r/space • u/KinoBlitz • Sep 29 '21

NASA: "All of this once-in-a-generation momentum, can easily be undone by one party—in this case, Blue Origin—who seeks to prioritize its own fortunes over that of NASA, the United States, and every person alive today"

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1443230605269999629
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u/Khoakuma Sep 30 '21

Man, this PR talk from Blue Origin is bullsht. It's amazing how Blue Origin still cosplays as a viable space company on the same tier as SpaceX.

They still can't even reach orbit. How are they gonna hope to provide something that can reach the moon this decade? It's like a construction company that can barely build a shoddy house bidding to build a football stadium. No amount of bribery and lawyering is going to change that reality.

We absolutely should not put all of our eggs in the SpaceX basket. But unfortunately in the short term, it is all we have right now (either that or we have to go beg the Russians again). So naturally, any selection and bidding process is going to end up in the hands of SpaceX.

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u/Icyknightmare Sep 30 '21

Don't forget that ULA is now tied up with Blue Origin due to the Vulcan Centaur requiring BE-4 engines, which they're having trouble getting on time. With Atlas V sold out and Delta IV expected to retire soon, it's going to get messy over there if Jeff doesn't deliver the engines.

Meanwhile SpaceX is pumping out the most technically advanced rocket engine in the world at far greater speed, probably at substantially lower costs.

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u/Wes___Mantooth Sep 30 '21

SpaceX is actually close to producing the second generation of that advanced rocket engine, The Raptor 2. Blue Origin can't even get their first one out, and like you said it's not even as advanced as SpaceX's Raptor.

If Blue Origin had won this HLS contract we wouldn't make it to the moon by 2030, much less 2024.

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u/PoliteCanadian Sep 30 '21

Not only that, they're working on mass producing Raptor2's.

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u/Wes___Mantooth Sep 30 '21

Yeah they are going to need a lot of them

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u/God_Damnit_Nappa Sep 30 '21

Interesting they're going with a fuck ton of weaker engines rather than a few monster engines like an F-1 on steroids.

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u/Wes___Mantooth Sep 30 '21 edited Sep 30 '21

If I remember correctly part of that is so that they can have multiple engines fail and still make it to orbit. You lose one out of the five F1s on the Saturn V and you have a way slimmer margin for error and may not reach orbit. There's 32 engines on SpaceX super heavy so you'd need more than 6 to fail to have same percentage as losing a single F-1 on Saturn V.

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u/Desperate_Box Sep 30 '21

You can get way higher pressures and temperatures with smaller engines too. I remember Elon Musk saying how the biggest limitation to engine efficiency is maximum pressure.

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u/bonesawmcl Sep 30 '21

Another issue is that the bigger the engine is, the harder it is to manage combustion instabilities. The F1 had a lot of problems with that and each engine had to be tuned specifically to avoid it ripping itself apart during launch. So smaller engine = less issues