[jrometty]

What's great about Blue Origins long term is the frequency of launches. Blue Origins will be launching a rocket every day years before SpaceX will, because of obvious differences in rocket magnitude and mission.

There's a fair amount of boilerplate that comes with launching a rocket. From the command terminals (and associated IRL command structure) to the pod's parachute and rocket assisted landing , all components will be used and tested A LOT thanks to Blue Origins' strategy.

Assuming Blue Origins learns as much as possible and iterates on any sliver of weakness, we as a planet can be far more confident in the human carrying structures that are used to transport space-to-surface. SpaceX undeniably has more impactful and impressive rocket technology, but I'll always respect the lower level work Blue Origins is focusing on.

Space is really, really, really hard. Everyone wants to go up, I enjoy how much Blue Origins wants to come back down. :)

[Animats]

Space-X does have a problem with launch rate. They have a backlog of 50 launch orders and are about two years behind. They stopped posting future launch dates on their web site last year; comparing old launch manifests with new ones made their slip rate too clear.

The plan was to open their Brownsville TX launch facility this year, but they've having foundation problems and may slip to 2018.[1]

The first Falcon Heavy is supposed to launch this spring/summer. That will be a major milestone. Nobody has launched anything that big since the Saturn V.

[1] http://www.krgv.com/story/30994915/foundation-problems-delay...

[slyall]

> They stopped posting future launch dates on their web site last year;

The people at Wikipedia have added up between 20 and 30 launches scheduled for 2016. But obviously lack of an official list makes is speculative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

[molyss]

Out of honest curiosity, can you explain the nature of the "lower level work" BO is focusing on that SpaceX is not ?

[SEJeff]

BO is sub orbital meaning their rockets don't actually break out of the Earth's gravitational field. What they are doing is hard, but much easier than what SpaceX is doing.

For the BO missions, their rockets travel Mach 3.7 (3.72 was the exact top speed from a previous launch). This is called Suborbital. In comparison, since SpaceX is trying to break out of the earth's gravitational pull, its first stage goes around Mach 10 (per the media package of CRS-3).

This article does a better job putting things in laymans terms:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9793220/blue-origin-vs-sp...

In short, the Falcon 9 has unbelievably more thrust than the BO rocket due to being designed for carrying payloads into outer space, not simply small objects into suborbital flight. Both are necessary and both are amazing.

[marcosscriven]

Sorry to be pedantic, but there's no "breaking out of Earth's gravitational field" here in either case.

The essential difference is the huge velocity required for orbit, the kinetic energy for which goes up with the square of that velocity.

Reuse is also much easier for BO - their rocket goes straight up and down.

[molyss]

I believe I might have completely misunderstood what "lower level work" meant. I took it for "more fundamental work" in opposition to "easier work". My bad

[dandelany]

Worth noting though, that as mentioned (announced) in this post, they are working on an orbital vehicle too. Part of this is the development of the BE-4 engine, which will also be used on the orbital ULA Vulcan rocket.

[aerovistae]

> Blue Origins will be launching a rocket every day years before SpaceX will

I would stake my life on you being dead wrong, that's how fucking positive I am. It's such a silly thing to suggest! SpaceX has made dozens of launches, Blue Origin has made a couple ! What in the world implies to you that their rate of scaling will soon outpace Spacex??

[dandelany]

The fuel cost of a Falcon 9 launch is ~$200k. In a perfect world (tons of launches), lets say (generously) that we get launch costs down a million a pop, all things included.

BO's New Shepard is shooting for something like $100k or less per flight. The rocket is much smaller, uses less fuel, and is much easier to move around on the ground, reducing fixed launch costs. It's at least an order of magnitude lower in price, for a completely different service (suborbital tourism), which will make it accessible to a much larger market.

[sandworm101]

Larger market? I think not. The space launch biz is populated by hundreds of different companies, all wanting to spend millions or billions to get a useful sat into orbit. BO is looking to a small group of billionaires with the money to throw 30-50k to spend a few minutes vomiting. And of those, only the ones young enough to participate, a rare thing amongst billionaires.

(1) The launch is not gentle. Everyone will be strapped tightly into chairs, ready for launch escape rocket thrust if necessary.

(2) Time weightless will be measured in minutes, probably less than ten. So nobody is getting out of the chairs. At best they get a few minutes of watching pens hover, unless that is everything has to be secure. In such cases only the vomit will float.

(3) The landing options are not great. Soft if all goes to plan, but parachutes/hard if no. So everyone stays in chairs. No old people and/or heart conditions need apply.

How many people pay to ride the vomit comet every year? How many of them are billionaires? That's BO's market.

[motoboi]

Well, I'm not even a millionaire and I would very gladly sell my house to go to the space, even for a few minutes.

Best thing is: with that money, I can go twice!

[sandworm101]

cc. Here ya go: https://www.gozerog.com/

[wcoenen]

The Falcon 9 first stage accounts for only 3/4th of the launch cost[1]. Given the $60M+ [2] total current launch cost, that still leaves $15M even if booster reuse is free.

SpaceX no longer has plans to develop second stage reusability for the Falcon[3].

[1] http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-s... section "Question on the changes to the Falcon 9"

[2] http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

[3] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10391/how-does-spac...

[bdcravens]

There's a number of reasons, most notably rocket size. I'm not sure that SpaceX will ever have a rocket every day, and that's okay. I realize it's heresy to question Musk's omniscience, but it's very possible to outscale SpaceX, and that in no way diminishes what they have and will accomplish.

[lamontcg]

You're assuming a large demand for space tourism and little suborbital hops. Once the novelty wears off and the 0.1% who have the money and want to experience it have gotten their ride, then what is their business model exactly?

[cstross]

If SpaceX get their launch cost per Falcon 9 down to the close order of $1M, and succeed in re-using Dragon 2 for multiple flights, then that's a price on the order of $100-200K per seat to orbit.

If Bigelow then have an inflatastation on orbit -- made a whole lot more plausible with Falcon Heavy on-stream and semi-reusable -- then there's a plausible market for real space tourism (as in, stay in a hotel for multiple nights in orbit) for under $1M, possibly considerably less.

What's the next step? Some kind of Earth Departure Stage and a lunar fly-by?

Just speculating here, but Blue Origin's current rocket is purely sub-orbital. It'll tap out the $100K space tourism market really fast. While SpaceX is building a commercial launch manifest and the infrastructure to support orbital and trans-lunar space tourism as a hobby on the side (I'd expect Musk to go this route with free rides for billionaire potential investors when he's gearing up for Mars).

Oh, I'll bet National Geographic is already thinking about ways and means of recording and monetizing a "Return to the Moon" mega-documentary before 2030. It'd probably be do-able by 2022 for on the order of $1Bn with Apollo-levels of risk and the equivalent of a Block 1 LEM (two astronauts to surface, 24-48 hour excursion, no rover); assume half the money goes on developing the LEM and the rest on Falcon Heavy launches. By 2030 it'll be the same price, but a whole lot more comprehensive (a 4-6 body crew, multi-week excursion).

Utility of Blue Origin's current platform in developing such a "real" space tourism market? Approximately zip.

[lamontcg]

Yeah this is basically what I'm thinking. It seems like Blue Origin might be able to do some brisk trade for awhile in Russian billionnaires who can drop $100k to hop up into space and impress whatever supermodel they're trying to woo this week. I don't see that ever getting to a launch-a-day.

I did look up the company, though, and they plan on building vehicles that can compete with the Falcon 9. At that point the competition would start to get more interesting since that opens the doors to everything you just mentioned SpaceX could wind up doing. SpaceX is launching Falcon 9's now though...

[bdcravens]

Shipping perhaps? Is there a place for science that is covered by satellites or weather balloons? Perhaps deploy emergency connectivity faster than a satellite can be launched? Just thinking out loud here, I'm sure there's tons of applications I haven't considered.

[jdiez17]

>Perhaps deploy emergency connectivity faster than a satellite can be launched?

New Shepard points straight up for the entire duration of the burn (110 seconds), because the goal is to get the payload to just barely 100km and then land more or less in the same spot. Any object on this ballistic trajectory will fall down to Earth very quickly.

Project Loon is better for communications equipment - the balloons stay up for longer, they are closer to the ground (essential for low power applications), and they're much cheaper to launch. https://www.google.com/loon/

[lxa2]

the 0.1% could be hundreds of thousands of people?