[vassvdm]

Elon's reaction (quoted from Twitter):

"Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster

It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit."

[mmaunder]

This may come off as sour grapes, but it's really important for Musk to point this out. It's not just that you need to go sideways at mach 24 when you reach space to achieve orbit. It's that you need to carry the fuel up to space to be able to do that. Which means that any returnable vehicle is going to be way larger to carry all that fuel. So from an engineering perspective, the size of Blue Origin is a toy compared to the size of rocket that would return after achieving orbit. Not to mention the amount of additional fuel required to decelerate a much larger mass right before landing.

[protomyth]

> This may come off as sour grapes, but it's really important for Musk to point this out.

It does come off as sour grapes and it absolutely wasn't important for Musk to point this out. His PR team needs to deal with this, not him. He can send out congratulations and rah-rah for another amazing achievement for humanity, but his PR needs to get on the ball and show what the differences in goals and achievements BO and SpaceX have. They also should look at this as a failure to explain what the whole landing phase means for both companies. He can stay above the the whole thing. Its not like Bezos is beloved (the whole Stark / Hammer comparison is not far off).

[klunger]

Sort of. The ascent booster separates from the crew capsule, which basically uses parachutes for its deceleration. For descent of the booster, there will be some fuel requirements, but most of the work should also be done by the parachutes (I think. It just says "guided flight", but it would be weird if it did not use parachutes), with fuel only needed at the end.

[mdturnerphys]

I don't think if makes sense to decelerate from Mach 30 using parachutes.

To your second point, if you watch the video, you can see the booster descending under power, without parachutes.

[T-hawk]

Even if it did, it would be more of a drag chute rather than a parachute. The Mach 30 velocity of orbit is horizontal to the ground, not downwards.

[tim333]

I think klunger is referring to the Blue Origin which is deigned to take tourists to the edge of space and then come down, not to go anywhere near Mach 30. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin_New_Shepard#Missio...

[jacquesm]

I don't see Blue Origin claiming 'orbit' anywhere so I fail to see why that bit needed any clearing up. It is the L bit that SpaceX seems to have had some problems with to date. Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

[chriskanan]

I'm guessing that Musk felt the need to do that because some of the early reports about Blue Origin's success were using it as a platform to trash SpaceX for failing to land on the barges. This Gizmodo article (before they changed it due to all the comments complaining) was a good example: http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-new-rocket-just-made-a-control...

It was significantly longer earlier today, but it contained a factually inaccurate comparison.

Here are a couple more examples:

Wired: "Jeff Bezos just accomplished the near impossible: one-upping Elon Musk"

Link: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/jeff-bezos-brags-on-rocket-land...

Engadget: "Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk's SpaceX in the reusable rocket race"

Link: http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rock...

[Tloewald]

And of course SpaceX (and before them John Carmack's team) did vertical test landings on land years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxKWh7kLDzw

But expecting journalists to even google something during their fact-checking these days is hopelessly optimistic. (Reminds me of Jon Stewart's recent inverview of Fresh Air when he was asked how the Daily Show is able to do such a great job of fact-checking and digging up contradictory statements -- Google and Lexis Nexis.)

[cthalupa]

Neither SpaceX or Carmack's team were able to do that with a rocket that made it to space, however.

[mikeash]

With SpaceX it's really just because they didn't bother, though. Getting their test vehicle to space first probably would not have been too difficult, considering that it was adapted from something meant to go to space anyway. It's just that doing that wouldn't have been useful to their ultimate goal of recovering the first stage as part of an orbital launch.

I know this sounds like a typical "I could do that, I just don't want to" boast, but it's true. There's little point in merely going to space without also achieving orbit, unless you're selling people the opportunity to say "I've been to space." And getting to orbit is way, way, way harder. In terms of relative difficulty, Blue Origin's accomplishment is much closer to SpaceX's Grasshopper flights than to their (not yet successful) barge landings.

[ethbro]

"Journalists" not understanding basic physics? Shocking!

[jsprogrammer]

That still has nothing to do with orbit, making Elon's tweet(s) a non-sequitor.

Edit: I see the Musk posse has arrived at this comment.

[dtparr]

When stories with titles like "Your Move, SpaceX: Blue Origin Just Secretly Landed a Reusable Rocket"[0], "Blue Origin Beats SpaceX In Landing Reusable Rocket"[1], "Move over SpaceX! Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully lands a reusable rocket in Texas beating Elon Musk's firm to it"[2], are the main articles about it for me on google news, I can understand how he might feel the need to make the point to the general public that they've not achieved the feat SpaceX is attempting.

[0] - http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/your-move-spacex-blue... [1] - http://www.popsci.com/blue-origin-beats-spacex-in-landing-re... [2] - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3331885/Move-...

[agumonkey]

The TV News re-served the 'first time ever' speech tonight. I sighed.

[jsprogrammer]

Through all the ads on those sites, I still saw nothing about orbit.

The reusable part of a Falcon (assuming it actually lands undamaged)[0] doesn't go into orbit either.

Edit: Stay classy HN.

[0] "I don't expect the Falcon 9 to have a reusable upper stage" http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-at-mits-aeroast...

[stingraycharles]

You're missing the point. The media is basically doing an apples/apples comparison with BO and SpaceX. The tweet was necessary to point out that they're not competing in the same space.

[ChrisClark]

You are focusing on the word 'orbit' and not the overall meaning. The forest for the trees. You are being downvoted for arguing about something completely pointless.

[vectorjohn]

Here's the thing. SpaceX already landed a rocket. Lots of people have landed lots of things. So saying Blue Origin beat SpaceX to something, you have to be more specific about what that something was. SpaceX isn't even trying to land a tiny test rocket (which they already have), they're trying to land real full size rockets on real launches that go to orbit. It's a huge difference.

In other words, nobody said "orbit". But they did say Blue Origin beat SpaceX, which doesn't make any sense.

[jsprogrammer]

>Here's the thing. SpaceX already landed a rocket.

Right, which is why this entire thread is so confusing.

>In other words, nobody said "orbit".

Exactly. This makes the tweet a non-sequitor.

>But they did say Blue Origin beat SpaceX, which doesn't make any sense.

Yes, anyone who said that is incorrect. However, Elon did not directly address those people (at least not in these tweets).

[pmorici]

I don't think it's immediately obvious for the lay person not familiar with space flight of the differences between the achievements of the two companies.

[Cshelton]

Let's face it, this is a huge PR stunt for BO. Congrats to them; however what they did is not the goal. Now the media, from all the articles I've seen, portrays what BO did as the same as Space X. It's unfortunate but yes, the lay person will see BO being ahead of Space X, when in reality, that's far from the truth.

[smackfu]

Isn't Blue Origin aiming at space tourism? No orbit, you just go up on a rocket, get weightless, see the curve of the earth and the blackness of space through big windows, then land 10 minutes later. They just did a perfect demonstration of that flight.

[Luc]

> They just did a perfect demonstration of that flight.

You think putting passengers aboard, instead of the proverbial sand bags, will be trivial? You could afford to cut a lot of corners with an empty crew capsule.

[JoeAltmaier]

Its hard to untangle cause and effect. I think the space tourism is to fund the engineering effort, which now can be used in other vehicles.

[TrevorJ]

As an aside, it's sort of bothersome that it's termed as space tourism (not your term, I know) because it sort of belies the inherent risks associated. I'm pretty worried about what the public reaction will be when one of these 'tours' goes horribly wrong.

[discardorama]

> They just did a perfect demonstration of that flight.

Did you see how hard the capsule landed? Look at around the 1:39 mark on the video: https://www.blueorigin.com/gallery#youtube9pillaOxGCo

[greglindahl]

Doesn't look hard to me -- are you being confused by the big cloud of dust? That's mostly caused by the last-second retrorocket.

[jacquesm]

To me the BO launch-and-landing is very much like what SpaceX already did with Grasshopper, only from a lot higher up.

Anyway, let's hope that SpaceX manages to land the next time they put something in orbit, that would be a big step forward, I'm seeing a lot more practical value in SpaceX than in BO.

[FD3SA]

Compare the size of grasshopper to BO's little toy rocket. Grasshopper was a full Falcon 9 first stage, which is a production GTO capable rocket.

What exactly is BO's rocket capable of? Reaching 100km altitude?

No one is more embarassed than BO engineers by the comparisons with SpaceX. They are in completely different leagues. BO is playing with toys, SpaceX is hauling commercial payloads to GTO.

It's like me making a go-kart that goes 0-60 faster than an F1 car, and saying "I've built a faster race car than McLaren!". Anyone with an ounce of knowledge on the subject would be in tears from laughter.

[moistgorilla]

The first thing I thought of when I saw this video was that this group did it before SpaceX without knowing SpaceX was trying to solve the harder problem.

[ethbro]

It seems like this gets understated (probably because, you know, it's our planet): just how energy-intensive it is to get things into Earth orbit.

Reddit has a nice delta V chart: http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png (source: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1ktjfi/deltav_map_of...)

There's also the linked NASA version: http://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php?NEOs=on&NEA...

[modeless]

SpaceX has been launching and landing non-orbit rockets for a long time: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4

There's nothing magical about 100 km that makes Blue Origin's rocket more useful. 100 km is just a round number. It's not useful until it's literally 100 times more powerful so it can get to orbit. Implying that Blue Origin's achievement is comparable to what SpaceX is attempting is disingenuous. But, predictably, that's exactly what the news media is doing.

[fixermark]

100km is the edge of space. Reusable human transport payloads that go to space and back are sufficient for a space tourism ecosystem to start forming, which may be the orange Bezos is chasing (to Musk's "payloads to orbit and beyond" apple).

In that sense, this is exciting news for Blue Origin, as it gets them one step closer to the insane-but-possible goal of profitable space tourism---with the world's money being as disproportionately allocated as it is, one can imagine actually being able to find six people willing to pony up enough cash to get launched into the edge of space purely for the delightful view.

[mtgx]

It might have something to do with half the headlines out there claiming Blue Origin "beat" SpaceX.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rock...

[PakG1]

I imagine that doesn't matter. I can't imagine that people who would actually buy their services would not actually know the difference, so I don't see this as a big marketing/PR hit. It's not like the people who would buy these services are clueless managers who make bad IT investments. The people who'd buy these services or make investments (e.g. NASA) would know the difference as to what's what.

[elbigbad]

But, to the public who elects the representatives who control the budgets of the agencies that make the investments, it does matter. It can be critical.

We have people elected congress who don't believe in things like evolution or climate change, which affects national policy, budgets, and investments. Same thing.

[mikeash]

Or just the representatives themselves. How long will it be before some Congressmoron asks, "Why are we giving Elon Musk $300 million to take our people to the space station when Amazon is doing the same thing for $3 million?"

[mtgx]

I think PR for "normal people" absolutely matters when it comes to Elon Musk and his companies' reputation.

[asmithmd1]

How cool is it that there are currently two billionaires competing to build a better reusable rocket. For all the problems with capitalism, this is a great benefit.

[return0]

If only another billionaire would try to one-up bill gates in eradicating disease...

[edem]

The main reason for that was the fact that SpaceX launched several rockets with the same goal and failed to land. Most people won't know the difference between getting to space and getting to orbit and will conclude that SpaceX failed. If you clarify however that New Shepard is a toy compared to the Falcon 9 it changes the perspective.

[jacquesm]

SpaceX already landed a rocket. Just not from that high up and not after achieving oribital velocity.

[simonh]

>Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

If you actually read his tweet, copied in full in the post you are responding to and in the article, you'll see that he did exactly that.

Ok, fair cop. It looks like he didn't do just exactly that. The article I saw only gave his first tweet. My apologies.

[jacquesm]

I did actually read his tweets. And I won't put into question whether you did but it's not just one tweet, it's three tweets:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk

[jinst8gmi]

There are at least two tweets. The first one to congratulate, followed by the "clear up" tweet. I assume parent is referring to both, not just the first in isolation.

Either way, a vertical landing is pretty neat.

[Havoc]

>Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

Thats not his style. Plus I'm pretty sure SpaceX is pretty pissed at BlueOrigin for allegedly stealing staff. So can't say I'm surprised at the snarky response.

[brazzledazzle]

If it were a neutral third party I'd agree, but presumably they're competitors.

[jacquesm]

I don't know. Clearly SpaceX was gunning for a 'first' here and they simply lost that to BO. I like Elon Musk a lot and especially because they are competitors I'd be nice if he was gracious about this and not use it as an opportunity to toot his own horn.

If they wanted to make a valid criticism then they could have simply said 'but we could already do this with Grasshopper' and left it at that.

[jblow]

What do you mean "way to make a valid criticism"? The criticism IS valid and that is obvious. This is a tiny and light rocket, and any VTOL system that would work for a big heavy rocket would be very different from this one and a much harder thing to engineer.

You are saying SpaceX lost a 'first' here to BO but that is not really true and that's Elon's entire point. This is not the first VTOL rocket landing either, maybe it is the first rocket to officially reach space and then subsequently VTOL land but that is not as big of a 'first' as most people are thinking it is.

Which is not to diminish what BO just did, it is just to see it in an accurate context.

[jacquesm]

It's not a valid criticism because BO has entirely different goals than SpaceX and the context musk provided applies to SpaceX, not to BO.

[rst]

Blue Origin has announced an orbital booster, and will be using at least the engine from New Shepard for its upper stage (presumably with some tweaks for improved efficiency at high altitude). They've hinted at much grander plans, although not with the specificity of SpaceX's "we're going to Mars". So it's reasonable to grade them on the same curve.

For suborbital space tourism, BTW, that New Shepard engine is phenomenally over-engineered. Even the fuel choice is surprising; liquid hydrogen is the highest-energy chemical fuel you can get, but it is nasty stuff to handle. (For starters, it diffuses right through the crystal grids of many metals, making your piping brittle and creating an invisible fire hazard outside of it.) So even the design of the current vehicle hints at building tooling for a much grander vision; if a large suborbital sounding rocket was all they wanted, they could have gotten it much more quickly and easily than by building what they have.

[adam12]

> 'but we could already do this with Grasshopper'

That to me is way worse than what you claimed to be inappropriate.

[jacquesm]

Because?

[adam12]

For me, the 'but' negates the congratulations.

[mikeash]

What exactly was SpaceX gunning for a "first" in?

First space rocket landed successfully? That's been done many times, starting with the X-15.

First successful vertical rocket landing? SpaceX has done it already.

First successful vertical landing of a stage of an orbital rocket? Nobody has done this yet, and that's what SpaceX is gunning for.

[vectorjohn]

SpaceX "lost" to BO in the same way you lost in a foot race to me just now down the hall.

They aren't even close to the same thing.

[Turbots]

They don't claim orbit, but they claim (rightfully so) landing a rocket.

People with basic scientific backgrounds will make the link with SpaceX and think: "wow, they've just done something that SpaceX hasnt been able to do so far, with less funds and less attempts..."

While this is comparing apples to oranges ofcourse.

Big congratulations to Jeff Bezos & Team, but it's still quite a big difference indeed

[lsaferite]

Does Grasshopper not count for some reason?

[jacquesm]

It didn't go into space, but that's a minor achievement compared to landing it in the first place.

[xixi77]

Thanks for noting Musk's clarification, this did leave me confused for a moment. The difference between what they are trying to do is indeed quite huge.

I feel still a bit unclear on this though: hasn't SpaceX been trying to land just the first stage module (which presumably doesn't try to achieve that Mach 30)? If so, what is the main difference -- just the size of the payload, or is the 1st stage of SpaceX itself already going a lot faster than the BO rocket? (or perhaps both).

[mikeash]

Blue Origin's rocket is returning from a bit above 300,000ft and roughly zero speed. Falcon 9's first stage is returning from a similar altitude but at mach 6.

That adds a lot of difficulty just in terms of getting rid of that speed without destroying your hardware. Plus you need to aim from a lot farther away. The Falcon 9 includes hypersonic grid fins to steer towards the landing site, for example. (Failure of these due to running out of hydraulic fluid is what caused the first landing attempt crash.)

Just getting to that state requires a lot more of the rocket as well. If getting to that altitude is the equivalent of going mach 3, then the Falcon 9 first stage is putting in the equivalent of mach 9, so that's 9x more delta-v, which means the rocket needs to carry vastly more fuel and be vastly lighter.

All in all, the Falcon 9-R is trying to optimize for two things at once, which is always difficult. Landing a rocket vertically is not that difficult. Landing a rocket vertically while having that exact same rocket also be useful as the first stage of an orbital launcher is way harder. It's a bit like building a flying car: there are good cars, and good airplanes, but trying to build a machine that's good at both is far more difficult. Hopefully SpaceX's effort works out better than flying cars have.

[rst]

For one thing, the trajectories are very different -- New Shepard is pretty much up and down, while the SpaceX booster's velocity is mostly horizontal at stage separation; it requires a substantial amount of maneuvering to cancel that out. For another, SpaceX's landing attempts have been on a barge, not flat land, which means that targeting is a much harder problem. (The latter is speculation on my part, but the New Shepard booster went through a lot of gymnastics just before landing; that sort of thing can be a whole lot easier if you just have to wind up level with zero velocity, without having to target a particular spot on the ground as an added constraint.)

EDIT: some observers claim that the New Shepard is hovering. If so, that does two things: first off, it indicates that either the stage is ballasted, or Blue is taking advantage of their engine's very deep throttle range. (SpaceX's first stage can't hover, as even fully throttled-down thrust of one engine exceeds weight of the stage at landing; so long as an engine is firing at all, the stage is accelerating up.) Second, it obviously makes the targeting problem much easier. (Note that the ballast could just be extra fuel; they've clearly got extra to burn in the landing maneuvers...)

[InclinedPlane]

The point is reuse of a core stage of a launch vehicle. Both Blue Origin's vehicle and SpaceX's are launch vehicles, one is sub-orbital the other is orbital. Reusing either makes their respective launches cheaper and easier, but because the launches themselves are vastly different the implications of that reuse are also vastly different.

[wiremine]

From what the website says, one of their main goals is a commercial "astronaut experience". In that case, they're only aiming for 100km. [1]

This flight confirms they have achieved that goal, correct?

[1] https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience

[phkahler]

>> From what the website says, one of their main goals is a commercial "astronaut experience". In that case, they're only aiming for 100km.

But SpaceShipOne achieved that back in 2004.

[wiremine]

True, although Virgin Galactic haven't commercialized it either, correct?

[robotresearcher]

Not least because the vehicle was destroyed, killing the pilot.

[Tloewald]

And in a more energy-efficient and elegant manner.

[warmwaffles]

I play kerbal, and I can confirm, getting to space requires a lot of energy as the payload gets bigger.

[Schwolop]

Ladies and gentlemen, we can now present conclusive evidence that the internet has officially achieved peak-hubris.

[pierrebai]

Are the SpaceX boosters that Musk want to land going to orbit? No.

Is the extra fuel needed to make such a landing a big part of going to orbit? No.

The extra weight a enerby needed to land vertically has nothing to do with a 900 factor. Musk's tweet is thus equally disengenuous. It makes it sound like vertical landing a booster for a rocket going to orbit is tremendously harder than what BO did. It is not, it's the same ball park.

[colordrops]

An orbital rocket takes a lot more fuel and has to go a much faster. You are being disingenuous by implying that there is no significant tradeoff when designing a much larger booster designed to take payload into orbit.

[t_fatus]

But they have to carry a lot more load which then goes to orbit, making them much more heavier, hard to control and to land. And indeed the separation velocity is Mach 6 - Mach 10 for Falcon 9, so Space-X booster needs to go faster.

[Zelphyr]

I agree that the distinction needed to be made. However, this is a win for man kind regardless of the distance.

[jlebrech]

would it be possible to keep catapulting fuel to the rocket when it runs out?

[ForHackernews]

Musk is just salty that another billionaire has a newer toy.

[Turbots]

a smaller, lighter toy which goes Mach 3 and 10km

compared to a bigger, much heavier toy which goes Mach 30 and into actual orbit :-)