I really appreciate Blue Origin's methodical approach to building this system. I note that they are closer to being operational than Virgin Galactic who I consider their primary competitor.
The challenge I have with the 'suborbital tourist' economy is that while some folks will pay $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity, one has to compare that to the Zero Gravity Corp which gives you over 6 minutes of weightlessness (in 20 - 30 second increments) for $5K[1]
Sure there is the 'Concorde' effect where the very wealthy will all do it once so that they won't feel left out at cocktail parties but that does not seem sustainable.
My hope is that Blue Origin's plans to move into orbital flights is successful. Spending $200K to spend nearly 90 minutes (1 orbit) weightless has much more appeal.
I don't think the aim is for New Shepard to be a sustainable business, you only need maybe a dozen or two launches to gain experience and knowledge to pump back into the New Glen project. If they can have a tourist soak up $200k of the cost, then that's great because the astronaut doesn't actually do a whole lot on these trips, save for being a human guinea pig to send vitals back down.
Once New Glen starts launching in 2020, they want to quickly move past human certification, so practicing with New Shepard is less costly in terms of critical-path length and probably financially too-- bigger rocket, bigger spend per test.
I don't think a lot of people get this. These "space tourist" companies don't have an end goal as space tourism. The problem with launch vehicle companies (launch PROVIDERS) is that they don't always have something to launch (provide). To sustain your company you need to launch often. Rather, to sustain the low price on your vehicle you need to launch often.
You also need to get to a high TRL for confidence from contractors. People are more willing to take risks than someone sending up $100m+ satellites or vehicles. Those successful human missions get you to a TRL 9 pretty quickly.
But many of these companies have much bigger aims than tourism. Tourism is part of it, but more like orbital hotels, lunar hotels, etc. Not a short trip. But also mining. There's A LOT of money in mining once the vehicles get cheap enough. Which they aren't if you're flying a few times a year (like how most things come down in price when you manufacture at scale).
Nit pick: The point of the ride isn't to get 0 gravity. IT IS TO GO TO SPACE! That has a value much higher than that 5k 0g rides. Sure, 0g is part of it, but that's not why ANYONE is buying a ticket.
> a dozen or two launches to gain experience and knowledge to pump back into the New Glen project
then it's probably cheaper to never fly a tourist. It's not great if the revenue from tourists is smaller than the opportunity cost of making the thing safe for tourists.
Indeed, I think one important factor that is overlooked is that they are gaining experience in manned launches, sub orbital or not once you put a person on a rocket it’s a whole new ball game.
This is can in the long run give them an advantage over SpaceX depending on how fast SpaceX can actually shift towards manned launches.
> $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity
There's more than just weightlessness to appreciate on a suborbital flight. Plus the 8 minutes up and 8-20 minutes back down are probably pretty fun too.
Agreed. Let’s say if I earned $200K/yr, and was close to “retirement”. I’d consider working an extra year to take a 90 min orbit in space. I would not make that same decision for a 3 min joy ride.
Would you be interested in a financing program that allows you to take your flight and pay it off throughout your life? No prepayment penalties.
The earlier you do it, the longer you can live life sharing your experience and viewing everything through its perspective, instead of just fly and die maybe a decade later or so.
Just noodling about the economics, 7 passengers at $200K each is $1.4M gross revenue. So assuming very low earth orbit (basically you just need to be above enough of the atmosphere that you won't re-enter before the end of your first orbit) that is still a very low cost for a Falcon9 launch given that the second stage is not recovered. So you need to recover both stages operationally "close" to where they lifted off so that you minimize refurbishment/transport costs.
I'm guessing that would be that the second stage provides retropulsion to get you back to nominal zero velocity over the return point.
So that would be launch, booster returns to the pad, and the second stage pushes you up enough to insure an orbit, then your orient for return. Enjoy the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your velocity to 0 as you arrive over the launch facility (you'll have to scoot 1000 miles or so east as well given planetary rotation) and then separate for a parachute landing of perhaps both the capsule and the second stage booster.
Sounds pretty complex. But you would have to recover all equipment if you wanted to have a chance as meeting the economics of that.
I've been on the Zero Gravity Corp plane- it's cool, but if I had the money to drop, I would absolutely rather go to space. Minutes of sustained zero g would be mindblowing compared to what I experienced.
>I really appreciate Blue Origin's methodical approach to building this system. I note that they are closer to being operational than Virgin Galactic who I consider their primary competitor.
It's also worth mentioning that Virgin Galactic has eschewed the Karman Line, preferring the old "50 mile" definition the Air Force uses for astronaut wings. SpaceShipTwo's apogee is expected to be under 100km during this test campaign, though they have said that heavy test equipment sandbags performance.
I think the price difference between 200k and 5k might be the very difference of a quick suborbital trip and the vomit comet. I will wait for better economics :-)
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.
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.
Interesting that they stated a passenger would have experienced a peak of 10 Gs, that seems excessively high for tourism. The space shuttle launches were around 3 Gs and Soyuz rockets around 4 Gs.
Agreed, I've read you get about 4g peak deceleration going down stairs. But people seem to survive that process on a regular basis. So a temporary 10g is not a problem, and the effects of gravity loads on the human body are well studied and understood by military and aerospace organizations.
true, but it is not sustained Gs, it's in a reclined & fully supported position (i.e., its more mechanical stress on the body than draining blood from the brain, which requires special training & G-suits to counteract). Also, this would an exceptional event, not the standard launch profile.
I'd call it a reasonable spec, though it does seem that each passenger should be medically cleared and, ideally, physically tested beforehand.
I read it somewhere that Elon Musk was since the beginning very demanding of aesthetics, in his rockets as well as cars. This has resulted in some beautiful looking rockets and cars.
Having said that I believe it's primary for rockets to be safe and efficient rather than beautiful.
The difference between suborbital spaceflight and orbital spaceflight is like the difference between reading a book about Antarctica and going to Antarctica.
Difference in delta-v is roughly 8 times higher for low orbital flight.
Difference in aerodynamic heating is more than that. I think Blue origin is still supersonic/high supersonic, re-entry from orbit is hypersonic and requires different materials.
The rocket & capsule are designed to be fully reusable.
Retro rockets fire just before landing. This is the main cause of the dust cloud that kicks up around the capsule.
Various sources on the web put the touchdown speed at 1-3 mph.
Edit: the 3mph comes from a test where they disabled 1/3 of the parachutes [1]:
Similar flights had been done with the same craft three times before, but this time around, one of the capsule’s parachutes was disabled. Bezos said the two parachutes slowed the descent to 23 mph, as opposed to the usual 16 mph with three parachutes.
Just before the touchdown, the capsule’s retro rocket system fired. Bezos said that brought the speed at impact down to 3 mph. The capsule was equipped with a ring of crushable bumpers on its bottom to absorb that remaining force.
Readit News
The challenge I have with the 'suborbital tourist' economy is that while some folks will pay $200K per ride for less than 3 minutes of zero gravity, one has to compare that to the Zero Gravity Corp which gives you over 6 minutes of weightlessness (in 20 - 30 second increments) for $5K[1]
Sure there is the 'Concorde' effect where the very wealthy will all do it once so that they won't feel left out at cocktail parties but that does not seem sustainable.
My hope is that Blue Origin's plans to move into orbital flights is successful. Spending $200K to spend nearly 90 minutes (1 orbit) weightless has much more appeal.
[1] https://www.gozerog.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=reservations.we...
Once New Glen starts launching in 2020, they want to quickly move past human certification, so practicing with New Shepard is less costly in terms of critical-path length and probably financially too-- bigger rocket, bigger spend per test.
You also need to get to a high TRL for confidence from contractors. People are more willing to take risks than someone sending up $100m+ satellites or vehicles. Those successful human missions get you to a TRL 9 pretty quickly.
But many of these companies have much bigger aims than tourism. Tourism is part of it, but more like orbital hotels, lunar hotels, etc. Not a short trip. But also mining. There's A LOT of money in mining once the vehicles get cheap enough. Which they aren't if you're flying a few times a year (like how most things come down in price when you manufacture at scale).
Nit pick: The point of the ride isn't to get 0 gravity. IT IS TO GO TO SPACE! That has a value much higher than that 5k 0g rides. Sure, 0g is part of it, but that's not why ANYONE is buying a ticket.
> a dozen or two launches to gain experience and knowledge to pump back into the New Glen project
then it's probably cheaper to never fly a tourist. It's not great if the revenue from tourists is smaller than the opportunity cost of making the thing safe for tourists.
This is can in the long run give them an advantage over SpaceX depending on how fast SpaceX can actually shift towards manned launches.
There's more than just weightlessness to appreciate on a suborbital flight. Plus the 8 minutes up and 8-20 minutes back down are probably pretty fun too.
The earlier you do it, the longer you can live life sharing your experience and viewing everything through its perspective, instead of just fly and die maybe a decade later or so.
I'm guessing that would be that the second stage provides retropulsion to get you back to nominal zero velocity over the return point.
So that would be launch, booster returns to the pad, and the second stage pushes you up enough to insure an orbit, then your orient for return. Enjoy the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your velocity to 0 as you arrive over the launch facility (you'll have to scoot 1000 miles or so east as well given planetary rotation) and then separate for a parachute landing of perhaps both the capsule and the second stage booster.
Sounds pretty complex. But you would have to recover all equipment if you wanted to have a chance as meeting the economics of that.
It's also worth mentioning that Virgin Galactic has eschewed the Karman Line, preferring the old "50 mile" definition the Air Force uses for astronaut wings. SpaceShipTwo's apogee is expected to be under 100km during this test campaign, though they have said that heavy test equipment sandbags performance.
Dead Comment
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
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...
Deleted Comment
Because the abort took place after MECO, the capsule reached an apogee of 118.8km. This will likely stand as New Shepard's altitude record.
Blue Origin previously tested a transonic abort and (unexpectedly) recovered the booster. Recovery did not appear to be in question this time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line
It definitely didn't reach orbit and it isn't designed to be in space for long, but I wouldn't say it won't ever go to space.
https://space.stackexchange.com/a/7857
For a short time is nothing to talk about during emergency when it comes from the back (eyballs in) and you are protected from the whiplash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_linear_acceleration...
https://www.blueorigin.com/new-shepard > Accelerating at more than 3 Gs to faster than Mach 3...
I'd call it a reasonable spec, though it does seem that each passenger should be medically cleared and, ideally, physically tested beforehand.
Having said that I believe it's primary for rockets to be safe and efficient rather than beautiful.
The only thing with any claim to match it is the Saturn V with it's black and with paint job and fashion fins.
Difference in aerodynamic heating is more than that. I think Blue origin is still supersonic/high supersonic, re-entry from orbit is hypersonic and requires different materials.
Also, landing at 16mph seems a little rough? I guess the capsule is not reused?
Retro rockets fire just before landing. This is the main cause of the dust cloud that kicks up around the capsule.
Various sources on the web put the touchdown speed at 1-3 mph.
Edit: the 3mph comes from a test where they disabled 1/3 of the parachutes [1]:
Similar flights had been done with the same craft three times before, but this time around, one of the capsule’s parachutes was disabled. Bezos said the two parachutes slowed the descent to 23 mph, as opposed to the usual 16 mph with three parachutes.
Just before the touchdown, the capsule’s retro rocket system fired. Bezos said that brought the speed at impact down to 3 mph. The capsule was equipped with a ring of crushable bumpers on its bottom to absorb that remaining force.
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-test-ch...