GLS
Well-known member
Another payload flight yesterday...
... this one with a new view!
... this one with a new view!
Updates Blue Origin New Shepard News and Updates
- Thread starter RGClark
- Start date
GLS
Well-known member
GLS
Well-known member
... and gone 
Thunder Chicken
Resident Lua Script Rabble-Rouser
New Shepherd was an R&D program wrapped in a business model simply to recoup some of the cost. It's as developed as it is likely to get, and they got over the introductory learning curves of landing boosters and flying man-rated spacecraft using it. Now they are launching and recovering New Glenn successfully, there's no reason to continue it.
They may be shifting these assets and energies to their lander program, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a faster program. The crude old engineer's adage was that gathering three women together doesn't mean you can make a baby in 3 months instead of 9. A lot of things in engineering don't improve with all-hands-on-deck at the 11th hour.
But it seems that Blue Moon is making good progress and they are planning to launch the pathfinder on an unmanned mission this year for testing. Years ago I thought that their "Gradatim Ferociter" motto signaled a slow and plodding development process compared to SpaceX's willingness to absorb RUDs in the evolutionary process of their rockets. But it seems that SpaceX is now making design changes in frantic response to surprise failures and dwindling timeline and are now creating problems faster than they are solving them, basically throwing everything at the walls randomly to see what sticks. They're moving fast and breaking things, but that is just making a lot of wreckage at this point.
dennis.krenz
Well-known member
Also it was a pretty successful, but very expensive PR program for spaceflight. I won't talk the impact on how the general public perceives spaceflight and privately operated spaceflight small there.
But even with accepting high losses, the costs for one seat were much too high to find enough customers. Or offer something extraordinary for this price. A rather cramped cabin negates pretty much everything you can get from having 3 minutes of freefall instead of mere 20 seconds in a vomit comet.
I believe (don't shoot me!), that the next company to try this market needs a vastly improved propulsion technology, because the mass fraction is the limiting factor for how much mass you can devote to safety, comfort and amusement - And New Shepherd did a lot right there! Sorry SpaceX, but I don't see you getting there with your strengths and strategy.
Thunder Chicken
Resident Lua Script Rabble-Rouser
I really wonder if there is any widespread public interest in spaceflight these days. Outside of the Orbiter community I really have never heard any interest in modern spaceflight expressed by anyone, and I work in engineering where one would expect more enthusiasm. Unless there is a fiery explosion that gets posted on TikTok no one seems to care.
New Shepherd could also give you pseudo-astronaut bragging rights for barely crossing the Kármán line. But in any event, the pool of potential customers for this sort of amusement ride was always going to be minuscule. The costs don't scale so well, so developing something where they could send masses up and down for costs comparable to say a first-class airline ticket simply isn't going to happen.
I really don't think anyone is very interested in this sort of business model for its own sake. Even a more airliner-like infrastructure like Virgin Galactic couldn't make the economics work. The sad reality is that there is very little profit to be had trying to give less-than-excessively-wealthy people access to space. The customers are going to be governments, large corporations, and billionaires.
dennis.krenz
Well-known member
What if you could get from London to Australia in 90 minutes and it merely cost you three times the normal ticket costs, crosses the karman line and offers you 35 minutes of microgravity. How many people would take that offer? Enough for, lets say, a 40 pax cabin?
(And I would instantly do it like the pope and kiss the ground after I got out of this ride)
Thunder Chicken
Resident Lua Script Rabble-Rouser
This would be a steal, and SpaceX would be losing massive amounts of money if this was the case.
Let's say a current London to Sydney flight costs around $1000 USD. 40 people paying three times that amount would be a revenue of $120,000 per flight. Musk himself said fueling Superheavy would cost $900,000 to get to orbit, total cost of $2 million. You don't need quite all of that fuel to get to orbit on a suborbital flight, but you need most of it. And Musk has incentive to minimize these estimates.
Let's take that $2 million number per mission as an order of magnitude estimate, and seat 100 passengers (indicated capacity of Starship if it carries passengers). For SpaceX to just break even would require a ticket cost of $20,000, twenty times our London to Sydney airline flight. And, knowing capitalism, they probably would like to have some profit on top of this.
Point-to-point InterContinental Ballistic Meatships aren't going to be a thing at this price point.
dennis.krenz
Well-known member
You are right on the capitalism, but underestimate the current ticket prices. The average is at $1700 right now, including cheap fuel and lots of subsidies.
Also, I don't think it can be done with current technology. Especially since the shortest great circle distance from London to lets say Melbourne would require you to accelerate into the supersonic speed over France and Italy.... will not happen at that size. You would need to take a longer route that accelerates over the pole or over the Atlantic.
But otherwise - its actually not that far from thinkable. The main problem would be accelerating to most of the speed on ambient oxygen. Reaction Engines have developed a lot there before closing their shop, but still not enough.
N_Molson
Addon Developer
Yeah. You would need something a bit like the Concorde but with ramjets. Now as an airliner the Concorde wasn't very profitable, if at all. It was mostly a flagship meant for prestige. How would it be different with a spaceplane ? It would be a very complex machine and the maintenance would be insane, there's no doubt about this (well, if you want any kind of safety record).
And sure, on paper the Skylon does that (and is even orbital).
Maybe in 200-300 years, if we manage not to eradicate ourselves before.
And sure, on paper the Skylon does that (and is even orbital).
Maybe in 200-300 years, if we manage not to eradicate ourselves before.
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dennis.krenz
Well-known member
I don't really think it will take that long. Neither to get into a situation that this could work nor to eradicate ourselves from the gene pool. If we don't learn to let fossile fuels stay below Earth or use it more wisely than to burn it, we are doomed anyway.
And what was the price for synthetic kerosene again?
And what was the price for synthetic kerosene again?
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