Not entirely sure how I feel about Blue Origin getting a contract like this with their current track record. I don’t like how space is becoming a playground for billionaires lately. But, if they push science forward, then in the end it’s a net win.

I’ll reserve judgment until the supposed launch date

Shouldn't they at least be able to get to orbit, then maybe the moon before they get a Mars contract?

They must have confidence that the New Glen will be ready in time. Blue must have shared some information with them that NASA has verified.

Just wondering, do companies like SpaceX and blue origin get confidential data and knowledge and technology transfers from NASA for these things so that they can catch up quickly and work on the next ground breaking thing? I mean how can companies just created 10-15 years ago gain so much groundwork within few years and becoming top players in the field? Considering NASA or roscosmos took decades.

Because they’re private companies, not having to deal with all the government bs really speeds things up. People with money really like making more money

The same NASA that contracted with SpaceX for the yet to be seen Moon Landing System for Artemis.

Those that have the resources and can serve their own interests, rather than the interests of the masses, are how things are going to get done. Like it or not, the US government had gave up on space exploration before billionaires started showing interest.

It's even worse than that, not only have they not gotten to orbit, they've never even tried to get to orbit. They've never built anything that was even capable of trying for orbit, and right now they don't have anything that launches at all.

I think SpaceX has lots of time to get that working, since Artemis is insanely behind schedule anyway.

Further, that's a different kind of contract. NASA is paying to have something built that has never been done before. If SpaceX doesn't hit milestones in that contract, they don't get paid. They both know that.

Even further, SpaceX underbid that contract to win it. They're using some of their own money to build it, knowing they will use the tech themselves down the road.

We saw the booster fire up 31 engines yesterday. We have been looking at the landing stage for three+ years. They are bending metal at Boca Chica. Sure there is work to be done but nobody is sitting on their hands. Not sure what people expect. Insta-rocket?

There's lots of publicly accessible information on the subject, SpaceX in particularly has also paid Russia for access to Soviet rocketry, and most importantly they hire personnel from existing rocket programs who are experienced in their field.

Why would they start building a full Artemis mockup when the generic Starship upper stage hasn't been finalised yet? That makes absolutely zero sense, at the very least they need to achieve orbit and confirm their design works before building a moon lander. You have to walk before you can run.

Lots of people on here that never read the article and just spewing opinions and misinformation.

The contract they got is to simply launch the ESCAPADE mission through a new program NASA has to basically make these new rocket test launches also have things on top the rocket. ESCAPADE is a cheap small sat mission through NASA’s SIMPLEx program, which are $50 million missions with a single science goal.

ESCAPADE will be the thing studying Mars, and they have a whole team that has nothing to do with BO. They were selected years ago through NASA (just as nasa selects other robotic missions through competitive calls). They’ve been waiting for a lunch provider and this program (which specifically is higher risk but that is ok with cheaper missions) gives them the launch provider they need.

THAT’S IT. Sometimes reading the articles and not just the headlines is helpful

It's a relatively cheap launch with New Glenn being oversized for the mission. NASA gets a cheap launch and validate a launch provider while BO gets to boast about winning a NASA mission.

Then they should do it with their own money. I have as much achievement as blue origin. I built a rocket and launched it, the rocket didn't make it to orbit or space but that paper towel tube sure did go high. The government should give me a couple of billion dollars for a mission OR nasa should be doing things in house and not contracting with private for profit companies on the tax payers dime.

The taxpayer dime NASA gets is a grain of sand in the US taxpayer budget, if you took it all out you wouldn't even notice. Sorry.

The irony is that NASA finding is net positive for the economy, at least has been, honestly not sure of current status but if this is the hill you want to fight on, we can have a look of any recent info on the topic.

Don't you mean the "revised launch date"?

Hmm.

NASA awarded pretty big contracts to spacex for lunar lander and starship. That's a platform under development and not at all proven yet.

Blue origin has a similar rocket, blue Glen. NASA wants more commercial launch providers, so a mission like this to cut the teeth of new Glen is a great thing.

Blue origin has as invested billions of dollars into the development of the Blue Glenn rocket.

It's going to become another player in the commercial launch industry and NASA wants that to happen.

I don't see any problem here

People are criticizing NASA for contracting blue origin and a developmental rocket, but apparently ok to look the other way for NASA contracting a developmental rocket for something of much higher consequence

This take is laughably bad and shows a real lack of understanding or intelligence. New Shepard may not be an orbital rocket, but you're vastly under stating the amount of hard engineering that has to go into a vehicle like that. Developing rocket engines in and of itself is one of the hardest parts. And the rest isn't much less difficult. Last time nasa tried to get something similar developed, they failed.

This mission doesn't cost a billion dollars either. The class of mission it is in puts it at under 80 million. Blue origin is all but guaranteed to be taking a big loss in money to launch this payload. And despite your paper towel tube, they actually do have a track record of doing complex engineering and a plan to have a partially reusable heavy lift launch vehicle, unlike you.

Lastly, nasa has always, and I mean always, done things through contracting. Saturn v, space shuttle, SLS, all made by contractors. Nasa owned those designs but again, made by contractors. Not to mention even back decades ago they were launching satellites on rockets that they didn't own. This is no different. They also still do things in house.

Your terrible argument is like saying nasa shouldn't by cars from Ford. And instead should build them from scratch rather than giving tax payer money to Ford, a billion dollar company. It's completely ignorant of how things work for one. And for two, it shows a lack of understanding about why nasa would use services rather than doing every single thing in house. It would be a bigger waste of tax payer money to do it your way.

So instead it is more beneficial to nasa to use the rocket developed by blue origin which has near totally been funded by bezos and his money. So i reiterate that your complaints are just laughably unintelligent and, well, pointless.

While I agree that people are being too harsh, there is quite a difference. SpaceX has experience building not one, not two, but 3 separate orbital rockets. One of them that was previously holding the title for most powerful operational rocket (and uses 27 engines on the first stage). So it makes sense that nasa would trust them to be able to develop their 4th rocket that uses 33 engines and is in a less complex configuration despite being a larger rocket.

The contracts were also very different. No one has a working human landing system for the moon. They're development contracts. The whole point is developing something new and having nasa oversight into some of the technical challenges. This launch contract isn't about development. Nasa isn't going to be helping blue origin get new Glenn ready. Instead they are putting faith that this company that has never developed an orbit rocket can develop one of the most powerful orbital rockets. And have it working by late next year.

Blue has experience developing new Shepard which is far different, but also still shows engineering competency and definitely gives reason to believe in new Glenn coming eventually. But it's still very different scenarios than HLS.

Well a middle class man with $300,000 to his name certainly isn’t going to afford anything in the space industry

The nuances of both are different but there are similarities, and it fits with NASA strategy of helping to foster the commercial launch industry.

it's definitely risky and a stretch to rely on starship for the moon lander, there are many untested capabilities that have to be developed. It's a developmental rocket, and got the contract.

Blue Glenn is similar in that it's a developmental rocket, and got the contract.

>Blue origin has a similar rocket, blue Glen.

Do they, though?

Nah, blue origin bad SpaceX good. How dare they snub SpaceX or so goes the Elon simps in /r/space

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |BO|Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry)| |C3|Characteristic Energy above that required for escape| |EVA|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |FCC|Federal Communications Commission| | |(Iron/steel) Face-Centered Cubic crystalline structure| |GTO|Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit| |HLS|Human Landing System (Artemis)| |SLS|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |SOP|Standard Operating Procedure| |ULA|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |USAF|United States Air Force|

|Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |Starlink|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|

^(11 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 15 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8542 for this sub, first seen 10th Feb 2023, 15:53]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

Starship is further along in development in that a prototype exists, but yeah they are both under development.

Blue origin has spent a billion dollars on manufacturering facilities to build new Glenn. That to me shows they are serious about building it and we should see the first prototype rolling out sometime soon

Ive worked for enough startups to know that spending money means nothing.

Then you should know also that starship could be a complete failure too.

But I get it. SpaceX good blue origin bad. That's the thought process around here.

Starship has flown hops and landed and its from an enterprises that not only has gone to orbit, but is the planet's premier launch service provider.

New Glen is a couple of pictures of incomplete tanks and fairings.

If Blue Origin wants to be taken seriously, they gotta actually make an orbital rocket and actually go to orbit. You can't just burn money without results and expect people to take you seriously. Its been what, 20 years? I think people (and Nasa) have been patient with them.

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Exactly my point. There is no way a Starship-based lunar lander will be ready in time. In fact, I believe the Starship will not be used as a lander at all and expect to see NASA use a more conventional design.

I don't really have a much of a problem with BO getting this contract

However trying to argue that BO getting this is in any way comparable to SpaceX getting their HLS contract is pretty silly and doesn't hold up to much scrutiny

So SpaceX won't be able to have a starship based lander ready in time....but some other aerospace company will? As far as jokes go that's a pretty good one

I do agree that it fits with nasa strategy. Overall this allows them to have more options for sending cool science payloads out into space. Which is what I think everyone in this sub wants to see more of.

Starship is risky but so were all the other proposals. SpaceX had the most technically adept proposal with the best strategy for mitigating risks. That's why they won and the others did not. And they now get help developing it from nasa.

But there's still a big difference between saying "I'm going to help you build your next generation race car so i can use it for the race season" and "I'm gonna use your race car (without helping) to race in the talladega 500, even though you've only ever built a go kart before now"

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Interesting. I have always thought rocketry is considered rather strategic, so I am surprised private companies could just willy nilly get access. Maybe I was wrong. I am just surprised countries like those in the middle east didn't pay their way into space exploration considering their vanity.

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Yeah blue origin will be losing money on this launch. Seems pretty good for NASA.

> SpaceX in particularly has also paid Russia for access to Soviet rocketry,

They what now?

Oh there are similarities when you describe the two cases at a surface level. But any kind of deeper look at the two scenarios should make it super obvious that it's not really things that are comparable

The contracts that SpaceX won very early on when they were basically a very young startup with no proven track record. Those contracts are comparable to this contract that BO has been awarded

I mean... is that really worse? Wouldn't it be worse, had they tried for a decade and never managed?

SpaceX is the most advanced launch organization in history, lapping the rest of the world twice over in mass to orbit with a nearly perfect safety record and dirt cheap vehicles.

Blue origin hasn’t been to orbit and their suborbital rocket just failed.

Investing in starship is smart based on track record, blue origin? They literally have no track record.

That's the point of this launch, to establish a track record

Yeah I'd agree, and good thing the risk was taken back then, just as it's good to do so now with BO

>I have as much achievement as blue origin.

And you did it for cheaper :) People saying "just wait til New Glenn launch next year" are hilarious. Ive been reading this since 2015 at least, when half of today's redditors were in grade school.

NASA bought more Starship landings. They seem to have quite a bit of confidence in the rocket.

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One would think so. Bezo's has been using his fortune to sue NASA at damn near every turn, setting back science missions for years to come. NASA having to spend their funds to fight litigation is insanity. But Bezo doesn't care. He wants a cut of the pie, even if he isn't ready to do anything.

It's in NASA's interest for their to be healthy competition. They don't want to be reliant on the whims of SpaceX (and by extension Musk). SpaceX being dominant is an argument for diversifying the contracts.

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Jeff's engines are on the launch pad right now. The ULA Vulcan rocket uses two of them in the first stage. New Glenn will use 7 of them and be reusable (eventually).

Vulcan is a standard throw-away rocket intended to replace the Atlas that has flown for many years.

Not in rocket science. It is famously difficult to get to orbit. At least companies that have tried understand what they don't know. Blue Origin only knows how to build gas powered shaftless elevators. Which isn't nothing, but certainly is an order of magnitude easier than orbit.

That's actually a big concern with a new player. The launch window to Mars doesn't care what bugs you're ironing out. If they miss the closing of the launch window it's another 2 years before they can make the trip to Mars. I wish them luck.

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What I really want to know is if there's any spare capacity for secondary payloads with this opportunity. The New Glenn looks to have a lot of GTO capability so getting to a C3 for Trans Mars Injection should be well within their capacity to bring some additional payloads. Anyone have any intel on that possibility? NASA's general policy is to make secondary launch available whenever they can so I'm hoping this is the case here.

I mean... lets give them some credit. New Shepard has worked pretty reliably, even considering the recent failure. They have more experience with operating rocket powered vehicles than most other NewSpace companies. More importantly, they have experience with operating human rated reusable spacecraft, even if they just launch vertically up and then fall back down.

The difficulty in spaceflight for most companies arises in keeping their engines running for long enough to make orbit. Chaining two stages together when you already have the experience to operate them is not that much of a leap.

The only reason Blue is taking so long at the moment is because they wanted to skip smallsat launchers (a wise move given their small market and many competitors) and instead start out with a true monster of a rocket in the form of New Glenn. Rockets of that size take time. Compared to any development program of this type that is not SpaceX they are doing perfectly fine.

They awarded the Apollo rockets to companies that had never been to the moon before as well. Pure corruption.

Remember before the billionaires the rockets were more expensive and less ambitious. Unless you can build a rocket on Kickstarter this is as good as it gets.

Don't forget they hire from a pool of engineers that already work in the most advanced aerospace industry in the world.

There are zero functioning human moon landing systems in the world. Even if there were a few, dissimilar redundancy can bring down the cost.

I'd be a little worried - New Glenn doesn't even have a track record and it's less than 2 years from the launch date; it's a 2 year wait if they miss that window.

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I'm still highly skeptical that an engine with that large of a chamber and that high of a chamber pressure can survive, but I guess we'll see!

In this case they've literally spent the last TWO decades working on this, and still have yet to even try, so yeah I'd say that's worse when they're applying for contracts.

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Strangely nonenof that translates to orbit or interplanetary travel...

You are absolutely correct, they deserve credit where credit is due. The only thing I would counter you on is the difficulty of launching a large rocket is the number of systems required to work in those environments without failures. Not just the rockets running that long. The reason most space companies start small isn't because they hope to take over the small sat market but because it is more attainable to start small for quicker test and iterations. Bezos strategy is certainly bold but I would argue not very pragmatic. He is basically going all in blind on New Glen. If he pulls it off it will be an incredible feat. But if it fails how many chances will he have to recover. Even Boing, a company with significant industry experience has struggled to keep up with large rocketry in recent years by comparison to Space X. I absolutely love all the competition in space right now but I won't be holding my breath for the first launch of New Glen.

They have test fired several of them. It is a hard problem and they have had their share of difficulties in development, but it looks like they have gotten it to work. Time will tell.

Peter Beck was not wealthy when he started Rocket Lab. Elon musk was a millionaire when he started SpaceX. Clearly it does not take a billionaire to start a successful space company.

I wonder how many lawsuits it took them to get the contract

Not saying the suit had any grounds, but it was exactly one lawsuit.

Elon has quite a few under his belt now though:

2019 (SpaceX vs AFSMSC)

2019 (SpaceX vs NASA bid protest over a launch procurement, later withdrawn)

2014 (SpaceX vs USAF)

2005 (SpaceX vs Boeing and Lockheed)

Not to mention all the shady shit Starlink has pulled with the FCC.

Lawsuits force change in this industry, acting like one lawsuit somehow shaped NASA’s ability to do anything is absurd.

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I love how everyone here thinks they a rocket expert. Competition is good take it easy on blue origin

Musk told reporters, it seemed like Bezo's retired to: “Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …"

There are other suits he's done, but failed.

I don't really care, but I think it was a stupid decision on NASA's part, to accept 2 billion "donation" and then award the contract to Bezo's, who hasn't even achieved orbital flight yet.

More on some of his other suits against Musk. https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/jeff-bezos-retired-to-file-lawsuits-against-spacex-says-elon-musk-121082700846_1.html

Who cares how Musk words it. It's literally the 1 lunar lander lawsuit, and 1 letter filed to the FCC(along side many others from other telecoms).

Musk has more lawsuits, and more public letters to the FCC against other companies than anyone.

Whew…thought they might actually have to put a human in space for a minute there.

NASA has learned its lesson about relying on one provider. Imagine if Boeing was the only commercial crew provider, or when the Space Shuttle was supposed to be the only satellite launch provider in the 80s.

It’s great that SpaceX has succeeded - but you know what’s better? Competition and an equally successful Blue Origin.

That’s all well and good but blue origin has not proven the ability to be successful, even with a sub orbital joyride. Throwing money at the problem won’t solve anything, this is Amazon We are talking about, Jeff Bezos. Money isn’t the issue, it’s management, it’s pipe lining, I don’t want to say it’s talent because I know there’s plenty of talented people there. But blue origin is a laughingstock in the industry for a reason, and it’s going to take more than contracts to get them to a point where they can compete with SpaceX. They already have contracts with other private launch companies, they license out their engine, but they have been holding them back because of their constant delays. If blue origin wasn’t causing so many delays, there probably would be more substantial competition in the industry right now from other launch companies.

I don’t see how they are ready for a Mars contract within the next 10 years

They have the benefit of all the knowledge gained from 8 decades of public funding of the space program. Easy to get off the ground when someone else has done most of the work.

Keep in mind that this isn't yet a playground for billionaires. None of these companies would exist without NASA, they are glorified apparatuses of NASA. This is actually in NASA's best interest. Without these companies, they would have to do the space launch themselves and bureaucracy would balloon the costs to most of their budget. By delegating this to outside organizations, they can keep the cost of space flight down, while allocating their budget more wisely.

If these companies do anything NASA doesn't like, they would be dropped and disappear over time. If they further get too uppity, the federal government can regulate them out of existence. These companies should be used for what their worth, then when we get what we need, we crush them.

There was a time when SpaceX was the laughingstock as well. Gwen Shotwell is primarily the reason things didn’t end with Falcon 1. Even when NASA gave SpaceX a shot with commercial cargo and later commercial crew, people were skeptical. And if it weren’t for those contracts, SpaceX doesn’t make it.

Blue Origin had one “failure” so far for suborbital and the vehicle performed exactly the way it should in an emergency.

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I presume most of this knowledge won't just be in public domain considering how strategic space is and how several unfriendly countries can use it for other purposes

This is great for Blue Origin! Competition is fantastic at pushing for better tech and safety standards along with SOP and culture at work.

I seem to recall early in Space Xs life people were look forwards to competition and welcoming it. Same thing happened with Tesla with Musk and the fanbase welcoming it. Then competitors come and all goodwill leaves with people wanting them to fail and quit before they even attempt anything.... thats not productive for anyone.

Also I remember some people here and at a certain Private space sub reddit wishing for the SLS to explode on launch so NASA can just abandon it... Toxic team cheering is not a good look.

Not necessarily. Historically, a ploy it government funded research originated in academia where "pure" research is available in the public domain. If course research with specific applications may exist behind a classification system, but our knowledge of space travel drives from the years and years of publicly funded research.

Interesting, so this can also be misused by other governments then right