.9bn lunar lander contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Billionaire space cowboys could become heroes by focusing on the climate crisis

Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest people, founded Blue Origin to pursue the dream of commercial space flight, which saw him, his brother and two other crew members blast off from Texas last month.

After that flight, Blue Origin offered Nasa $2bn if it would change its mind on the lunar lander contract. It did not, and the Blue Origin lawsuit was filed in the US court of federal claims on Friday.

In a court filing, the company said it was challenging “Nasa’s unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals”.

Last month, the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) sided with Nasa over its decision to pick a single lunar lander provider, rejecting Blue Origin’s protest.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... e-contract

[caltrek]

Blue Origin is Taking NASA to Court Over Moon Landing Program
by Aria Alamalhodaei
August 16, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/16/jeff- ... to-spacex/

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Blue Origin, the space company helmed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is taking NASA to court. The company filed a complaint with a federal claims court on Monday over the agency’s decision to award a lunar lander contract solely to rival company SpaceX.

The complaint, which Blue Origin successfully petitioned to have sealed, says NASA’s evaluation of proposals for the the Human Landing System was “unlawful and improper.”

“Blue Origin filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in an attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the moon for America.”

The Human Landing System, a key part of NASA’s forthcoming Artemis program, is the lander that will return humans to the moon’s surface for the first time since the days of Apollo. NASA aims to have the human lander touching down at the lunar south pole in 2024.

In April, NASA awarded the HLS contract to a single company — SpaceX, which submitted a $2.9 billion bid. That NASA selected only one company, rather than two, was a surprise (the agency likes to hedge its bets).

[weatheriscool]

'Star Trek' Star William Shatner Heading to Space on Bezos' Next Rocket
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/start ... efOg9jtv_g


By Charles Kim | Friday, 24 September 2021 06:27 PM

At 90, actor William Shatner, the star of the original ''Star Trek'' television series who brought to life the iconic Starship Enterprise as Capt. James Tiberius Kirk, will ''boldly go where no man (his age) has gone before.''

According to a TMZ report Friday, Shatner is slated to become the oldest man in space when he boards the next Blue Origin rocket excursion into low orbit next month.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[raklian]

We finally acknowledge Capt. James Kirk actually being in space.

[Lariliss]

Spaceship development is on rail, we need that technology.
Regarding manned flights there are some points that I would like to put:
- Manned flights are necessary, otherwise the last 50 years' investments will become a waste, and (when?) we will start again in any case. Also it is necessary to be sure of the long flights consequences as much as possible to send people safely to orbits.
- ‘Space economy’ development needs space exploration and space travel. Inevitably, humans need to travel. Robots can go further, but personal experience and pushing the limits of physiology is also a research for our bodies and development.
- I don’t assume space hotels and even billionaire flights to be common due to the necessity of technical equipment tasks on the orbits (and they drastically increase).

[weatheriscool]

https://phys.org/news/2021-10-bezos-blu ... ation.html

[wjfox]

[wjfox]