Comment by seydor
2 days ago
I don't understand why making excuses for their failure, 10 years after spaceX started reusing their rockets. There are so many competitors now and china is doing quite well, that we don't need participation trophies.
2 days ago
I don't understand why making excuses for their failure, 10 years after spaceX started reusing their rockets. There are so many competitors now and china is doing quite well, that we don't need participation trophies.
Reaching orbit on the first try is a big deal. I think it deserves recognition and celebration.
Noone has ever managed to nail the landing of an orbital class booster on the first try.
> Noone
Name another company that even landed orbital class booster on whatever try.
10 years ago it was an impossible feat many were laughing at.
The space shuttle achieved reusable booster landing in the 80s with parachutes and water.
Delta clipper controlled burn relanding in the 90s but not scaled to orbital class.
4 replies →
SpaceX have had much worse recent failures on launches of their new generation rocket.
Blue Origin have moved glacially slow by comparison, but they achieved their primary goal with this launch (get to orbit) and failed a secondary goal (land the booster).
If this were a SpaceX launch of a brand new rocket we'd be calling this a success and noting how they'd almost certainly achieve the secondary goal soon.
I think the question is how well and quickly Blue Origin can iterate to achieve first stage reuse. It took SpaceX quite a long time with a lot of lessons learned to reach the maturity they have now with Falcon 9 landings and re-launches.
Blue Origin changed CEOs two years ago and since then it started to pull forward.
They may have failures during flights, but they aren't a failure as a company.
This. I used to be very skeptical of anything Blue Origin. But after the CEO change they appear to have changed their attitude for the better.
They are not on SpaceX level, but they are growing recently and I think this test, even with the many problems or things I didn't like (SpaceX spoiled us), it was positive.
I'm about as big a SpaceX fanboy as possible, and still find this a remarkable achievement.
You simply can't sim your way to a successful landing because there's too many unknown unknowns. Note on this launch it seems they even fubared the thrust:weight ratio a bit right off the pad, and that's normal.
This stuff is hard to do, and them getting to orbit in one shot is a great indicator of where they might be headed.
I'd love to see a competent competitor to SpaceX because that'll just get us to Mars (and beyond) that much faster.
> ... they even fubared the thrust:weight ration a bit ...
Fubared, or carefully nerfed? With so tiny a payload, I can see both engineering data collection and range safety reasons to barely crawl their first launch off the pad.
I don't understand why you're drawing attention to their failure, it doesn't mean anything. Failure by anyone on the first time of anything is understandable.
But I'm interested to know what the extensive competition for domestic heavy lift rockets consists of, especially reusable ones with a low cost. SpaceX of course, but Boeing is out to lunch.
> extensive competition for domestic heavy lift rockets consists of
New Glenn, Vulcan and Falcon Heavy/Starship.
There'll be a Chinese option shortly for those that are truly launcher-agnostic.
Didn't we laude SpaceX for failing fast and moving forward?
”Many” competitors? I thought that in this vehicle category (large&affordable) Space X was the only competitor?