Blue Origin – Outrun Change

Project Kuiper – Amazon’s planned constellation to provide internet service across the planet.

Merritt Island, FL, USA – December 26, 2020: Photo of the Blue Origin Complex, Merritt Island, Florida. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock and Felix Mizioznikov.

Amazon is developing its own low Earth orbit satellite system to provide Internet connectivity across the planet. They are calling this Project Kuiper.

4/19/21 – Ars Technica – Amazon’s first Internet satellites will not launch on Blue Origin rockets – Some background to start the discussion.

In addition to Amazon, Jeff Bezos also owns a rocket company developing spaceships. It is called Blue Origin. They are developing New Glenn rocket as a lift vehicle. Article says first flight for New Glenn is not expected until fourth quarter of 2022 with likely slippage to 2023.

Big announcement covered in this article is Amazon announcing they will use the Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance for the first nine launches of their satellites.

Summary of accomplishments and plans for SpaceX and Blue Origin. Gotta’ love that competition!

Successful recovery of Falcon 9 booster during CRS-10 mission. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX who has placed their photos in the public domain.

Found an article that summarizes accomplishments and plans for SpaceX and Blue Origin, the space exploration companies of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, respectively.

Check out Mike Wall at Space.com on 3/13/17: To the Moon! The Musk-Bezos Billionaire Space Rivalry Just Reached New Heights.

Here are many of the key achievements and targets for both companies. I sorted and regrouped the items that drew my interest. As you consider the list, you can see both companies are making rapid progress. The competition is getting serious.

By the way, if the Space.com article and my little summary here does not satisfy your appetite for learning what is going on in space, you really, really need to check out Capitalism in Space: Private Enterprise and Competition Reshape the Global Aerospace Launch Industry, by Robert Zimmerman, available in PDF format for free at Behind the Black. I am about half way through the paper. It is superb.

First steps

SpaceX:

12/15 – successfully recover Falcon 9
Through 3/17 – have now successfully recovered a Falcon 9 lift vehicle eight times; 3 on land and 5 on drone ships at sea
3/17 – planned first time reuse of Falcon 9 for launch of SES 10 satellite

Blue Origin:

11/15 – successfully recover New Shepard
Late 2016 – retired a New Shepard booster after it was successfully recovered 4 times

Heavy lift

Continue reading “Summary of accomplishments and plans for SpaceX and Blue Origin. Gotta’ love that competition!”

Speaking of competition in space, Blue Origin books 6 launches for 2 customers

Illustration of reusable New Glenn lift vehicle from Blue Origin with 3.85M pounds thrust. Credit Blue Origin.

In Behind the Black’s favorite phrase, the competition heats up. Check out the news just this week for Blue Origin becoming a very serious player.

3/7 – Florida Today Blue Origin books first New Glenn launch contract – Eutelsat Communications has booked the first launch on the New Glenn rocket from Blue Origin. First launch is expected in 2021 or 2022, which is only four or five years away.

Continue reading “Speaking of competition in space, Blue Origin books 6 launches for 2 customers”

Even more competition in the wide open frontier of private space exploration

Most of the current competitors, with a Saturn V for comparison. Illustration courtesy of Blue Origin.

I am astounded at the number of companies taking on the challenge to explore space. It’s staggering to see the innovation emerging.

Check out the number of competitors that are in the game. That is fantastic. The more companies pushing to figure out how to get in space and provide commercially attractive service at a profit, the harder everyone else will push for progress. Good.

Check out that awesome graphic at the top of the page. Lots of thanks and all the credit to Blue Origin. I’ve been looking for something like that visual for a long time. Yeah, you will be seeing it again and again on my blog.

Check out what some of the competitors are doing. This is what I’ve noticed in just the last few weeks:

2/27 – Space.com – SpaceX to Fly Passengers on Private Trip Around the Moon in 2018 – How does this sound for a great schedule?

Continue reading “Even more competition in the wide open frontier of private space exploration”

2 more successful recoveries of space boosters

As Behind the Black likes to say, the competition heats up. Very cool.

4/3 – Tech Crunch – Blue Origin releases video from third launch and landing of New Shepard – Blue Origin successfully launched and recovered a booster again. This is the third launch and landing of that specific lift vehicle.

Blue Origin is Jeff Bezo’s space company.

The video:

[youtube=https://youtu.be/YU3J-jKb75g]

4/7 – Wall Street Journal – SpaceX Lands Portion of Spent Rocket on Floating Platform – SpaceX nailed the landing of its booster on a floating platform. They have had four failures to recover at sea and one successful recovery back on land (which required a lot of extra fuel). Was just a matter of time until they nailed it.

I do hope it will now become the norm to recover the lift stage.

Behind the Black provided the best link to video I’ve seen yet:

[youtube=https://youtu.be/sYmQQn_ZSys]

Oh, this launch also successfully delivered a load of cargo to the ISS. Delivery of cargo to space by private companies is old news. Still extremely cool.

More great news on the open frontier of space exploration

CRS6 launch. Photo by SpaceX. Used with permission.

Blue Origin launch. Photo courtesy of Blue Origin. Used with permission.

Two follow ups on the previous post about the great news last week on space exploration. Competition in bragging rights heats up. Guesses on the cost for the successful launch of a commercial satellite by Japan.

11/24 – Space.com – Billionaire Battle: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk Square Off on Reusable-Rocket Test – The competition and bragging rights is definitely heating up. It looks to me like making the brags very narrow in scope means they can all be true.

Let’s walk through the brags in the article.

Continue reading “More great news on the open frontier of space exploration”

Delightful news on the wide open frontier of private space exploration shows why I am so optimistic about the future

Recovered first stage, which landed a mere 4 1/2 feet from where planned. Photo courtesy of Blue Origin. Used with permission. — Recovered first stage, which landed a mere 4 1/2 feet away from planned impact point. Photo courtesy of Blue Origin. Used with permission.

Lots of fun news in the past week about the wide open frontier of space exploration. Three huge developments are:

SpaceX landed a contract for a manned flight,
Blue Origin successfully recovered a first stage, and
Japan successfully launched a commercial satellite.

What I describe in this post is the reason I am so wildly optimistic about the future. The astounding progress here stands in stark contrast to the foolishness and ridiculousness we see dominate the news every hour of every day.

The absolute best news:

11/24 – New York Post – The new space race is a private-sector affair – Editorial celebrates Blue Origin successfully recovering a first stage, SpaceX has already flown several resupply missions to the International Space Station, and Boeing & Virgin Galactic are also in the game.

The more competitors, the better.

First stages can be recovered after launch:

Continue reading “Delightful news on the wide open frontier of private space exploration shows why I am so optimistic about the future”