Blue Origin Will Be VTOL 92
Spy Handler writes "The Blue Origin spacecraft, being built by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' new venture, will have VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) capability, according to the company's FAA permit applications. It will be a cone-shaped vehicle about 50 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter at the base, and carry 3 or more passengers to an altitude of 325,000 feet"
Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
That will require some interesting reliability stats on the exposed surfaces...
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:1)
British Aerospace (before they became BAe Systems) used to build a range of high-wing STOL jet airliners, the BAe 146 series, which was developed into the Avro Regional Jet. Their short-field performance is unparalleled; the 146 and Avro RJ are the largest jet transport aircraft certified to land at London City airport, a 4,300ft runway in the very centre of London's docklands.
This line of jet aircraft was the last commerci
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:1)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just a matter of designing for reliability and servicability instead of cutting-edge performance like NASA does.
It helps that this is a sub-orbital vehicle.
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of those assumptions that you put in your business plan spreadsheet, that makes the difference between success and failure but which nobody can say for sure.
Elementary economics tells us you can't possibly say something like "there won't be enough demand for 52 launches per year in the long term." What you have to say is "the market will demand less than 52 launches per year at a certain price." Price the launch low enough, and you'll be able to sell a thousand or even a million launches; the question is, can you make a profit.
Creating a popular web site and creating a aerospace company are on the surface very different things. But one thing that is in common is that there is an adoption curve. You almost never have enough people want your service at the outset to sustain it. What you need is enough people to want your service to keep the ball rolling, to bring in enough cash that venture dollars don't feel too lonely as they're waiting to be shoveled into the furnace.
The key to everything is pricing and its relationship to volume. IN a mature business, you want to charge to maximize profit, but in a startup you aren't expecting to see profit. It's more complex because your pricing has to do more things than deliver a profit. It has to deliver enough volume so that you can begin to achieve economies of scale and learn how to operate the business efficiently; it also has to show that your business plan's ales projections and cost projections are realistic. Pricing and volume has to validate your assertions about your ability to manage the technology, as well as your assertions about how the market will respond to price.
In a venture like this, you'd charge more at the outset, because you really can't deliver more. So supposing after initial test, you think you can launch four times a year for the first year, because you're shaking down your system and learning how to scale the system safely and efficiently. So, you charge so much that the number of rides you sell is exactly four, neither more nor less. You still burn lots of money and don't get much back. Next year, you can launch eight times, which is twice as often. You drop your prices, hopefully less that 50%; let's say 66%. Presuming that your marginal costs stay the same or drop, it means you lose more money.
In time, repeat this process enough, and (God willing) your marginal costs start to drop, and you start to approach the area where you are making profit on each transaction instead of losing money. However, if your model was wrong, you may end up get no closer to that point: if you don't achieve economies of scale with increased volume, or if demand does not fall with price rising.
Every business plan depends on predicting the future, and making leaps of faith about certain assumptions. Most of the time, some assumption was wrong; if it's right, and you're talking about something like this where you can't create a business overnight, then you can expect to enjoy larger than normal profits if you are right. Higher rewards nearly always entail higher risks (although the converse is not true).
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2)
If it's condescension you want, you've come to the right place. I've got more of it than I know what to do with. It's nice to be with people who have a sense of humor.
However my point is that the "product" here is fundamentally not a particularly attractive one, once you take out the "one of the first to do it" and "uniqueness of experience" factors. It's a fundamentally high altitude flight with a few minutes only technically in space, where even the most wildly optimisti
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2)
I saw the Discovery Channel program on the X-prize winning SS1 flights, and it was awesome. I would pay $200,000 if I had a few million dollars in my pocket, considering the only way to get into orbit is paying the Russians $20 mil.
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2)
+1 Informative.
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:3, Insightful)
When you get thrown 99km upwards to the "edge of space" (whoo-hoo, you're not even in orbit) and float down again, you don't need to do it again. The novelty wears off and that's over. That's the point - the interest is to due the novelty; the service being essentially uselesss it will become passe when it's common. 52 flights ought to be eno
Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... (Score:2)
There were 7.5 million millionaires in the U.S. in 2004, up 10% from 2003. Even if the growth drops to 5%, after 10 years that is about 12 million over that period of time. For this company to sell 52 rides
What will it cost? (Score:1)
Are the costs to take one of these commercial flights known yet? And wasn't a similar venture investigated by Virgin owner, Richard Branson?
Re:What will it cost? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What will it cost? (Score:1)
Scales better than SS1 (Score:5, Interesting)
SpaceShip[12..] is a design which will only work as a straight up-down suborbital vehicle. The basic idea behind Blue Origin: to have a straight forward rocket with a high mass fraction can be made to scale towards semiballistic lobs and eventually orbit. Its a good way to go.
Re:Welcome to 1961 (Score:4, Funny)
Welcome to 1943 (Score:2)
How about Wan Hu legend in the 16th century?
Re:Welcome to 1961 (Score:2)
A reusable VTOL craft is new.
Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Saturn V didn't land. As the basis of a single stage to orbit system I think this is very interesting. The hardware associated with staging caused the loss of both shuttles.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
I understand that we seek to have romantic illusion of Argonauts-alike independence with "spaceship" or "spacecar" that would be more self-containd vehicle (just tank the fuel in and off you go) then repetitive vertical masonry project of huge surface-locked organisations, but that time has not come yet.
Overall, it is like try
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmm...more like Pheonix family of ssto (Score:1)
All about the powered, precission landing, and quick turn around, reusable craft.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Ummm
All rockets take off vertically. They're talking about a craft which also lands vertically so it's physically in launch position.
Saturn V rockets landed rather balistically. There is a huge difference.
Cheers
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1)
I was just thinking, if one of these things took off in Tokyo, and landed in Los Angeles, Then they could say, "We'll deliver your package when it absolutly, positively has to be there Yesterday".
In normal units (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In normal units (Score:3, Funny)
I suspect that a rounding error crept in there.
Re:In normal units (Score:2)
Unless, of course, some regulatory agency like the FAI defined an altitude of 100 km as being somehow significant.
Going 99 km up won't make you an astronaut. 100 km will. To go those extra few metres you need to tip your pilot.
Re:In normal units (Score:2)
Or lie about your mass.
Re:Normal units are boring! (Score:5, Funny)
The mods must be crazy (Score:2)
If I had a point, Nothing would get it.
Why can't we use journalistic units? (Score:3, Funny)
I think the important question is (Score:2)
Re:I think the important question is (Score:1)
Granted, the Volkswagon Beetle is a confusing unit, as it can be used for either volume or mass. It's definition must be gleaned from context.
Re:I think the important question is (Score:2)
Re:Why can't we use journalistic units? (Score:2)
Re:Why can't we use journalistic units? (Score:1)
American or European football?
Re:Why can't we use journalistic units? (Score:1)
Re:Normal units are boring! (Score:2)
Re:In normal units (Score:1)
Prior art ? (Score:1)
Re:Prior art ? (Score:2)
Distance to space? (Score:2, Interesting)
A fine step forward eitherway. I look forward to the day when these new space companies will competing for passengers - regular people passen
Re:Distance to space? (Score:1)
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Heh. We'll have a dozen different TLDs for all of the different planetary colonies, and everybody will still be clamouring for .com domains.
Re:Distance to space? (Score:5, Funny)
If a (flying) bird is a creature of the air, and a swimming fish is a creature of the water, what do you call a fish that can momentarily break the surface of the water?
I'd still call it a creature of the water.
Similarly, I'd call Bezos's craft a VTOL airplane -- though I might give it an asterisk -- VTOL airplane*.
*capable of reaching super-mesospheric** altitude.
**Where super-mesospheric*** means above 99.9999% of the atmospheric mass.
***Though at the the time of the X-15 flight (1963) the US considered 50 miles**** (~80km) to be the boundary of space.
****But the significance of the 100km boundary is that it is the approximate altitude of the turbopause, below which turbulent mixing***** of the atmosphere predominates; above this, molecular diffusion dominates.
*****Speaking of which, it's time to get another cup of coffee (with milk, turbulently mixed) before the asterisks really get out of hand.
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
It isn't an airplane - by your analogy, I should be an airplane, as I live in the air (I spend more time in the air than in the water)
It has no feature that puts it in league with an airplane. It is a rocket, 100%. It is not an orbital rocket, it is a suborbital rocket, meaning it makes hops but never stays out of earths orbits ad infinum. Its a
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Umm, no. You'd be a creature of the surface, if you choose to extend the analogy.
Gotta disagree again. Since when does the criteria for 'car' include travel distance of 400 mi?
In t
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Airplanes can be rockets.
No, rockets carry their own oxidizer onboard. Airplanes breathe oxidizer from the ambient.
A 'plane' describes a fixed-wing vehicle.
A plane describes a vehicle that derives its predominant lift force from aerodynamic forces (90%+). A rocket has no lifting surfaces but derives lift from its engines.
You could put Bezos' vehicle on the moon, on Mars, under the ocean (if it was denser th
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Quite true -- but then how do you classify the Bell X-1 and its bretheren? Of course in the 40's and 50's, they were called "rocket planes" and justifiably so. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Distance to space? (Score:1)
Confirmed Bogus. [darwinawards.com] Although others have strapped rockets to cars before, your reference has been known to be false for a while.
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Similarly, I'd call Bezos's craft a VTOL airplane -- though I might give it an asterisk -- VTOL airplane*.
And in that regard, we don't need another rocket that reach 100km -- what we need is private industry to develop one-off and reuseable systems to work in Earth orbit and beyond, and heavy lift vehicles to get cargo into space in bulk to help build the next generation of Moon exploration vehicles. It sounds like Bezos is in it for the tourist dollars more than anything, and I'm afraid the ticket pric
Re:Distance to space? (Score:3, Informative)
Shouldn't / Doesn't the definition of an airplane include the vehicle achieving flight primarily through the exploitation of aerodynamic forces, instead of primarily through the expulsion of reaction mass? The Blue Origin vehicle (if the picture on the cover of the FAA Draft is any guide) has no wings, it looks like the DC-X.
If a vehicle has wings or a lifting body, and flies by using the lift generated by those wings or the lifting body, then it is an plane. If the vehicle travels exclusively through
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Re:Distance to space? (Score:3, Funny)
If you throw up during the flight. Would that be "projectile vomiting"?
If it's used mainly to send Billionaires on trips between continents, would it be an InterContinental Billionaire Missile?
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Most people call those things flying fish [wikipedia.org].
Re:Distance to space? (Score:2)
Not to belabor the point - the words used in English to describe something new bear no relation to previous word usage. It only depends on marketing, for lack of a better word...
Re:Distance to space? (Score:1)
I realize this is a first generation craft of a new era in space travel and that the tourism allure is the opportunity for (eventually) most people with average means can experience very low G
Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:2)
To answer your question, *obviously* it wouldn't be a space plane since it has vertical landing, exactly what this article is about. It is contrasting it to the space shuttle saying that it's *not* like the space shuttle.
Re:Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:2)
Re:Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:2)
A spacecraft taking off from a private West Texas spaceport being bankrolled and developed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos would take off vertically, but unlike NASA's space shuttle would also land vertically, according to an environmental study that offers a glimpse into the secretive plans.
The craft would hit an al
Re:Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:1)
Re:Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:2)
And on a darker note, all spacecraft have the ability to land by crashing, as Soyuz, the Shuttle, and the DC-X prototype which will become Blue Origin have done. People can spend an awful lot of time arguing about the semantics, but in the end it doesn't matter how the
Re:Only shuttles aren't VTOL. (Score:2)
Actually (Score:3, Insightful)
While the news of how they intend to do this, i think as someone stated above me, the real question is whether you can call it a spaceshuttle when it's only designed to go to weightlessness and return.
Yes it gives a spacelike feeling, but it's not useful for putting up satelites, not possible to go to spacestations with it, from my point of view, it's just a step up from a parabolic flight, but it's not more a spacecraft, than a tow ferry is a ship.
PS. i wish i had one
Re:Actually (Score:2)
I can think of a few other non-VTOL spacecraft. The Pegasus [orbital.com] rocket (in active use today), some other Spaceship One [wikipedia.org], or even some of the early US ASAT [wikipedia.org].
Re:Actually (Score:2)
The thing is, that i perfectly clearly state that I don't consider going to 100 km (or 62 miles) to be going to space, because nothing orbits that low.
An orbital rocket that's launched from underbelly of a fighterjet is a warhead, not a spacecraft. I don't consider a bullet to be an aeroplane either.
Re:Actually (Score:2)
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/pegasus_laun
VTOL, as it should be (Score:2, Funny)
Man -- I wish I was the one who'd thought that one up....
I simply would not be interested. (Score:1)
But build me an orbiting hotel - and I'm there.
Re:I simply would not be interested. (Score:1)
Useful as a first stage for an orbital craft (Score:3, Insightful)
The Redstone rocket was far from capable of achieving orbit -- it was pretty much straight up and back down as you say. Wiley Ley writes that the Redstone in its missile application didn't have range beyond 200 miles. But what the Hunstville people did was put a cluster of solid-fuel rocket stages on top of it, and not only could they reproduce the flight path
Powered Landing (Score:1)
Descent loaded with rocket fuel (Score:1)
FAA Environmental Review (Score:2)
Getting there (Score:2)
*Single Stage To Orbit Vertical Take-O
Ya'll are missing the big new thing here (Score:2)
There has never, ever, been a flying vehicle carrying humans that didn't have a pilot with at least some control of the craft onboard.
The big thing about this vehicle isn't that is VTOL, it is that will be the first ever passenger rated UAV.