Blue Origin’s New Shepard Launches, Lands Again
And Again
Credit: Blue Origin
Blue Origin has taken another step in its quest to see “millions of people living and working in space,” and this one could be characterized as significant. Following the announcement of FAA airspace restrictions for the area surrounding the company’s West Texas test facility which came on Thursday, it was pretty clear that another flight of New Shepard was imminent. On Friday, early local reports indicated that something had indeed taken off into the blue, but in the absence of real time coverage, the results were kept under wrap, at least for a little while. As it turned out, New Shepard did fly again, and more importantly, it came back again too, marking the second flight of the hydrogen/oxygen powered suborbital vehicle in two months, and the second time both the rocket itself, as well as the capsule it carries, have returned to gently to Earth.
As befits a genuine rivalry, company founder Jeff Bezos doesn’t forget to take a barely veiled swipe at rival SpaceX in his accompanying blog post, but it is difficult to ignore a much larger, though perhaps unintentional, target as well.
Post from Jeff Bezos:
Launch, Land, Repeate
The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.
Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today’s re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one. Rather than the vehicle translating to land at the exact center of the pad, it now initially targets the center, but then sets down at a position of convenience on the pad, prioritizing vehicle attitude ahead of precise lateral positioning. It’s like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don’t swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline. Our Monte Carlo sims of New Shepard landings show this new strategy increases margins, improving the vehicle’s ability to reject disturbances created by low-altitude winds.
Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I’m a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing. Why? Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well. When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance. We solved the inverted pendulum problem on New Shepard with an engine that dynamically gimbals to balance the vehicle as it descends. And since New Shepard is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here. We’re already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle. Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it’s still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year.
Also this year, we’ll start full-engine testing of the BE-4 and launch and land our New Shepard rocket – again and again. If you want to stay up to date with all the interesting work that our team is doing, sign up for email updates at www.blueorigin.com/interested.
Gradatim Ferociter!
Jeff Bezos
About the Author: Stewart Money
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An intriguing aspect of the design of both SpaceX’s lander and Blue Origin’s is that the use of legs seems to only further enable the use of fins, but neither design has fins. It’s all about gimballing. I guess the trade-offs don’t work out, but I wonder why not.
Huh. Both SpaceX & Blue uses fins on their boosters/ Grid fins for SpaceX & Ring fin for Blue.The top of the the New Sheppard propulsion module got many fins enclosed by a ring structure.
I love your blog Stuart — Innerspace is one of my home tabs in Chrome! Thank you.
I picked up on the thinly veiled swipe at SpaceX, but I wasn’t sure what the other unintentional target was that you referred to? Did you mean SLS or something else?
quote from Jeff Bezos
“Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I’m a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing.”
So what current NASA manned vehicle uses parachutes for landing? Hint, there is only one in development. And it is not a commercial vehicle.
The CST-100 “Starliner” also uses parachutes for landing.
Wesley, thanks for the kind words. Ans yes, I meant SLS. Again, I doubt it was intentional, but when you mention scalability and launch vehicles, its hard not to think of the biggest booster currently under development,and with reusable engines to boot!