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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."

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.
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.
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).

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

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

I agree that the distinction needed to be made. However, this is a win for man kind regardless of the distance.
would it be possible to keep catapulting fuel to the rocket when it runs out?
Musk is just salty that another billionaire has a newer toy.
The same thing is being mentioned in several places elsewhere, but to put some numbers on it:

Orbital velocity is in the vicinity of 7500 to 8000 m/s. At that speed your KE is 1/2.m.v^2 which is about 32e6 Joules/kg.

Orbits are, conveniently, at about 320 km, so your PE is m.g.h, or about about 3.2e6 Joules/kg.

In other words, the energy to get to orbit is ten times the energy to get to the altitude of orbit, and this exercise only got to 1/3 of that. So the energy involved was about 1/30 of that required to put something in orbit.

It's still a fantastic achievement, and an important - nay, critical - step on the way to properly reusable rockets, but it does lend some perspective to it.

TLDR:

Blue Origin did a soft landing from above the Karman line. SpaceX is trying to do that from orbit. The former involves speeds 10x less and energies 100x less than the latter.

Still a hard thing to do no matter how you look at it, but the two goals are not trivial to compare.

Comparing one- and two- stage rockets is a bit of a handicap, since no one (yet) is talking about landing a single-stage-to-orbit rocket.

The best numbers I can find say that the Falcon 9 stage separation is at around 80km and 2km/sec (2.8 MJ/kg of total energy), and the Falcon 9 has so far failed to land under power.

That's neat.

But what I see on video is Bezos landing a rocket and Musk blowing up a rocket.

I understand the technical differences, but in terms of media, this is a pure win.

I noticed a major difference in the landing sequences of the New Shepard and Falcon 9 first stage.

The Falcon 9 first stage, if I recall correctly, is incapable of either hovering or slowly decending. The engine has simply too much power. A Falcon 9 first stage, stopped mid air has two choices, keep the motor on and go up, or turn the motor off and fall - and I don't think the motor has too many extra restarts available.

Because of this inability to hover the Falcon 9 first stage, SpaceX is attempting to have the rocket's vertical velocity reach zero at the exact moment the rocket reaches the pad. This is why when you watch the grasshopper or other SpaceX landing videos, you always wonder for a split second if the rocket has just smashed into the ground. In order for this to work, all nine axis (three each of position, rotation, and velocity) must be brought to zero at exactly the same fixed time. This is insane level control theory here.

Now this type of landing is theoretically possible - and I think it has been tested on the grasshopper at lower speeds, but it scares the willies out of me. There's almost no room for error nor for the chaos of the universe.

New Shepard on the other hand, comes to a hover about 100? feet above the pad, moves horizontally to be above the pad, stops, then lowers itself down. This is tremendously simpler since the rocket only really cares about one or two set of axis at a time, it does not have to be nearly as precise, and you have time to fix anything that's not lined up.

I'm still curious to see if SpaceX can pull off their landing style, or will instead change so that their first stages will be able to hover.

That's not entirely true. Grasshopper is entirely capable of hovering, there are plenty of videos of it doing precisely that. The Falcon 9 landings that have been attempted are a different story because they actually weigh much less at the time of landing because they have burned off most of their fuel. This makes the thrust to weight ratio much higher, making hovering impossible.

The important difference between this New Shepherd flight and those Falcon 9 tests is that the Falcon 9s launched payload to orbit. They burned all their fuel, leaving them with the incredibly difficult slam-landing manoeuver to manage at the end. They have gone close, very close, but have not yet got things entirely right.

So, although this was an impressive technological demonstration, it's a long way from demonstrating a relaunch capability. I look forward to seeing new developments.

Hovering is also an insane balancing act for a rocket. At speed a rocket can use aerodynamic forces to keep everything lined up. In a hover everything literally turns on the engine gimbals. So there is something to be said for coming to an abrupt halt and landing immediately, before things start getting tipsy.
Hovering wastes energy though. The most efficient (theoretical) landing would be an instantaneous impulse that brings your velocity to whatever your landing gear can support. The Falcon economics might not support anything less efficient (than the hover-slam technique).
So this was just a vertical hop?

It would seem that SpaceX remains in a totally different league. By only going vertical, this is a very limited "spacecraft", more akin to the Virgin spaceplane than SpaceX's launch vehicles. For proper access to space, rather than tourist hops, everyone wants to see a reusable launch vehicle --> a craft to actually boost something towards orbit rather than an altitude record. That means returning to some sort of landing after huge downrange progress. So while this is an impressive achievement for space tourism (roller-coasters for billionaires) I still see SpaceX's efforts as the more revolutionary.

This is super cool, in case any of their engineers read this thread congratulations.

To jump in with the inevitable SpaceX comparison. Worth noting is you see the Blue Origin booster: fall, slow, hover, correct any drift, descend then land. The SpaceX booster cannot hover, it has more thrust than it weighs.

I'm sure SpaceX will land their Falcon 9 sooner or later but I think this goes to show that being able to hover makes things a lot easier. Real rockets can't be set to any throttle like in Kerbal Space Program, most can't throttle at all. The Merlin's ability to throttle down to 70% is impressive, and the BE-3's ability to throttle down to 25% is very impressive.
Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo

The landing footage begins at 1:40.

Video I think is from yesterday... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo
Amazon Prime next-day deliveries to the International Space Station just got one step closer...
I find it quite amusing that Bezos does this and what's everyone's first reaction? Let's find out what Elon has to say!
Just watched the video....I think it's pretty lame that Jeff Bezos has no idea how to spray champagne out of a bottle.
Looks like they'll be taking passengers soon. Expected ticket price? Waiting list time?
I'm far from being an expert on such matters, but why doesn't SpaceX attempt to lasso the upper part of the rocket on landing? How about a super big soft pillow? At the very least spread out some huge arms to aid stability?
The Delta Clipper was historic. This has been a followon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
Is this is the first attempt by Blue Origin? The first one turned to be successful?
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos competing with each other? That's great!
I used to be enough to get lots of big boats:

Larry Ellison; Oracle: http://www.superyachtfan.com/larry_ellison.html (including his Americas Cup yachts)

James (Jim) Clark; Silicon Graphics, Netscape: http://www.superyachtfan.com/sailing_yacht_athena.html

Paul Allen; Microsoft: http://www.superyachtfan.com/paul_allen.html (3 very large vessels)

And more recently:

Larry Page; Google: http://www.superyachttimes.com/yachts/details/333

Now you need a rocket! OK, Paul Allen did go there first, as far as I can tell.

Is this what happens when an Engineering company decides to go to space? The video (https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blog/historic-rocket-landing...) of the booster coming down like a freight train, igniting, arresting velocity and correcting for yaw, then landing on a dime was absolutely uncanny. This thing reeks of technical competence and flawless execution.
Does anyone know why it is 5x the effect of gravity for reentry? I would think it would just fall back into the Earth's gravitational pull after its thrusters are turned off. Or is it because it has an arcing path, and thrusters are deliberately not turned off during reentry so that the rocket spends less time burning up in the atmosphere? Anyone know? It's not clear to me why it would be 5x the effect of gravity on reentry.
Investing in space is great for humanity in general but what's gonna stop this industry from going the way of the airlines?

Is this gonna turn into a price war ?

Between SpaceX, Blue Origin and co it is great to finally see such competition and progress in the space sector.

As the great philosopher Mike Tyson once said: I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds.

The video was really exciting to watch. It does appear they come back much more rapidly than Space X but this might be due to video editing. I also did not notice visible attitude thrusters, was it all done via that main motor gimbal?
Space noob here: why is it that just after liftoff, the rocket swings out to the right, and corrects. Is this intentional?

https://youtu.be/9pillaOxGCo?t=55

Elon's Grasshopper from 2 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4

The New Shepard went much higher though (100.5km vs 744m).

That landing was pretty amazing! I was expecting parachutes.
The spacecraft did not exit the atmosphere, but this is certainly a prepossessing feat. Congratulations to Bezos and Blue Origin.
Check the latest Elon Musk's tweets about that.
Great Job! Amazing rocket that 'LANDS'.
So.. they beat spacex?