[jncraton]

I don't fully understand the negativity around BO. They haven't gone to orbit yet, and they don't run everything they do as a PR campaign the way that SpaceX does, but getting a rocket to orbit isn't that big of a deal these days.

We first achieved orbital flight over 50 years ago, and many different groups have achieved the same since then. Given Bezos' deep pockets, why would BO fail where so many other have succeeded in launching payloads to orbit?

They appear to be making steady progress, both on reusability and on their BE-4 engine. There doesn't appear to be any real insurmountable obstacles between where they are today and orbital flight.

I'm not saying they will absolutely succeed, but their success feels more like a when than an if unless Bezos decides to pull the plug for some reason. Whether they can do this by 2026 is of course a different matter.

[nscalf]

The default state of space is failure. It's incredibly expensive, extremely error prone, and failure can have catastrophic results. There's a reason SpaceX was laughed out of room for years. Hell, the most basic problem is described as tyranny.

Regardless of how rich Bezos is, can he bring the right type of talent together and get that talent to make no errors? How many hundreds of millions to billions of dollars is he willing to throw away with nothing to show for it? It's not just can it be done, it's can it be done in this competitive environment before SpaceX pulls so far ahead that there isn't any reason to compete? Add onto it that most of the top talent wants to be, and is, at SpaceX.

[DennisP]

Also I think BO is doing things the hard way. SpaceX started with small expendable rockets carrying cargo. That kept the stakes reasonably low, and let them rapidly iterate and learn from experience. BO's first orbital rocket is supposed to be a heavy-lift reusable.

[mbell]

> getting a rocket to orbit isn't that big of a deal these days.

There are have only been maybe a dozen LEO+ launch families developed ever, and less than a handful by private companies. There exist only 3 active systems in the same category as New Glenn (Long March 5, Delta IV, Falcon Heavy).

Getting anything more than a toy to orbit is _extremely_ difficult, and many have lost untold millions trying to get just a toy to orbit. It is a _really big deal_.

[jncraton]

I shouldn't have said that it isn't a big deal these days, as that devalues the scope of the achievement of getting a payload to orbit. I simply mean that orbital flight is something that we are able to do with the proper funding and resources.

I still think that Bezos can do it if he wants to. If SpaceX were for sale, Bezos could buy them 5 times over (as of their valuation based on their February funding). I have to believe that level of capital could build a company with similar capabilities.

SpaceX has done, and continues to do, incredible work, but their success isn't magical, and it should be repeatable for another company.

[HeadsUpHigh]

>but their success isn't magical, and it should be repeatable for another company.

Not 100% true, SpaceX went against a market that was not only disposable but also extremely inefficiently built. Today's market is significantly more competitive both from SpaceX's side but the other launchers have also decreased prices and are in the process of building cheaper rockets as well.

[JumpCrisscross]

> why would BO fail where so many other have succeeded in launching payloads to orbit?

Guess: Blue Origin employees don’t get equity.

Obviously more motivates an aerospace engineer than cashing out. But my understanding is Bezos owns 100% of Blue Origin. It’s solely his project. That probably changes the type of person they attract and their personal dedication to the effort.

Also, “so many others” haven’t succeeded on orbital insertion. Most efforts (start counting at successful motor test) failed.

[Lazare]

> getting a rocket to orbit isn't that big of a deal these days.

Arguably true, but to the extent that is is true, it makes BOs failures to do so given how much time and money has been spent on it rather inexplicable, no?

Either they're doing something hard (and might fail), or they're doing something easy so why haven't they succeeded? Either way you cut it, it's a bad look.

> They appear to be making steady progress

It's certainly slow. Whether it's steady or indeed, progress, remains to be seen.

> I'm not saying they will absolutely succeed, but their success feels more like a when than an if unless Bezos decides to pull the plug for some reason.

Let's hope.

[bryanlarsen]

> It's certainly slow.

Slow compared to what? Compared to SpaceX they're slow, but compared to everybody else?

NASA/Boeing's SLS program started in 2005 as Constellation. It's still over a year away from it's first test launch and several years away from fully operational status.

China's Long March 5 started in 2007 and it can be argued that it wasn't fully operational until this year.

ULA's Vulcan, started in 2014 is at least a year out. And it reuses the same Centaur upper stage as Atlas.

[liability]

Slow compared to Rocket Lab; 11 years to orbit, compared to Blue Origin's 20+ and counting.

Slow compared to Orbital Sciences, who took 8 years in the 1980s.

[versteegen]

Rocket Lab took about 7 years for Electron: for the first ~5 years after founding they did some sounding rockets and DARPA/ONR-funded non-orbital-rocket propulsion tech before pivoting. Can't remember or find when Peter Beck said they started on an orbital rocket, but they got NASA funding to do a study of the concept December 2010 [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110723113333/http://www.rocket...

[NikolaeVarius]

BO doesn't have a PR campaign since they haven't done anything to campaign about.

The Falcon 9, started design in 2005, first launched in 2010 and rapidly improved to the state we have now.

Meanwhile, the New Glenn started in 2012 and has yet to produce anything but engine tests videos, which are cool, but its not a vehicle.

[valuearb]

BO hasn’t done anything. They’ve demonstrated zero progress. They haven’t even attempted orbit. Their tiny tourist vehicle has gone what, four years in testing, without a single person on board, let alone a customer?

So why the positivity? Because they made videos and a giant plastic lander mockup?

Why the negativity? They tried to patent landing rockets on a ship ten years ago, and still have never done it.

[newsclues]

Because they haven’t done “the hard thing” yet.

[bhupy]

Sure, but there doesn't appear to be anything intrinsic to BO that lends itself a particular disadvantage to doing "the hard thing".

They appear to have the requisite resources & staff, so predicting that they will never do "the hard thing" seems a bit like spiking the football after the first quarter.

[mlboss]

Space is hard. Even with the best people and resources there is a high probability of failure. The only way forward is to launch -> fail -> learn -> repeat.

[bhupy]

Yes, pith aside, everybody knows that space is hard. The GP commenter is arguing that it's odd to write off BO when they are currently in the process of launch -> fail -> learn -> repeat.

[peakay]

but they aren't in that process, they haven't even started it

[bhupy]

They have for their sub-orbital rockets. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, right?

[almost_usual]

> They appear to have the requisite resources & staff

What makes you think that?

[bhupy]

Um, they have Jeff Bezos' personal piggy bank to fund it? He periodically liquidates his Amazon holdings to fund BO.

According to LinkedIn, they currently have ~2,800 full time employees. Their executive team comes from leadership roles at various aerospace agencies (both private and public).

They also appear to have no issues winning government space contracts: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/04/30/blue-origin-wins-lions...

That they have the resources is just about the least controversial claim. Whether they can actually execute on it is another question entirely. Despite the uncertainty, no credible person can claim with certainty that they will fail.

[raxxorrax]

> getting a rocket to orbit isn't that big of a deal these days

Sure, you just have to run fast enough. If you meant that from a PR perspective, I agree. Sad, but true.

[numpad0]

There is no negativity or positivity, towards or against, Blue Origin, or ULA, or SpaceX, or Tesla. None. Anywhere.

It’s the script some people are reading aloud, “I don’t understand why there is negativity...” like GPT-3 made out of human flesh.

[someperson]

Boeing's Space Launch System and to a lesser extent ULA's (Atlas/Delta) are certainly disliked among many space enthusiasts (on /r/spacex and other watering holes) for wasting taxpayer money in huge amounts.

Blue Origin is disliked for being an extremely well-funded project that appears to make almost no progress after 20 years, yet causes SpaceX grief by being a patenting the landing rockets on ocean platforms idea just as they were about to achieve it (and the "join the club" tweet).

The hate may or may not be petty, but it's wrong to say it's not there.

[rst]

Also for trying, back in 2014, to grab the lease on launch pad 39A at Cape Canaveral, which ultimately went to SpaceX, without having an orbital rocket to launch from it -- not then, and not now.

[TrueDuality]

I'm not an expert in the field, but I do work with the space industry and closely follow a lot of the developments from all of the different groups attempting commercial rocket endeavours.

The big thing that keeps coming up around Blue Origin is that still to date they're entirely unproven for any real flights. They're older than SpaceX and most of their lives have been exclusively focused on sub-orbital flights, and most of that was centered around the "space tourism" business.

They switched in 2014 to targeting orbital missions and from the outside it looks like that was only done for a contract with ULA (specifically this is the creation of the BE-4 engine). After that they started taking orbital options seriously, proposing the New Glenn as its own orbital launch vehicle the following year.

It may also now be worth pointing out that the BE-4 wasn't independently designed to work with the New Glenn or for any specific mission characteristics that Blue Origin had planned. It is supposed to be a drop in replacement for the RD-180 engines we were purchasing from Russia for the Atlas V which is a major design constraint.

You're also right that they haven't been performing as much PR as SpaceX but I don't think that's by choice. Every time they've had a success or an attempt at success they've done very large PR campaigns and even taunt Elon publicly but those are few and far between.

They have absolutely had successes but they've also missed all of their target deadlines they've announced publicly and with their contracts. They have yet to have a successful payload to orbit and now they're talking about using a non-existent platform to launch 1,618 satellites to orbit by 2026. If they get the same density of satellites as Starlink (56/mission I believe, didn't look this up) that is about 27 launches.

I hate to toot SpaceX's horn, but they're currently the gold standard on rapid development of rocketry so it's worth comparing their time line to this one proposed by Blue Origin. As a starting point Blue Origin has not launched their BE-4 rocket into orbit yet much less with a payload so they haven't reached the beginning of it yet:

* September 2008: SpaceX successfully gets their rocket into orbit

* July 2009: SpaceX successfully gets first commercial payload into orbit

* June 2010: The Falcon 9 v1.0 platform has its first launch

* 2010-2013: SpaceX launches 7 missions

* 2014: SpaceX launches 6 missions

* 2015: SpaceX launches 7 missions

* July 2016: SpaceX launches its 27th mission

* January 2017: SpaceX launches its 27th successful mission

So at least in my opinion Blue Origin may not entirely be vaporware, but their time line seems unreasonable. To be successful in this endeavour using exclusively Blue Origin rockets, while taking on no additional launches, they would have to be more than twice as fast at development as SpaceX while using hardware that was designed for another purpose, in an market segment that they didn't start in.