November 25, 2015 at 22:14

Why you can not compare New Shepard and Falcon 9 spacecraft



    SpaceX has repeatedly tried to make a soft landing for the first stage of its Falcon 9 booster. If this process could be fixed, the cost of launching the booster would decrease many times. Accordingly, the cost of the "transportation" of goods into space would also decrease. Nevertheless, SpaceX still does not have so many successes in the project of creating a returnable first stage, although the reasons for the failures are serious - landing a stage on an offshore platform is simply not an easy task, and during a storm it is practically impossible.

    But reported on successJeff Bezos, founder of the company Blue Origin, which plans to work in the field of space tourism. The company managed to land the first stage of the New Shepard launch vehicle and the passenger capsule after the ship took off to a height of 100 kilometers (suborbital flight). After that, Blue Origin began to be compared with SpaceX, although this should not be done, and that's why.





    Friendly mini-dispute of Ilon Mask and Jeff Bezos on twitter.

    SpaceX versus Blue Origin


    New Shepard and Falcon 9 have different tasks , and accordingly, a different design. The mission of Falcon 9, as Musk sees it, is space cargo transportation, which includes both launching satellites and sending cargo, for example, to the ISS and vice versa - from the ISS to Earth. The SpaceX rocket is much taller and heavier than the Blue Origin rocket, it is more elongated and taller. This form allows the rocket to relatively easily overcome the resistance of the atmosphere with the subsequent exit into outer space. At the same time, this form makes the task of soft landing the first stage of the rocket when it is returned to Earth more difficult.



    Planting a rocket of this shape is something like trying to throw a pipe from the roof, hoping that it will land exactly at the opposite end. But in reality, everything is a bit wrong - the rocket during landing often loses its balance and falls.



    As for New Shepard, then everything is different. This booster will not fly as high and far as the Mask rocket. On the contrary, its task is to deliver space tourists to a height of 100 kilometers, where they can enjoy the views over the course of 4 minutes. After that, the rocket returns to Earth, and the capsule with tourists lands separately, and the carrier stage - separately.



    As a result, New Shepard is smaller than the Falcon, this rocket is more "dense" and wide, with less weight. Accordingly, landing with such a design is incomparably easier (although this is also a very difficult task).

    It is worth mentioning one important point - the Falcon 9 stage, which is planned to be returned to Earth, still does not go into orbit. It separates along the way, and in the usual case it just falls. In the case of Space X, they plan to carefully set the stage. The maximum height to which the step rises is 200 km, which is two times higher than in the case of New Shepard. Since the first stage of the Falcon 9 displays the entire ship into space, it is much higher and heavier than the New Shepard stage. And it falls from a height two times greater than that of the Blue Origins rocket. Different and speed. The New Shepard has a maximum of Mach 3, the Falcon 9 has 5.5-7.

    At the same time, New Shepard maintains a vertical position for almost the entire flight, and the Falcon 9 has to perform a difficult maneuver during landing, since at the end point the configuration of the rocket is almost horizontal with respect to the Earth.



    In general, comparing the flights of these missiles is somewhat incorrect, it is almost the same as comparing the climber’s training in the gym and climbing a high mountain. Compare suborbital flight with orbital flight is not worth it.

    Interestingly, from the very beginning, Jeff Bezos planned to make his rocket returnable, and Musk only after successful launches of the regular Falcon version began to develop a returnable first stage.

    Was there a boy?


    In other words, is the Blue Origin rocket the first to be returned to Earth intact? It all depends on the starting point and position of the judge, as well as on what is considered a rocket.

    For example, the Mask was able to normally land a reduced model of the first Falcon stage on Earth, this model was called Grasshopper ("grasshopper"). It was possible to return to the ground his ship and Virgin Galactic c her SpaceShipTwo (the ship crashed afterwards).

    But here it is worth recalling also the experimental North American X-15 rocket plane , which was tested by the US military in the 1960s. Like SpaceShipTwo, the X-15 had a task to reach a certain height and make a suborbital flight - this was done twice.

    In any case, the success of Blue Origin is very significant, both for the company itself and for the whole world. It is not worth comparing and recalling who is the first and who is the second - the space industry is developing, and this is very good for all of humanity.
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