[FreakyT]

It's really a shame what has happened to Blue Origin. They've gone from a promising space startup to yet another purveyor of perpetual vaporware.

Where is the BE-4 engine? Delayed, again and again. New Glenn, the rocket that could actually go into orbit? Same. So far their only functioning hardware (New Shephard) is, in effect, a glorified amusement park ride.

Considering that SpaceX has actually made it to orbit multiple times, any rational actor would clearly choose SpaceX over BO.

[elif]

Forget orbit, SpaceX has paid for it's ISS contract about 3x in savings over Soyuz. Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now.

[meepmorp]

> Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now.

You're not optimizing for the same outcomes as Congress. NASA is a jobs agency.

[aaronbrethorst]

From 2011:

Robert Siegel: "As NPR's Peter Overby reports, Capitol Hill has always been deeply involved in NASA's activities, and sometimes seem to regard NASA as a jobs program, as well as a space program."

Overby: "This year [2011], according to federal contract data, NASA will buy goods and services in 396 of the 435 congressional districts."

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555781/congressional-suppo...

From 2019:

"NASA will often highlight the fact that its SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft support aerospace suppliers. For example, this agency website details the number of suppliers in every US state and says, 'Men and women in all 50 states are hard at work building NASA's Deep Space Exploration Systems to support missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.' There are 106 suppliers in Alabama, alone, according to NASA's site."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/an-alabama-represent...

[Arrath]

A 'jobs agency' that has produced a whole lot of technical advancements, maybe.

[meepmorp]

I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about Congress, the guys with the checkbook. For them, it's a jobs program.

They're the next stop for Bezos, btw. This ain't over.

[randallsquared]

They were the previous stop for Bezos, were they not? That was why the GAO was even directed to look into this.

[meepmorp]

Yeah, that's what I read. Do you think Congresscritters won't take meetings with BO lobbyists this time around?

[voxic11]

What advancements have its current flagship program (SLS) produced? Maybe they do produce some but congress clearly wants them to produce jobs not anything else.

[jvanderbot]

You know congress funds a lot more for space than SLS, right?

[wumpus]

Have you noticed that most critics aren't complaining about all of NASA, but mainly about SLS/Orion?

On reddit, what usually happens is that SLS defenders try to misrepresent attacks on SLS as an attack on all of NASA, parenthood, and apple pie. And so the world turns.

[voxic11]

but sls is the program with the most funding currently right?

[s1artibartfast]

That's the point. Specifically, the point is to pay for aerospace jobs if we want to compete in the aerospace market. Nasa launch contracts are the carrot for companies like spacex and others to get in the market. Various contracts keep a larger pool of engineers in the market

[avmich]

The idea of paying for aerospace jobs lead to steady losses in the aerospace market, until deeply capitalistic (in a sense) SpaceX came and lowered costs.

Once again: the idea that USA would keep competing on international aerospace market of launch services wasn't working before SpaceX started launching Falcon-9. Maybe the market losses are because of paying for aerospace jobs, or maybe it's just a coincidence, but USA was practically pushed out from the market, until - heavily vertically integrated - SpaceX put the launch price on their website.

I think the idea of paying for aerospace jobs in this way doesn't work.

[s1artibartfast]

I'm not sure that we understand each other.

I'm not talking about NASA headcount, I am talking about NASA contracts which support private sector companies and aerospace engineers.

The USA wants to maintain the domestic capability to for launches, and this means funding technology and expertise. If you don't award contracts domestically, in 10-20 years the capability is gone. No domestic contracts => no jobs => no grads => no rocket engineers.

NASA's model has always been to award contracts to the private sector companies. This is why you have SpaceX, Boeing, Northrup, Lockheed launch capabilities.

>I think the idea of paying for aerospace jobs in this way doesn't work.

I'm not sure what you mean by paying for aerospace jobs. NASA funded private sector manufacturers before and continues to fund it now.

I agree the the US manufacturers were ripe for disruption, and SpaceX did a great job of doing just that. However, the entire market and jobs exist to chase these government contracts. Do you think that SpaceX would exist if it wasn't for NASA and DOD launch contracts? I don't.

[unishark]

Sure compared to those same scientists and engineers doing subsistence farming or something as an alternative. But compared to working elsewhere in society as scientists and engineers it's not so obvious what an alternative world would look like. There's always a hidden cost.

[ren_engineer]

maybe in the 60s, current NASA is living off past accomplishments

[Swenrekcah]

Launch technology isn't the only thing space research and exploration is about.

It's an important one for sure! But it's just not true to say NASA hasn't accomplished amazing stuff in the last decades with the funds and focus they're allocated.

[shakezula]

What are you talking about? NASA is the foremost explorer of Mars, no other country is even close.

NASA does plenty to keep its name in good scientific standing and accomplishment.

[wumpus]

Does NASA have mulitiple programs, some of which are more effective than others? Hint: SLS/Orion is not Planetary Sciences is not Earth Sciences is not Aeronautics is not Astronomy.

[voidfunc]

NASA is a taxpayer boondoggle. The faster we can transition wasting tax dollars on it to the private sector and dismantle the agency the better.

[Jcowell]

Hell no. Space exploration and expansion should absolutely NOT be in the hands of corporations but an government funded entity that contracts out work as we have now. If every government program should be profitable.

[systemvoltage]

I'd vote for NASA + private enterprise combo similar to DARPA programs. Leadership in the gov, execution in the private industry.

[voidfunc]

Space exploration and expansion shouldn’t be in the hands of the government in the first place. Let the private sector figure out how to do it, pay for it, and profit on it.

[yellowapple]

NASA is one of the biggest bangs (literally) for the taxpayer buck in the entire US federal budget. There are countless other agencies I'd be scrapping long before even thinking about scrapping NASA.

[kiba]

The problem isn't NASA. It's congresscritters.

[philwelch]

If you’re a member of Congress running for re-election, what’s a better sales pitch? “I voted for a slightly more cost-effective space program, which saved taxpayer dollars in a way that is almost completely disconnected from how much tax you have to pay”? Or, “I created jobs in this district by voting to award a federal contract to <LOCAL_SUBCONTRACTOR>“?

[jve]

> Congress would be dumb to pick a new horse now

I don't think SpaceX would be as strong if not that early NASA funding. "SpaceX contracted with the US government for a portion of the development funding for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, which uses a modified version of the Merlin rocket engine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX

So by your thinking, they could have only invested in old-school-reliable-expensive rocket companies, because less risk is involved...

So funding a space company that doesn't yet have required capability but can be helped to get there - is not dumb.

[cycrutchfield]

Or maybe they (correctly) assessed that SpaceX was actually able to deliver on its promises and Blue Origin is not.

[usehackernews]

BO didn’t want to replace SpaceX. That’s not what this is about.

BO said historically NASA gives contracts to multiple companies, and BO wanted funding too (in addition to SpaceX.

BO “argued that the agency was required to make multiple awards" because it had previously stated a preference for multiple awards”

[elif]

BO wanted 10B compared to SpaceX's 2.7B.

They also got court injunctions preventing SpaceX from starting it's program, kinda deflating your whole 'just wanted to play along' narrative

[marsokod]

It was closer to $6B, still more than twice than SpaceX though.

[jccooper]

Blue Origin isn't vaporware. They have engines, they have rocket bodies, they have tooling, etc.

But they are, apparently, firmly in development hell, with no public indication of trying to change that.

[squarefoot]

The point is that Blue Origin isn't going to have anything ready by 2023 which is the year the crewed Artemis 2 mission should get the go. They might not be vaporware, but they're still several years behind SpaceX.

[vanattab]

What 2023? Is there even a lunar lander prototype built yet? Launching a manned mission to the moon next year does not seem realistic to me.

Edit: lol forgot it was 2021 not 2022, still seems unreasonable to me though.

[nickik]

The definition of vapoware is things that are delayed continously after they should have been released.

The BE-4 fits into that.

[completelylegit]

vaporware is a product that has been announced but never materializes.

[yellowapple]

Right, like the BE-4 engine.

[voakbasda]

A project is not vaporware until it gets canceled without delivering.

[jhgb]

Wikipedia: "announced to the general public but is late or never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled"

Is official cancellation necessary?

[yborg]

It's telling that Bezos has chosen to take this fight to Washington DC - his only real hope is to kneecap SpaceX politically. It's not that Blue Origin lacks engineering know-how, it's that they brought in a ULA executive to run things and so he's running the ULA playbook - maximize profits by delaying things indefinitely to keep that taxpayer money flowing. Blue Origin wants SpaceX to play by its rules and slow to a crawl so they can compete. Elon Musk, for all his faults, wants to accomplish something and is personally driving things to get that done and is unwilling to settle for vanity wins and big talk to impress fellow billionaires at Davos. Unless Jeff can convince Elon to focus on salad fights over how high is up I'd say this competition is long over.

[peterkos]

Reminds me of a quote from the WeWork documentary: "When you can land two rockets concurrently on barges and you smoke pot, you're seen as 'quirky and likeable'. When you don't go public and your investors lose money, all of a sudden they decide that smoking pot is a criminal activity." [1:30:30]

[paxys]

Everything SpaceX is successfully launching today was similarly delayed during development. It's too early to write off Blue Origin, especially since Bezos just got involved in it full time.

[Retric]

Blue Origin was founded in 2000, SpaceX 2002. SpaceX achieved orbit in 2008. Blue Origin is still sub orbital yet planning on a moon mission.

At this point Bezos might be better off starting over with a new team.

[starik36]

They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the first to land vertically. That's not nothing.

BE-4 has been delayed, true, but if it were looking like a failure, ULA would have dropped them a long time ago.

I think 2022 will clear up lots of things for everyone. SLS, BE-4, New Glenn, etc... Till then there is no sense of dooming anything.

[xoa]

>They have some achievements to show. New Shepard was the first to land vertically. That's not nothing.

Sorry, but the McDonnell Douglas DC-X did the rocket straight up & down vertical landing in 1993. New Shepard frankly wasn't particularly different. It went higher and longer sure, but for orbital rocketry the challenge isn't height so much as speed and everything that comes with that. The Falcon 9 flight 20 at the end of 2015 that marked its first landing was a vastly bigger achievement given that it was an orbital class rocket booster. It was going much, much faster and had to descend on a much more complicated arc through the atmosphere. And it pathfinded for actual rapid reuse, which is a whole different set of skills. That New Shepard did a suborbital jump a mere one month earlier 2015 honestly just isn't great.

Since then, F9 has done over 100 more flights, to orbit, including crewed ones, and set ever growing records on cadence, reuse of boosters and refurb speed, satellite launch records, etc. NS has done... what? 5 test flights over 6 years? Then that silly little PR stunt? It's ludicrous. And it's long since stopped serving any useful purpose in terms of learning because it avoids so many of the true challenges in going orbital which involve 9+km/s of delta-v.

[WalterBright]

> silly little PR stunt

The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos. What Bezos actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned flight of a totally new rocket design. It was a massive display of faith in his engineering team.

Musk didn't do that. Branson didn't do that - and earlier test pilots of his craft died.

As for the BO rocket being totally automated, that was the original intent of the Mercury missions, until the astronauts objected. Nobody called them joyriders or ludicrous.

[errantspark]

One pilot died, the other bailed out successfully.

Branson didn't fly on the first flights because SpaceShipTwo is a completely different beast to New Shepard. SpaceShipTwo is a pioneering space plane with MANUAL controls. New Shepard is basically the absolute most boring way you could claim to have "gone to space". It's vastly vastly less interesting and ambitious compared to what SpaceX and even Virgin Galactic are doing.

[xoa]

>The media has been grossly unfair to Bezos.

I honestly think you have it backwards: the media has been very kind to both Bezos and Branson, particularly the latter. This isn't surprising because the media doesn't really get orbital dynamics any more than they get most technical topics. Nevertheless a lot of them act as if Branson's and Bezos' flight were some big technical achievements or progress forward, as if they can just evolve the designs around the current limitations.

They cannot. Hybrid engines have garbage ISP, the entire design of the Unity is completely worthless for high speed period let alone reentry, every $ spent on it is pointless beyond a quick joyride that will relatively soon be obsoleted by real space tourism. NS is at least vaguely sort of more useful for BO, it has a hydrolox engine so it's not doing anything for them on that front but they got to work on their landing a bit somewhat more easily.

But the value of space comes from actually getting to orbit and then beyond, and that's a fantastically more difficult problem due to the delta-v needed, the rocket equation, our material science, etc. SpaceX's approach of focusing on the real hard problem which delivers serious revenue and opportunity then working backwards on economics, always with focus on orbit as their lodestone, has clearly been much more effective. BO is older than SpaceX and has yet to even once get to orbit or deal with reentry. At all. It's hard not to look at so much of NS and just see such a waste of years and dollars.

>What Bezos actually did was risk his own neck in the first manned flight of a totally new rocket design.

I guess? It had been flown and landed multiple times and it had a lot of margin to work with since it's just a big sounding rocket. They did a hyperconservative work-on-the-first-launch Old Space development process.

>Musk didn't do that.

You think Musk wasn't puckered launching 6 astronauts and tens of billions of dollars worth of other people's precious cargo to space? Musk didn't do that because it wouldn't have proved anything and been a pure waste and distraction from the actual serious mission.

>Branson didn't do that - and earlier test pilots of his craft died.

Branson is a daredevil and that design is garbage on a host of levels.

>As for the BO rocket being totally automated

So is Dragon 2. So will Starship. That's normal and good, it's manual that's bad. But it's also not a special achievement that justified 6 years after first launch and landing.

[systemvoltage]

The public has been primed too much by the media to literally spew hate like there is no tomorrow for certain individuals. On the right wing - it is Bill Gates, on the left wing it is Bezos/Elon. They got their clicks and ad revenue.

[WalterBright]

Personally, though, I would have taken with me as passengers the chief mechanic and the chief engineer, just to ensure the rocket works well!

[Retric]

Blue Origin arguably did the first verticals landing from “space” as defined by 100km of altitude in 2015. Though the lunar lander is perhaps the more famous vertical landing from space in 1969, following earlier soft landings like Luna 9 1966, and a lot of earlier VTVL rocket research at the time.

SpaceX started on powered decent in 2011 achieving it’s first landing from an actual orbital space flight in 2015. I don’t mean to dump on Blue Origin but their achievements are really just around the definition of space as 100km which is completely arbitrary, their effectively just publicity stunts.

It’s possible that Blue Origin will create a useful system for space exploration, but based on past progress their years if not decades from that point.

[SahAssar]

> SpaceX started on powered decent in 2011 achieving it’s first landing from an actual orbital space flight in 2015

I'm not sure how important/big the difference is, but IIRC spaceX only lands boosters that never actually reach orbital velocity. They help boost things into orbital velocity, sure, but the things that land under powered flight never actually reach orbital velocity, right?

I'm aware that the crew dragon was supposed to do this, but AFAIK it never has.

[bpodgursky]

It's still a dramatically different and faster trajectory than straight up-and-down. There's a reason SpaceX has drone ships out in the middle of the ocean -- they travel laterally hundreds of miles.

[Retric]

Yes, but what I was getting at was the safety factor. As part of the first stage of an orbital rocket SpaceX was stuck with a ~20% safety factor if they wanted to get significant cargo to orbit, where Blue Origin could seriously over engineer the rocket without any obvious problems.

I am not saying they fudged things or that it was easy, just that it wasn’t the kind of litmus test you see on an actual orbital rocket.

[justahuman74]

Blue's landing is not in the same league as SpaceX's orbital re-entry landing

[xgbi]

> *near-orbital re-entry

The first stage is far from orbital velocities when it reaches MECO and starts down, even though I strongly agree with you: SpaceX is in an entire other league.

[jhgb]

> New Shepard was the first to land vertically

Apollo LM was the first to land vertically.

> if it were looking like a failure, ULA would have dropped them a long time ago

That seems to be assuming that they have a choice. Given the fuel difference between AR-1 and BE-4, they've been committed to BE-4 for quite some time, no matter how much progress BO is doing (or not doing) on BE-4.

[Retric]

The first soft landing on the moon occurred in 1966. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9

Many rockets did soft landing on earth before that point, but none of them had been in space.

[jhgb]

Sure, if that probe's rather crude landing system is enough for you, suit yourself with Luna 9. However, the LM landed on its legs in one piece, just like DC-X, New Shepard, Grasshopper, and F9 first stage did later.

[archsurface]

Similarly delayed? The delays are different by over a decade. Spacex was attempting orbit in 2006. When will blue origin? 2026?

[mattr47]

Bezos was never a scientist, engineer or dreamer. He is an entrepreneur, business savvy guy. Its about the dollar for him (which I'm not saying is a bad thing), versus for Elon it is a dream/passion to get to Mars.

[relativ575]

He's always been a big space nerd.

"While at Princeton, Bezos attended O’Neill’s seminars and ran the campus chapter of “Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.” Through Blue Origin, which he has called his “most important work,” Bezos is developing detailed plans to realize O’Neill’s vision." - [0]

[0] https://www.princeton.edu/news/2021/04/16/documentary-featur...

[johnsimer]

His high school valedictorian speech was about going to space: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-space-travel-life....

[namelessoracle]

The kind of guy who saves The Expanse on a whim probably does have at least a hobbyist interest in space.

Elon was probably more invested earlier and was paying more attention to what was going on is for sure though. Im not convinced Bezos personal attention is going to do much to help his space company though. Nothing about him seems like it would help other than his wealth. And he hasnt shown a willingness to throw a significant part of his fortune into his space venture. Nothing about this strikes me as anything more than what is a hobby that one of the richest persons in the world is passionate about

[WalterBright]

If that was true, Bezos would have sent someone else on the test of manned flight rather than risk his own ass.

[tigershark]

No, it wasn’t. Blue origin was founded two years before SpaceX. SpaceX in the meantime managed to create the first ever reusable commercial rocket, the first ever reusable heavy launch vehicle. The first ever commercial manned flight for the ISS. And it’s well on track to perform an orbital test in the next month or two with a fully reusable rocket that is using a full flow engine. Seriously, you are trying to compare an Australopithecus climbing a tree with an Homo sapiens building nuclear weapons.

[mr_toad]

Is Blue Origin slow, or is SpaceX really, really fast?

[monk_e_boy]

Yes and yes. I expect Blue Origin are playing catch up with star ship. New Glenn could only self land the booster, not the upper stage. There's no way that could compete with star ship, it almost doesn't compete with falcon heavy.

[wolf550e]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/blue-origin-is-devel...

[bryanlarsen]

Blue Origin is slow, but doesn't stand out when compared to Old Space. SLS, for instance, is also taking a very long time.

SpaceX is really, really fast.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Slow and steady wins the race. I'm not counting them out, Bezos is so immensely wealthy that if he wants Blue Origin to succeed then it will succeed.

[bawolff]

The moral of the tortise and the hare fable is that the hare lost because he took breaks. He lost despite having a faster top speed not because of it.

[whatshisface]

Slow and steady wins the race against fast and transient, not, as SpaceX has been, fast and persistent.

[the_third_wave]

That is like saying that the meek shall inherit the earth - or what is left of it when the bold have taken all they wanted. Slow and steady is just that, slow. There is a place for it, e.g. when refining an established practice like mining or internal combustion engines. Commercial space exploration is a place where rapid advances can be made by visionary explorers, only once you can buy an off-the-shelf space minivan for the whole family the time has come for 'slow and steady'.

[zhdc1]

The actual saying is closer to "the disciplined shall inherit the earth".

[labster]

Can you give a citation on that? I’ve seen rather, well, creative interpretations of Bible verses online before, and I’m wondering if the text actually supports this translation.

[zhdc1]

Biblehub gives a good overview for alternative translations of πραεῖς in English. See https://biblehub.com/greek/4239.htm

From them "This difficult-to-translate root (pra-) means more than "meek." Biblical meekness is not weakness but rather refers to exercising God's strength under His control – i.e. demonstrating power without undue harshness."

There's also a good discussion at https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-does...

[the_third_wave]

The original saying is 'μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν' [1] which refers to 'οι πραείς' - 'the meek'.

[1] taken from Novum Testamentum Graece, κατά ματθαίον 5,5 (pp.9/26X - 28th ed, 2012) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Testamentum_Graece

[inglor_cz]

This is not really a race, as it does not have a well-defined endpoint. Reaching the orbit is just a starting step for some other activity and former champions may fall by the wayside as decades go by.

Soviets were once in the lead very clearly, Roskosmos lost that edge a long time ago.

[adventured]

> Slow and steady wins the race.

Not if it's a 100m or 200m sprint. Try that and you'll finish dead last.

If SpaceX had gone with slow and steady, it would have merely given their monopolistic competition - competition particularly well connected in DC - that much more time to try to wipe them out using their preferred approach of avoiding competition via government protection.

Blue Origin may yet make something of itself via slow and steady pacing (which Bezos can afford), however it's not winning the race.

[pmoriarty]

It's not like immense wealth hasn't been squandered before.

[chasd00]

Slow and steady doesn’t work against persistently fast and right.

[jvanderbot]

Blue Origin is doing non-launch things. They are working on a lander system and studying lunar mission concepts at a level of seriousness that does deserve some respect.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/a-telescope-on...

I appreciate SpaceX's focus and god bless em for what they're doing in that sector, but there are other things to space than just delivery driving.