[vassvdm]

Elon's reaction (quoted from Twitter):

"Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster

It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit."

[mmaunder]

This may come off as sour grapes, but it's really important for Musk to point this out. It's not just that you need to go sideways at mach 24 when you reach space to achieve orbit. It's that you need to carry the fuel up to space to be able to do that. Which means that any returnable vehicle is going to be way larger to carry all that fuel. So from an engineering perspective, the size of Blue Origin is a toy compared to the size of rocket that would return after achieving orbit. Not to mention the amount of additional fuel required to decelerate a much larger mass right before landing.

[protomyth]

> This may come off as sour grapes, but it's really important for Musk to point this out.

It does come off as sour grapes and it absolutely wasn't important for Musk to point this out. His PR team needs to deal with this, not him. He can send out congratulations and rah-rah for another amazing achievement for humanity, but his PR needs to get on the ball and show what the differences in goals and achievements BO and SpaceX have. They also should look at this as a failure to explain what the whole landing phase means for both companies. He can stay above the the whole thing. Its not like Bezos is beloved (the whole Stark / Hammer comparison is not far off).

[klunger]

Sort of. The ascent booster separates from the crew capsule, which basically uses parachutes for its deceleration. For descent of the booster, there will be some fuel requirements, but most of the work should also be done by the parachutes (I think. It just says "guided flight", but it would be weird if it did not use parachutes), with fuel only needed at the end.

[jacquesm]

I don't see Blue Origin claiming 'orbit' anywhere so I fail to see why that bit needed any clearing up. It is the L bit that SpaceX seems to have had some problems with to date. Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

[chriskanan]

I'm guessing that Musk felt the need to do that because some of the early reports about Blue Origin's success were using it as a platform to trash SpaceX for failing to land on the barges. This Gizmodo article (before they changed it due to all the comments complaining) was a good example: http://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-new-rocket-just-made-a-control...

It was significantly longer earlier today, but it contained a factually inaccurate comparison.

Here are a couple more examples:

Wired: "Jeff Bezos just accomplished the near impossible: one-upping Elon Musk"

Link: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/jeff-bezos-brags-on-rocket-land...

Engadget: "Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk's SpaceX in the reusable rocket race"

Link: http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rock...

[pmorici]

I don't think it's immediately obvious for the lay person not familiar with space flight of the differences between the achievements of the two companies.

[moistgorilla]

The first thing I thought of when I saw this video was that this group did it before SpaceX without knowing SpaceX was trying to solve the harder problem.

[modeless]

SpaceX has been launching and landing non-orbit rockets for a long time: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4

There's nothing magical about 100 km that makes Blue Origin's rocket more useful. 100 km is just a round number. It's not useful until it's literally 100 times more powerful so it can get to orbit. Implying that Blue Origin's achievement is comparable to what SpaceX is attempting is disingenuous. But, predictably, that's exactly what the news media is doing.

[mtgx]

It might have something to do with half the headlines out there claiming Blue Origin "beat" SpaceX.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rock...

[asmithmd1]

How cool is it that there are currently two billionaires competing to build a better reusable rocket. For all the problems with capitalism, this is a great benefit.

[edem]

The main reason for that was the fact that SpaceX launched several rockets with the same goal and failed to land. Most people won't know the difference between getting to space and getting to orbit and will conclude that SpaceX failed. If you clarify however that New Shepard is a toy compared to the Falcon 9 it changes the perspective.

[simonh]

>Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

If you actually read his tweet, copied in full in the post you are responding to and in the article, you'll see that he did exactly that.

Ok, fair cop. It looks like he didn't do just exactly that. The article I saw only gave his first tweet. My apologies.

[Havoc]

>Musk could simply congratulate Blue Origin and leave it at that.

Thats not his style. Plus I'm pretty sure SpaceX is pretty pissed at BlueOrigin for allegedly stealing staff. So can't say I'm surprised at the snarky response.

[brazzledazzle]

If it were a neutral third party I'd agree, but presumably they're competitors.

[Turbots]

They don't claim orbit, but they claim (rightfully so) landing a rocket.

People with basic scientific backgrounds will make the link with SpaceX and think: "wow, they've just done something that SpaceX hasnt been able to do so far, with less funds and less attempts..."

While this is comparing apples to oranges ofcourse.

Big congratulations to Jeff Bezos & Team, but it's still quite a big difference indeed

[xixi77]

Thanks for noting Musk's clarification, this did leave me confused for a moment. The difference between what they are trying to do is indeed quite huge.

I feel still a bit unclear on this though: hasn't SpaceX been trying to land just the first stage module (which presumably doesn't try to achieve that Mach 30)? If so, what is the main difference -- just the size of the payload, or is the 1st stage of SpaceX itself already going a lot faster than the BO rocket? (or perhaps both).

[mikeash]

Blue Origin's rocket is returning from a bit above 300,000ft and roughly zero speed. Falcon 9's first stage is returning from a similar altitude but at mach 6.

That adds a lot of difficulty just in terms of getting rid of that speed without destroying your hardware. Plus you need to aim from a lot farther away. The Falcon 9 includes hypersonic grid fins to steer towards the landing site, for example. (Failure of these due to running out of hydraulic fluid is what caused the first landing attempt crash.)

Just getting to that state requires a lot more of the rocket as well. If getting to that altitude is the equivalent of going mach 3, then the Falcon 9 first stage is putting in the equivalent of mach 9, so that's 9x more delta-v, which means the rocket needs to carry vastly more fuel and be vastly lighter.

All in all, the Falcon 9-R is trying to optimize for two things at once, which is always difficult. Landing a rocket vertically is not that difficult. Landing a rocket vertically while having that exact same rocket also be useful as the first stage of an orbital launcher is way harder. It's a bit like building a flying car: there are good cars, and good airplanes, but trying to build a machine that's good at both is far more difficult. Hopefully SpaceX's effort works out better than flying cars have.

[rst]

For one thing, the trajectories are very different -- New Shepard is pretty much up and down, while the SpaceX booster's velocity is mostly horizontal at stage separation; it requires a substantial amount of maneuvering to cancel that out. For another, SpaceX's landing attempts have been on a barge, not flat land, which means that targeting is a much harder problem. (The latter is speculation on my part, but the New Shepard booster went through a lot of gymnastics just before landing; that sort of thing can be a whole lot easier if you just have to wind up level with zero velocity, without having to target a particular spot on the ground as an added constraint.)

EDIT: some observers claim that the New Shepard is hovering. If so, that does two things: first off, it indicates that either the stage is ballasted, or Blue is taking advantage of their engine's very deep throttle range. (SpaceX's first stage can't hover, as even fully throttled-down thrust of one engine exceeds weight of the stage at landing; so long as an engine is firing at all, the stage is accelerating up.) Second, it obviously makes the targeting problem much easier. (Note that the ballast could just be extra fuel; they've clearly got extra to burn in the landing maneuvers...)

[InclinedPlane]

The point is reuse of a core stage of a launch vehicle. Both Blue Origin's vehicle and SpaceX's are launch vehicles, one is sub-orbital the other is orbital. Reusing either makes their respective launches cheaper and easier, but because the launches themselves are vastly different the implications of that reuse are also vastly different.

[wiremine]

From what the website says, one of their main goals is a commercial "astronaut experience". In that case, they're only aiming for 100km. [1]

This flight confirms they have achieved that goal, correct?

[1] https://www.blueorigin.com/astronaut-experience

[phkahler]

>> From what the website says, one of their main goals is a commercial "astronaut experience". In that case, they're only aiming for 100km.

But SpaceShipOne achieved that back in 2004.

[warmwaffles]

I play kerbal, and I can confirm, getting to space requires a lot of energy as the payload gets bigger.

[Schwolop]

Ladies and gentlemen, we can now present conclusive evidence that the internet has officially achieved peak-hubris.

[pierrebai]

Are the SpaceX boosters that Musk want to land going to orbit? No.

Is the extra fuel needed to make such a landing a big part of going to orbit? No.

The extra weight a enerby needed to land vertically has nothing to do with a 900 factor. Musk's tweet is thus equally disengenuous. It makes it sound like vertical landing a booster for a rocket going to orbit is tremendously harder than what BO did. It is not, it's the same ball park.

[colordrops]

An orbital rocket takes a lot more fuel and has to go a much faster. You are being disingenuous by implying that there is no significant tradeoff when designing a much larger booster designed to take payload into orbit.

[t_fatus]

But they have to carry a lot more load which then goes to orbit, making them much more heavier, hard to control and to land. And indeed the separation velocity is Mach 6 - Mach 10 for Falcon 9, so Space-X booster needs to go faster.

[Zelphyr]

I agree that the distinction needed to be made. However, this is a win for man kind regardless of the distance.

[will_pseudonym]

The square of 30 is.

[jlebrech]

would it be possible to keep catapulting fuel to the rocket when it runs out?

[ForHackernews]

Musk is just salty that another billionaire has a newer toy.

[Turbots]

a smaller, lighter toy which goes Mach 3 and 10km

compared to a bigger, much heavier toy which goes Mach 30 and into actual orbit :-)