Updates Blue Origin announces the New Glenn Orbital Launch Vehicle

[GLS]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1821638974793789575

 

[GLS]

This should be interesting

https://twitter.com/x/status/1823078225012260967

 

[GLS]

Just dropped!

 

[GLS]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1827079568470995106

https://twitter.com/x/status/1828532073784901655

 

[GLS]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1829172633142997172

 

[GLS]

Test fire time!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1830591233506394356

 

[GLS]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1830662658280038737

 

[Sbb1413]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1830662658280038737

Wait, didn't they scrap the Jacklyn landing ship bought from Stena Freighter?

 

[GLS]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831083772134969708

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Jaclyn, A Shortfall of Gravitas,... when I become an ICBM billionaire I will name my landing barge Eye Brokewind just to mess with the announcers.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

So we got New Shepard and will get new Glenn. Next: New Armstrong?

 

[GLS]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831361597916520622

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831327892825137246

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831323168403038681

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831297839520993737

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831119199244026129

 

[Urwumpe]

Looks rather risky to have so much superstructure. Rocket landings can fail.

 

[diogom]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831421563331358843

 

[BrianJ]

No soft-landing-on-water test first? Going for a barge landing on the first shot??

 

[Thunder Chicken]

IIRC SpaceX aims their booster off the barge initially on approach, then moves to the touchdown point when the engines are verified on a landing burn. BO might do something similar.

They do have some experience with landing boosters so it might be instructional for them to give it a shot. I expect that they'll have to learn how to do the hover slam which might be the biggest new technical milestone.

 

[diogom]

IIRC SpaceX aims their booster off the barge initially on approach, then moves to the touchdown point when the engines are verified on a landing burn. BO might do something similar.

They do have some experience with landing boosters so it might be instructional for them to give it a shot. I expect that they'll have to learn how to do the hover slam which might be the biggest new technical milestone.

What I understood from the Bezos tour (Part 1) is they intend to do the same as New Shepard, hover for a bit then put it down gently, but I'd have to check again.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

What I understood from the Bezos tour (Part 1) is they intend to do the same as New Shepard, hover for a bit then put it down gently, but I'd have to check again.

I'm not sure they can do this, unless they have figured out how to reliably deeply throttle an engine, or they have dedicated smaller engines for hover. What BO can do with New Shepherd doesn't scale to New Glenn. SpaceX had to resort to the hover slam landing because even a single Merlin at minimum throttle produced more thrust than the weight of the empty Falcon 9 stage.

Also, hovering is 100% gravity loss, so from a performance standpoint for an orbital booster it really isn't something they want to do unless they like wasting fuel and payload capacity.

 

[GLS]

I'm not sure they can do this, unless they have figured out how to reliably deeply throttle an engine

2 years ago:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1552659712876748800

 

[Thunder Chicken]

2 years ago:

Deep throttling, fine-tuned, and rapid response engines are key to reusability. #BE4 steadily ran for over 256 seconds in this transient power level demo test across varying mixture ratios and power levels between 45% and 100%. The exhaust plume length adjusts with power level. pic.twitter.com/N5rgtxtzeN

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 28, 2022

That's not deep enough. Merlin can be throttled down to 40% and they can't hover the Falcon 9.

45% of a single BE-4's 550,000 lbf thrust is just under 250,000 lbf or 124 tons of thrust minimum. Total thrust of the booster is 3,850,000 lbf, so the maximum weight of the entire loaded rocket must be less than that. Call it 3 million lbf on the pad. Spitballing a mass fraction is 5% (a rather high number) the empty stage mass would be something like 75 tons. In all probability it is lighter. Unless they are carrying a lot of fuel back to the landing site or managed to get their throttle down to 20% (which would be astounding) or have something else up their sleeve I don't think they'll be hovering this thing.