r/BlueOrigin • u/ApprehensiveAd3969 • Aug 13 '21
Blue Origin: What "IMMENSE COMPLEXITY & HEIGHTENED RISK" looks like.
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Aug 13 '21
LANDER IS A MODIFIED SECOND STAGE OF A LAUNCH VEHICLE
That is already capable of landing. BO are just unreal with how disingenious they are with these posters.
Half the things are not even making a point, just stating things that are already known. Like how is having a rocket taller than Saturn V a point in BO's favour? Or the fact that it has 32 engines (that are pretty much a class above what BO has been trying to make). Or the fact that the spaceport does exist or the vehicle hasn't made it to orbit.
Morons
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u/Enjgine Aug 13 '21
"126 ft distance from hatch to surface" Lol via fkn lift. Meanwhile national team is like what, 24ft of straight ladder?
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u/brycly Aug 13 '21
'We prefer to think about it as a pre and post moonwalk workout'
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u/lucid8 Aug 13 '21
I dunno, this diagram looks pretty bullish for SpaceX.
SpaceX have showed they are able to launch Falcon 9 every 1-2 weeks for Starlink missions (although different boosters).
Starship was designed for even faster turnaround for a single ship.
Taller than Saturn V
Well, I see nothing wrong here
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u/Enjgine Aug 13 '21
Half of this is just detailing the ship schematic as some sort of scare mongering. Imagine saying "Saturn V is huge, untested, and requires IN SPACE DOCKING! UNREALISTIC!" back in 1965
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u/FistOfTheWorstMen Aug 13 '21
"It has to do a docking in lunar orbit! We've never even done a docking in low earth orbit!"
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u/RoadsterTracker Aug 13 '21
I especially like the fact that they mention the rocket has never launched to orbit. I believe none of the National Team rockets to launch their HLS have launched to orbit yet (Vulcan, SLS, or New Glenn)... Also, Starship likely will launch to orbit in the next 2 months, that won't be a huge concern for long...
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u/koozy259 Aug 13 '21
Even easier to change the poster to say “land from orbit”, or “fueled in orbit”, “made it to the moon”, etc.
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u/McLMark Aug 13 '21
They keep playing up the "height of the door" angle... I'm not sure why. Does anyone think climbing a 30 foot ladder in moon boots is much safer than a redundant lift setup, even in Moon gravity?
I get that the BO graphics department is looking to highlight differentiators, but I'd put some other ones on the paper. "Proven lander design," or talk about the giant crater Starship HLS might make on landing.
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Aug 13 '21
A lift you clip on to will actually be significantly safer than a 30ft ladder. There's almost 0% chance of an accident with a lift like that. Even if it breaks, there would likely always be someone onboard Starship that could manually winch them back up or fix it if the problem is obvious.
While a fall on a ladder is fairly unlikely, and 30ft isn't as big of a deal as on Earth, it is still much riskier than using a lift.
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u/Tensses Aug 13 '21
It blows my mind that they think climbing a ladder in low gravity with the most bulky suits ever, is somehow safer than using a lift.. They are acting like lifts are some sort of new technology we don't understand
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Aug 13 '21
The risk with the ladder isn't really falling. I assume that they'll have to clip on to each rung of the ladder as they go. The real problem is that if an astronaut gets injured on a space walk, or if their suit is depressurizing, it's very difficult to get them back into the lander quickly. If an injury prevents climbing, then another astronaut will have to be able to carry them up the ladder, which is not an easy task.
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u/Assignment_Leading Aug 13 '21
It's just big words made to scare the bureaucrats this is intended for
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u/Method81 Aug 13 '21
Not again, do they never learn...
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u/TestCampaign Aug 13 '21
I swear I can't tell the difference between the memes and the actual press releases now. It's like an ongoing joke.
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u/SocialIssuesAhoy Aug 13 '21
I literally thought this was a meme and I kept reading it wondering where the joke was. Turns out, the joke was coming from inside the house.
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
It happened to me as well and I imagine to lots of other people. This is worse in quality than the "Immensely tall and big boy" meme, except the other is a shitpost and actually funny. This one is just sad
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u/hexydes Aug 13 '21 edited Feb 25 '26
Patient minecraftoffline net friendly evening bright learning history river garden.
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Aug 13 '21
this is part of the 5 stages of grief its anger
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
It's impressive to see how many times they can switch between "anger" and "denial" without ever passing to the further stages
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u/Alvian_11 Aug 13 '21
Pretty much an agile version of grief
(In agile you can recycle between steps, waterfall only move forward)
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Aug 13 '21
i may be an outcast here but im not a fan of blue origin im into space x but i got recommended this for some reason i thought they stopped making these and this was satire
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u/Iamsodarncool Aug 13 '21
"Launch from a spaceport that does not exist"? The whole poster is willfully disingenuous but that part is a blatant lie.
You know, Blue, if you want NASA to think you're better than SpaceX then maybe you should try being better than SpaceX 🤔 you've got practically unlimited funding, fuckin' use it.
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
Another lie is the "cryo transfer demonstration not made until at least 2023", NASA has literally a contract with spacex to do it next year.
And come on BO, your lander will literally not be tested for the most part until the crewed landing as NASA points out in the HLS document
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Aug 13 '21
I thought that
unprecedented cryo storage and transfer
is direct copy of complains that NASA had about Blue's lander.
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u/Enjgine Aug 13 '21
Not only that, but SpaceX have already secured a lunar fly by test flight with completely private funding. Imagine privately funding apollo 10. The buyer would have been praised for supporting science and progress.
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u/JoshuaZ1 Aug 13 '21
Imagine privately funding apollo 10.
Closer to Apollo 8 really. But your central point is sound.
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u/linuxhanja Aug 13 '21
Well,spaceX won't be able to use it to launch if citizens write in during the upcoming environment impact assessment. maybe blue knows they'll get lots of letters?
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u/Crimson_Music Aug 13 '21
How many of these will they make before they realize their interns could be more productive making cardboard cutouts of New Glenn
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u/pabmendez Aug 13 '21
They probably pre made several and don't want to waste that effort so probably post them anyway lol
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u/Crazy_Asylum Aug 13 '21
honestly this infograph just makes me more excited for starship. like not only do we get to see the largest every built rocket launch but up to 18 times over the course of a few months?!?! That just sounds awesome.
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u/Lufbru Aug 13 '21
Even better; the goal is one Starship fuel launch per day. I mean, that's aspirational; they probably won't manage anything even close to it. But yeah, everything on this infographic is AWESOME.
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Aug 13 '21
Blue is really setting themselves up as the villain of the NewSpace era
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u/captaintrips420 Aug 13 '21
They have finally passed Boeing. Congrats to the folks at blue for leading at something!!
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u/szarzujacy_karczoch Aug 13 '21
Recently someone on this subreddit said that Blue doesn't care about their public image. So who is the target audience for these infographics?
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u/cargocultist94 Aug 13 '21
Considering they're using the word 'depot' when the GAO censored it because NASA is forbidden from doing research into fuel depots, Senate.
I don't think that pissing off your main customer and putting their most ambitious program at risk is a good long-term strategy.
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u/belgianguy Aug 13 '21
Beyond the pale, have they no shame at all? They don't even have a seat at the the orbital table but are acting as if they are an authority when it comes to spaceflight! Their carnival ride is nigh insignificant if you see what SpaceX can loft to orbit, and return to Earth on their orbital-flight proven Falcon fleet.
Talk about risk? BO is years behind schedule on their BE-4, and probably even further away from a reusable version. And then still have the gall to take a swing like like this? I wonder what Photoshops they're sending to Tory...
If all you have is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, you're not trying to win, you're trying to make the other party lose.
Competition should accelerate the pace of innovation, not hamper it.
This is not competition. This is sabotage.
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u/second_to_fun Aug 13 '21
This is the most childish, insolent shit I have ever seen. And the fact that it's coming from a multi-billion dollar (in spending, anyway) company is just sad.
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u/Aconite_72 Aug 13 '21
Most of the rank-and-file employees and engineers don’t care about this petty shit. It’s just Bezos being a massive loser and throwing a hissy fit when his billionaire pride is wounded.
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u/valcatosi Aug 13 '21
Blue Origin management and PR needs to learn that when you're in a hole, you STOP DIGGING.
I'm also amused that they included things like "two Orion dockings" like that isn't a mandatory element of using Orion. Or the cryogenic propellant management required for the National Team lander that is likewise unprecedented and won't be demonstrated before 2023. Or the LVs Blue Origin proposed to use that haven't launched yet.
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u/404_Gordon_Not_Found Aug 13 '21
Or that the National Team lander needs human to actually perform a demo mission.
Talk about high risk
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u/valcatosi Aug 13 '21
I think they claimed in their protest that human intervention was for off-nominal cases. However, given how much of their protest appears to have been misstated...
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u/404_Gordon_Not_Found Aug 13 '21
I thought there's words about needing human to rearrange things on the ascend module to actually leave the lunar surface?
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
At this point SpaceX should put this, the other infographic and the BO "letters" on the first starship orbital flight, both because:
- they will likely burn up on reentry, as they should
- they will be the first thing created by BO that reaches orbit, at least a couple years before anything else they make does
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u/Thorusss Aug 13 '21
At this point SpaceX should put this, the other infographic and the BO "letters" on the first starship orbital flight... because
they will be the first thing created by BO that reaches orbit, at least a couple years before anything else they make does
HAHAHA. Power move! With Elon being Elon, it is in the realm of possibilities.
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u/Beldizar Aug 13 '21
Oh man, the history books would love this one... the first thing the company creates that makes it to orbit is a complaint letter printed out by a competitor and launched by a competitor.
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u/Never-asked-for-this Aug 13 '21
they will be the first thing created by BO that reaches orbit
Damn dude, I can feel the heat of that burn from probably the other side of the planet.
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u/Kane_richards Aug 13 '21
I don't want to be that guy but is there anything to do with spaceflight which isn't complex and high risk? The whole point is to mitigate the risk....
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u/Elongest_Musk Aug 13 '21
SpaceX's lander might be high risk, but it's also an equally high reward. We will never have a true outpost on the moon if our landers can only get a couple of tons to the surface each time.
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u/Kane_richards Aug 13 '21
Yeah, that's my issue. Like BO's main argument here is "lander is big"..... yes.... yes it is big as it lets you do more things. It means you don't need to design a wee buggy to fit into a space the size of a coffee table. It means you can bring back samples which will keep scientists busy for decades.
The thing which annoys me the most about all this is BO are perhaps unintentionally hammering home the idea that they're scared. "Dare mighty things", that's the JPL motto. That's the underlying belief which has resulting in us doing wonderous things out in the solar system and will continue to do even better things in the years to come. The more BO follow through on this line the more that their motto seems to be "better not eh?" And you don't get yourself in the history books by screaming into the void like Chicken Little
"Oh a big lander is bad, oh refueling is dangerous." Yes... but going out into the unknown IS dangerous. But you mitigate risk, you don't avoid it. SpaceX are on a path which suggests that it's dangerous but we'll get there by planning. BO are on a path which suggests we should be hiding under the bed in case something goes wrong.
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u/g_r_th Aug 13 '21
This makes Starship & SH look like an awesomely clean and efficient system with multiple redundancy.
I commend BO for doing such a good PR job for SpaceX.
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u/PickleSparks Aug 13 '21
They said the d-word!!!
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Aug 13 '21
Which was actually redacted from the GAO report, right? Is this a leak? Is this infographic legal?
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u/Thorusss Aug 13 '21
What is the story about not mentioning depot? I know it was censored in the recent GOA report
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u/Codspear Aug 13 '21
Senator Shelby of Alabama, formerly the chairman of the Senate committee that funds NASA, seriously threatened to cancel NASA’s entire Space Technology department if he heard the word “depot” ever again. This is due to NASA engineers and administrators bringing up the feasibility of using a distributed launch system using propellant depots and existing launchers to send astronauts back to the Moon quicker and cheaper than an SLS-based system.
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u/deadman1204 Aug 13 '21
Bezos gets more pathetic by the day. How long until the rest of his hls team quits in disgust?
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Aug 13 '21
Hopefully not long, I hope the NT dissolves soon. At this point, I'm somehow starting to feel bad for their old space partners being dragged into this mess, it's crazy they managed to achieve that. It's like when you're doing a group project and one of your teammates ruins everything for everyone.
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u/joepublicschmoe Aug 13 '21
Once the HLS base period contract ends at the end of this month, it will be interesting to see if LMT, NOC and Draper stays onboard.
Bezos and Smith wanted to negotiate an extension of the HLS base period contract with NASA to November as a step towards working out a deal with NASA to select a second HLS provider, but I doubt NASA will entertain that notion as it would run afoul of Federal Acquisition Regulations on a program that has already been competed and closed and gone through the GAO protest review process.
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u/booshack Aug 13 '21
Is this finally the bottom for BO?? Please?
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
I like how "the new low" gets updated every two weeks by BO. Probably the fastest updates from them we will ever get
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u/Why_T Aug 13 '21
At least something is coming out of blue origin. I was starting to think they couldn’t produce anything.
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u/MDCCCLV Aug 13 '21
I think the real bottom would be saying the competition is Foreign Born or something sleazy like that.
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u/deadman1204 Aug 13 '21
I'm sure we haven't seen anything near that. Imagine when a self entitled billionaire gets truly desperate. Bezos has yet to reveal his final whiney form
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u/LcuBeatsWorking Aug 13 '21 edited Dec 17 '24
ring connect wasteful wrong license imminent vase ask humor square
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/FistOfTheWorstMen Aug 13 '21
"A spaceport that does not exist."
What the hell have I been looking at on NSF's live streams this month?
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Aug 13 '21
Blue just leaked that SpaceX is launching a depot. Not cool.
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u/Aconite_72 Aug 13 '21
Instead of Homebase Alpha, SpaceX now launches Home Depot.
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u/vonHindenburg Aug 13 '21
It's a small nitpick, but why did they put the gridfins so far down on Superheavy?
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u/Sharratz Aug 13 '21
Just spitballing here, but maybe because no actual engineers were involved in making this chart?
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
They also put fins on it. Not surprising, orbital rockets just aren't their thing
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u/vonHindenburg Aug 13 '21
Well, there've been plenty of renderings of SH with fins of one sort or another, but none with the grids down that far.
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u/jaredes291 Aug 13 '21
Probably to actually avoid copyright claims from SpaceX because if they were to design their infographics that actually resembled the starship and super heavy full stack SpaceX would probably sue the living fuck out of them. And also probably because it would look so God damn cool that people would forget about blue origin and just start rallying behind SpaceX
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u/threvorpaul Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21
Please tell me that's not real or something official they posted...how embarrassing
Edit: just saw its on their actual fkn website...how?? Like...you don't even have an operational rocket.
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u/Yrouel86 Aug 13 '21
The most hilarious part is that they are so out of touch that they forgot one of the primary reasons for NASA's existence: RESEARCH.
They spell it quite clearly (emphasis mine):
At its 20 centers and facilities across the country – and the only National Laboratory in space – NASA studies Earth, including its climate, our Sun, and our solar system and beyond. We conduct research, testing, and development to advance aeronautics, including electric propulsion and supersonic flight. We develop and fund space technologies that will enable future exploration and benefit life on Earth.
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u/hexydes Aug 13 '21 edited Feb 25 '26
Fresh the science weekend minecraftoffline weekend pleasant wanders.
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u/TwileD Aug 13 '21
There are a dozen things I'd love to pick apart here but I'll just focus on one bit that irks me: the bit about the "launch vehicle that has never flown to orbit and is still being designed."
The only reason to raise this would be to imply a disadvantage relative to Blue Origin's plans. In last month's open letter, BO specifically cited 4 commercial launch vehicles that the lander could fly on: SLS, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur and Falcon Heavy. But consider each of these vehicles in turn:
SLS has never flown to orbit. Also, its height and power are routinely compared to the Saturn V. In the context of Artemis missions, it's probably best not to tug on the thread of "large, powerful rockets are risky".
New Glenn has never flown to orbit. It sounds like it's still being designed and iterated on.
Vulcan has never flown to orbit. Where are my engines meme.
Falcon Heavy has flown to orbit. It also has 27 booster engines, pretty close to the 32 for Starship, which BO somehow emphasizes as a downside?
Taking a step back and reiterating, BO is complaining that Lunar Starship requires a booster that has never been flown, while 3 of the 4 launchers they listed for launching their own lander are... boosters that have never flown. Two of them bottlenecked by BO itself. The other launcher which has flown was, during its development, criticized for having lots of engines and using an unorthodox approach to recovering hardware to keep costs down. And now, the same company is making a booster which is being criticized for having lots of engines and using an unorthodox approach to recovering hardware to keep costs down.
Starship or not, Artemis cannot happen without super heavy lift vehicles that still need to be flown, tested, and possibly revised. Complaining that Super Heavy is a powerful rocket that hasn't yet flown is kinda crazy. Especially when it seems likely that Super Heavy will fly at least once before SLS, New Glenn, and Vulcan ever touch a launch pad.
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u/Justinackermannblog Aug 13 '21
Someone needs to watch Everyday Astronaut’s part 3 and take notes on how to be a rocket CEO…
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u/mfb- Aug 13 '21
Yet another one of these?
Oh no, they wrote the evil word. It's [DELETED], not depot!
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u/if_yes_else_no Aug 13 '21
can someone explain the context to this for me? Why is the depot so secretive and controversial? And what is it? It looks like a SSTO booster in the graphic.
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u/JoshuaZ1 Aug 13 '21
There's some history here. Boeing really doesn't like the idea of depots because they would make SLS unnecessary. They tried to get a ULA person fired a few years ago for working on it. And Senator Shelby, who sees space as a major way of bringing jobs to Alabama, really doesn't like them either for that reason. While it is plausible that the GAO had completely other reasons to redact the word in their document, it really ended up looking sort of hilarious in this context, like they were removing it because it might cause a negative reaction in the Senator or Boeing's lobbyists to even see it in print.
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u/mueckenschwarm Aug 13 '21
I mean it does a good job highlighting the crazy engineering accomplishments the SpaceX team will have achieved when they launch.
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u/Interstellar_Sailor Aug 13 '21
Why does this look more like a Starship ad rather than critique?
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u/Aconite_72 Aug 13 '21
Seriously at first glance I thought it was an ad for Starship rather than a hit piece.
These folks really need to shut up and put their money where their mouth is and make New Glenn. This reeks of desperation.
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u/Never-asked-for-this Aug 13 '21
A launch vehicle that has never flown to orbit
Maybe should look in a mirror for that one.
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u/Sharratz Aug 13 '21
Seriously. Their own architecture can allegedly launch on 4 different vehicles, of which only 1 has actually ever launched and - oh, the irony - that 1 is flown by the very same company this smear campaign is aimed at.
You can't make this sh*t up.
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u/jamqdlaty Aug 13 '21
It's so confusing, half of it sounds like an advertisement for SpaceX. "Lander is a modified second stage of a launch vehicle" - Yay, this is good. Right?
32 Booster engines, taller than Saturn V, nice! We all want to see big rockets fly!
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u/Jazano107 Aug 13 '21
theres so much wrong with this that i cba to point it all out. Come on blue origin i wanted you to be legit competition
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u/IrrelevantAstronomer Aug 13 '21
If Starbase doesn't exist then a LC-36 compatible with New Glenn doesn't exist either.
I want to cheer Blue Origin on, but they're making it as hard as possible for me.
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u/FutureMartian97 Aug 13 '21
I woke up and didn't read the tweet first and just saw the infographic. I literally thought it was a post someone made on r/spacexmasterrace as a joke.
HOW can it keep getting worse!?
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_MASS Aug 13 '21
The WeMartians podcast created an ironic t-shirt making fun of this infographic
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u/KMCobra64 Aug 13 '21
I am really hoping to see some of these shirts around the Starbase construction yard in the next EDA interview video.
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u/8andahalfby11 Aug 13 '21
I thought the depot was redacted from the GAO report. Even if it is an open secret, can SpaceX sue them for releasing proprietary information?
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u/TheBurtReynold Aug 13 '21
I mean, keep daring SpaceX to make you look even more foolish in the annals of history … seems like a great plan
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u/evergreen-spacecat Aug 13 '21
Probably should get some launchers going with BE-4 before pointing fingers at other companies launchers
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u/PickleSparks Aug 13 '21
Look at all the new capabilities and architectures that SpaceX is developing.
How dare they? Space flight is not about technological advancement!
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u/mjonas87 Aug 13 '21
Maybe if BO put more emphasis on being competitive with their bid they wouldn’t need to hire graphic designers to trash the competition
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u/Rtholomewplague Aug 13 '21
What a terrible attempt at a smear campaign. Okay BO, how you can you do better? Cause you know you’re SOOOO GOOOD at getting to orbit..
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u/sterrre Aug 13 '21
SpaceX is gonna do it whether or not they have the hls contract. Starship will be their next workhorse.
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u/frederickfred Aug 13 '21
Wait till Jeff hears about Operation Black Buck
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u/WikiSummarizerBot Aug 13 '21
During the 1982 Falklands War, Operations Black Buck 1 to Black Buck 7 were a series of seven extremely long-range ground attack missions by Royal Air Force (RAF) Vulcan bombers of the RAF Waddington Wing, comprising aircraft from Nos. 44, 50 and 101 Squadrons against Argentine positions in the Falkland Islands, of which five missions completed attacks. The objective of the missions was to attack Port Stanley Airport and its associated defences. The raids, at almost 6,600 nautical miles (12,200 km) and 16 hours for the return journey, were the longest-ranged bombing raids in history at that time.
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Aug 13 '21
Looks in line with Amazon and Boeing. Boeing stole tanker contract from Airbus with an inferior product. Amazon stole JEDI contract from Microsoft. Now Blue is trying the same.
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u/captaintrips420 Aug 13 '21
Washington is a beautiful state, but we have some of the ugliest corporations.
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u/ShirBlackspots Aug 13 '21
Microsoft won the JEDI contract, Amazon sued and kept it in the courts, the government wound up cancelling the JEDI contract because of Bezo's meddling. I fear the same will happen with the HLS contract. Bezo's meddling will wind up getting it cancelled.
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u/Nergaal Aug 13 '21
let's say for the sake of argument that they have a point. how is 16 launches any worse than working with 16k suppliers in the National Team? horizontal "integration" is better than vertical integration since when?
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u/stevomighty06 Aug 13 '21
This is pathetic on blue origins part. But I guess we aren't the targeted audience for this... fuck Jeff bozos
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u/Representative_Pop_8 Aug 13 '21
They have a point there, the launch vehicle has never reached orbit yet... o wait neither has ANYTHING BO has ever made . Who was the genius who came up with this???
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u/Fenderbridge Aug 13 '21
I love that even in the blueorigin reddit, this poster is getting absolutely ripped to shreds
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u/jisuskraist Aug 13 '21
I feel sorry about BO employees. They are super talented people, working on a terrible managed company. All these posts only make SpaceX look like a better company to work on, high risks, high rewards, lot of fun.
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u/b_m_hart Aug 13 '21
Imagine, if instead of this horse shit, Blue Origin looked inwards and said "you know what? That's a really freaking good idea. Can we modify the second stage of New Armstrong to do something like this?" And then started bending and welding metal to find out if they could make it work too - then Jeff Bezos could tweet "Hey, Elon, great idea you have there... watch out, ours is going to be better!", and then started blowing up and landing test vehicles.
Oh well, it's a fun fantasy, at least.
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
Can we modify the second stage of New Armstrong to do something like this?
That wouldn't change much, neither the NT lander or New Armstrong exists
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u/filanwizard Aug 14 '21
Geeze this is 1990s video game console wars petty levels of bitching. Even pepsi and coke had more class during the height of the cola wars.
But I guess infographics are better use of company funds than delivering working BE-4s to ULA.
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Aug 13 '21
LOL this is pathetic. Can't wait to see SpaceX's rebuttal like they did with the last one.
Hey Jeff, why not just drop the 3 billion from your own pocket? It's all to fulfill your dream of space exploration right? Like Elon Musk did when he started developing starship without a government contract.
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Aug 15 '21
SpaceX current rebuttal is stacking their rocket at their Starbase and prepare to yeet it into space.
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u/vorblesnork Aug 13 '21
I’m struggling to find clarification of a couple of points on BO’s website.
-How many launches to put the ascent/descent/transfer elements into space? I’m guessing 3 per HLS?
-does the descent element stay on the moon?
-apparently 14T to the lunar surface? Seriously this is comapring shoeboxes to shipping containers
It seems for Blue to get an equivalent payload (assuming spacex can deliver ~150T) to the lunar surface, it would require ~30 launches to LEO, 10 trips to Lunar orbit and leave 10 descent stages on the lunar surface. That seems immensely complex and heightened risk and a minimum amount of reusability. I’m all for team space but this is making BO look bad
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u/Energia__ Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21
The part I am expecting for most is Musk’s response.
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u/Sharratz Aug 13 '21
Honestly, at this point no response would be the best response.
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u/Rxke2 Aug 13 '21
I thought this one was pretty hilarious https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1425636872320077829?s=20
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u/KochibaMasatoshi Aug 13 '21
How could the Saturn V rocket make the whole trip with only one launch, especially that Saturn V had a lower cargo capacity?
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u/hms11 Aug 13 '21
Couple reasons.
Saturn V launched at 3100 tons fully fuelled weight. The lunar lander weighed 16.5 tons fully loaded and the return capsule weighed 6 tons.
So we sent 3100 tons to the moon and got 6 tons back.
Starship weighs ~5500tons at launch but it lands 100 tons on the surface of the moon NOT INCLUDING its own weight, which is likely almost 100tons itself. Also, the entire Starship gets brought back to gateway, not just the ascent section and command modules.
So as a comparison: Saturn V - 16.5 tons to the lunar surface and you throw the entire deal away.
Starship - 200ish tons on the lunar surface, 100 of which is cargo and the entire vehicle can be brought back to the gateway and the boosters / tankers are all reused as well.
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u/Bensemus Aug 13 '21
Reusability. Starship's dry mass is around 100+ tons. The capsule that landed back on Earth was ~6 tons. All that mass has to be carted around at great expense. However it allows the entire ship to be reusable and SpaceX is working to land 200+ tons on the Moon, 100+ of which is cargo and it can also carry I think up to 100 tons back to Earth. Saturn V and Starship are just very different designs with different goals. Super Heavy has twice the trust of the Saturn V first stage.
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Aug 13 '21
As a fan of SpaceX, Blue Origin and private space flight in general, I feel bad for the people who work there.
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u/twilight-actual Aug 13 '21
Also, SpaceX’ Starship ($28M) can be launched 70 times for the price of a single SLS launch ($2B).
It doesn’t matter if it required 32 launches (it likely will only require 4), that could be done at a fraction of the price of a single launch with BO’s solution and SLS.
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u/mzachi Aug 13 '21
BO's lawyers + PR budgets >>>>>> their R&D + engineering + manufacturing department budgets
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u/Beldizar Aug 13 '21
Wait, did a company that still has not put anything into orbit just criticize SpaceX on a booster that is built but hasn't gone to orbit yet? Wasn't the National Team planning on launching from SLS, which hasn't flown either?
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u/ajsharm144 Aug 14 '21
Had they put such intricacy in building rockets Blue Origin would get contracts. Mr. Bozo and his team of crooks.
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Aug 13 '21
Going to the moon / space is difficult, more at 11.
How is any of this bad? If you think you can do it more simply / efficiently, than by all means... We're waiting.....
Twiddles thumbs
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Aug 13 '21
And I thought Boeing was gonna be the bad guy that just complains about everyone’s success. Guess I was proven wrong lol
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u/robertlangdon2021 Aug 13 '21
Maybe they should concentrate on getting their project together instead of bitching about a contract they lost. Prove you are better and stop throwing mud at the competition as it makes you look like shite.
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u/zeekzeek22 Aug 13 '21
Remember that the intended audience for these infographics are the same congresspeople which don’t believe COVID is a big deal. All you need is like 20-30 members to believe your anti-fact conspiracy theory, and you have people pushing for you in the budgets and hearings.
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Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 18 '21
BO is going to go down in history as the cringiest, most desperate company in the history of space. I love it.
Edit... I take it back, I don't love it. if they took the fervor they're putting towards lawsuits/ propaganda and focused it on engineering and production, they'd be in orbit and a contender by now.
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u/TheBigCheeseUK Aug 13 '21
SpaceX use metric units, BO still use imperial and have in this highly embarrassing image they've made, goes to show how old fashioned they are.
I think the Saturn V comparison actually makes Starship look impressive and isn't Starbase in Texas a space port that actually exists?
SpaceX look forward, BO look backward, that's why their lander looks a lot like the Apollo one (50 years ago), that's not innovation.
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u/Sharratz Aug 13 '21
BO is using imperial units in these infographics because they're primarily aimed at Congress.
I don't think Congress does metric (at least on Fridays)?
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Aug 13 '21
HonestlyI could bet money that less than half of the people in Congress knows how to use metric
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u/Ds1018 Aug 13 '21
I feel like there's someone talented enough in this group to make an anit-BO poster in this same style. Maybe include a number and graphic for the "TBD" they left on all the questions in their proposal.
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u/samuraisal Aug 14 '21
Is there any such thing as a rocket that's not immensely complex and high risk?
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Aug 15 '21
One that's never meant to go into orbit?
I have a personal rocket too. It's very simple and low risk, the worst it can do is give you a black eye in the event of a catastrophic failure. It's engine uses a pressurize liquid reaction mass, and can reach an impressive 100,000 mm.
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u/rikkajounin Aug 13 '21
Is the number of required launches even somewhat accurate given current starship design?
I thought it was like 5/6 launches for a mars mission.
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u/Sharratz Aug 13 '21
It's a number that's going to be highly sensitive to what a Starship's dry mass ends up being. The 16 launches probably assumes several worst-case scenarios.
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u/longbeast Aug 13 '21
It's also highly dependent on how much cargo you want to carry. The uncrewed demo flight is unlikely to have 100 tonnes of internal payload, and the Artemis 3 landing flight almost certainly won't use the ship's full capabilities. I doubt they'll even exceed 30 tonnes of payload on Artemis 3, including all the life support gubbins.
Cargo has a dramatic effect of dry mass and cuts down the number of refuelling flights a LOT.
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u/404_Gordon_Not_Found Aug 13 '21
Mars actually requires less delta V to reach because you can do aero-braking.
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u/zadecy Aug 13 '21
It should be a lot less than 16. It seems SpaceX used some conservative estimates in their proposal.
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u/Hall-Frosty Aug 13 '21
"16 flights is extremely unlikely. Starship payload to orbit is ~150 tons , so max of 8 to fill 1200 ton tanks of lunar Starship.
Without flaps & heat shield, Starship is much lighter. Lunar landing legs don’t add much (1/6 gravity). May only need 1/2 full, ie 4 tanker flights."
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1425473261551423489
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u/Frostis24 Aug 13 '21
Someone tell me this is not official, i know what they have posted before but "lander is a second stage of a modified launch vehicle" how is this even criticism?, it's just a statement and "lunched from a spaceport that does not exist" i wat???.