According to Jeff Bezos, the founder of the company, the initial data shows that the mission was successful and that the components of the New Shepard are ready for relaunch
The "commercial space race" of recent years is yielding cows - and this time in the form of the success of Blue Origin, which can be defined as historic. For the first time since rockets were launched into space in the last century, a space launcher was safely returned to Earth through a vertical landing, so that it could become multi-purpose.
In the secrecy that characterizes it, Blue Origin, the company founded by the tycoon Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, carried out on November 23, from a base in West Texas, a second unmanned test flight of the "New Shepherd" space vehicle. which it is developing for space tourism. The announcement of the flight was given to the media only 18 hours after it ended.
The New Shepard is named after the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, due to the similarity between his short suborbital flight aboard the Mercury spacecraft in 1961 and the flight of the "New Shepard" - a short journey to the (officially recognized) "frontier of space" at altitude of over 100 km, where space tourists will be able to experience a few minutes of weightlessness, and will be able to see the landscape through large windows The spectacular of the Earth. The New Shepard consists of two components - the propulsion module, which is the launcher, and a capsule that can be manned by up to six people. The launcher includes a single BE-3 rocket engine made by Blue Origin, which consumes liquid hydrogen and oxygen (the product of their combustion is water).
The test flight lasted only 11 minutes. After the launch and with the end of the engine combustion, the capsule separated from the launcher and continued to climb to a maximum height of 100.5 km at a maximum speed of Mach 3.72. After a few minutes it landed and landed using parachutes. At the same time, after detaching from the capsule, the launcher began to fall to the ground which was stabilized and directed using systems of upper fins and bottoms that allow it to be aimed and stabilized. In addition, eight braking racks At an altitude of about 1.5 km, the engine was re-ignited to slow the missile down to about 7 km/h, and allow it to make a soft landing. According to Jeff Bezos, the initial data show that the mission was successful and that The New Shepard components are ready for relaunch.
This is only Blue Origin's second attempt to land the launcher - after the first test flight of the New Shepard in April this year, when the capsule landed successfully but the launcher failed to return to Israel. It is important to note that more test flights are needed and it will take at least a few years before humans can fly on the "New Shepard".
Returning a launcher safely and making it multi-purpose is considered a "game changer", according to Jeff Bezos, in the field of launching into space, and especially for commercial companies that seek to significantly reduce the cost of launches that are so expensive today.
Another company promoting this technology is "SpaceX" of the billionaire Elon Musk. SpaceX developed the "Dragon" spacecraft that sends supplies (and in the future also people) to the International Space Station, and the Falcon 9 space launcher, which it has been trying to make multi-purpose for some time (but right now it is only concentrating on the first stage of the launcher). SpaceX's method of landing the first stage of Falcon 9 is somewhat similar to what we saw in the current test flight, but it faces a more significant challenge: unlike New Shepard, Falcon 9 is designed to launch payloads into an orbital path that is much higher than the space boundary region. Elon Musk commented on Twitter about the current success of Blue Origin, and although he congratulated her on the success, he tried to "cool" her when he mentions this difference.
So far, SpaceX has not been able to safely land the first stage of the Falcon 9, but it has made significant progress in this technology, and managed to steer the stage back to a special sea lander. The failure of Falcon's last launch on June 9 of this year prevented it from continuing its attempts to implement this technology, but it plans to return to launches as soon as next month.
It is worth remembering that Blue Origin and SpaceX are, at least now, in a different market - SpaceX in the near-Earth space sector while Blue Origin is in the sub-orbital sector. At the same time, Blue Origin announced this year that it had begun the development of a multipurpose space launcher for orbital orbit, the exact details of which it has not yet provided.
In the field of space tourism in which Blue Origin now operates, its competitor, Virgin Galactic, is also worthy of mention, developing the "Space Ship 2" rocket plane, which is also designed for suborbital flights. The company recently suffered heavy damage when the vehicle crashed during a test flight in October 2014, which led to the death of one of the test pilots. Despite the dismal failure - the company continues to operate and has already started building another model of Space Ship 2.
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According to what I read about a xenon gas-based engine - it seems promising to me
Herzl
I will not go into the matter of the space sail, which was only an example for the purpose of the discussion in principle,
But I think you are wrong.
The way I propose has been implemented for years on the International Space Station in a melting pot
Practical (and certainly an engine based on it) does not exist for practical use at a known time
(If any..).
In the field of principle, there is no technological problem to add more and more structures to the body
the navigator in orbit around the earth. The buildings can be residential,
Protection against cosmic radiation and solar storms, solar collectors (that can be used in the sun
Also to drive with a ionic engine - for course corrections and tiny acceleration
but long term) etc. After the construction is finished, equipment, food and water are brought up
using unmanned spacecraft and when the phase is over
This one, the astronauts who are used as "construction workers" are taken down and taken up
the astronauts into interplanetary space, at the place where a spacecraft connects
The payload connects to a rocket booster - and you can start raising a trajectory on the way to Mars.
For acceleration and/or return, discard the used engine and insert
In the exact same place is a new and fresh engine (second or third stage of a missile).
sent into a higher orbit around the Earth or around Mars.
We will live (I hope...) and see.
To everyone: if you want to understand how this engine works, search for "ion engine" and read some articles. You just don't know the subject and are making things up. Benjamin: Great theory but impractical. When practical, a fusion reactor will be significantly lighter than a fission reactor, and will therefore win the race. A solar sail has a disadvantage that is not talked about: severe handicap in navigation. It's like sailing a sailboat without a sword (go to sea scouts and ask). The ability to navigate is about the same as a hot air balloon. So even if it were practical to build a solar sail, it would remain science fiction.
In order to accelerate electrons you are used to energy mV^2/2. In order to accelerate electrons all that is required is a high and empty voltage. The electron will accelerate along the path of the electric field in a movement with equal acceleration. You have plasma in a neon lamp, a cathode ray tube in lightning, and more. The thinking in a plasma engine is outside the box and the application is not at all as easy as it sounds. Thinking in a box means that the longer the distance, the more solid fuel is needed. Thinking outside the box means how do I take with me a pool of low-speed particles, an inexhaustible pool and a small overall mass, and then how do I accelerate them to the speed of light - the answer is by ionization, which means very high voltage. Not a million kilovolts but tens of thousands of volts. The Philae spacecraft moves with an engine Plasma over a decade. Obviously, powering a probe is not like powering a spaceship, but the idea is similar.
In matter, Avogadro's number of particles is much multiplied. For that matter there is no electron pool problem.
In any case, it is clear to you that if you accelerate particles to the speed of light and throw them back in order for them to have a lot of momentum, either the mass is large or the speed or both.
Joseph
What are you talking about?? Electrons are confined in a spacecraft, just like any other matter.
Momentum increases with speed, but the energy for acceleration increases as the square of the speed. Therefore, fuel that is too light will be very inefficient.
Plasma is ionized particles moving at a speed very close to the speed of light. Therefore the speed covers the lack of mass to create a significant momentum p=mc. Electrons are something that exist in inexhaustible quantities inside the plasma engine. Producing plasma in principle is not that difficult. From a voltage of 5 volts it is quite easy to increase to tens of thousands of volts and that is enough for plasma. In plasma there is no need to carry fuel all the way in an increasing amount with the distance. That is the idea.
No one will X-ray the launcher to check for cracks and oops, we got a new "shuttle disaster"
to Yossi and Herzl
In my opinion, the real solution for real space traffic will only come
When space vehicles will be assembled in space and will remain there and will not be data
to the aerodynamic maneuvers as well as the reduced acceleration and gravity
Very much the volume and weight of the cargo launched in a single rocket for the trip.
When a space vehicle is assembled in space it will be possible to use it
In a variety of propulsion types in a single vehicle including a nuclear reactor, a sail
Shemesh and others, if starting the reactor will be done at a distance
Enough of the earth it will not be a risk, because it is
In technologies that actually exist or are close to it, reasonable
It is very likely that such a spacecraft will be developed before a space fusion engine
And give a solution also for the volume of the launched cargo, for use
repeatedly and eventually to the possibility of space travel
as a matter of course. Anyway, it's hard for me to see
Someone who would endanger expensive equipment like a nuclear reactor or a fusion reactor
In the coming decades (also regardless of the problems
the pollution in the first) in a hard landing on Earth.
Joseph
Momentum is still mass times speed - so any propulsion solution needs mass from the spacecraft.
Yossi: A nuclear reactor would be a huge pollution risk. Launching into space is not safe enough to risk a second Chernobyl. But there is a chance of realizing nuclear fusion in about 10 years and then maybe in 30 years there will be a reactor small enough to be launched into space.
There are 2 more challenges ahead. Powerful plasma drive - today it is not so powerful. And in my opinion, a nuclear reactor that will boil steam for reuse, that will spin a generator like in a power plant, that will produce high voltage for a powerful plasma. That would solve the fuel problem for Mars-sized distances. A nuclear reactor like that of a submarine will wear out in a decade, and plasma will solve the problem of creating great momentum - instead of a lot of solid fuel with a lot of mass, a lot of ionized electrons with a lot of momentum.
A real revolution in the costs of launching into space. I hope the Falcon will also be successful soon and together with a bigger Blue Origin there will be healthy competition and the prices will drop. That liquid fuel rocket engines can function many times over has been proven by the space shuttle. Now a launcher that weighs 3 times less and costs 10 times less will provide the same service.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a one-time only launcher