Blue Origin

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

cwerdna

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
Messages
13,671
Location
SF Bay Area, CA
No response to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD66suMp3J4 I posted at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=610812#p610812? They totally skewer Bezos. Don't want to say much else about it as it'd be a spoiler.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/blue-origin-new-shepard.209587/page-5#post-6008089 has pointer to a video (I've only watched bits of pieces of it) where in at least 2 brief segments, you can see Shatner in training. Shatner will be rocket man tomorrow. Let's hope it all goes well and he returns safely, esp. given that he's 90 years old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPl2c57Z8SY was filmed a bit after the announcement that he'd be going up on Blue Origin. It wasn't particularly insightful but if I make it to 90, I hope I can be as functional as he is.
 
Exactly! It's amazing that he's 90.

Per https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000638/ vs https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000559/. He and Nimoy were born a few days apart yet Nimoy died at the age of 83.

There are all sorts of memes going around about his flight like these:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/STPicard/posts/1081487572621431/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/STPicard/posts/1084740882296100/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/STPicard/posts/1083167815786740/ is likely a reference to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXHKDb0CNjA (skip to 0:58).
 
And what a wit. I have to think he is having more fun than any 90 year alive. Simply amazing.

At risk of this becoming a William Shatner fan fest, here's a very interesting interview with cbc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3imVbP_stB4
 
The landing looked a little hard. But everyone should get a chance to do this. Hugs all around from cowboy bezo$.
 
Nice to still see a bunch of Rivian pickups being used for meeting the returning capsule. All of 10 minutes from take-off to touchdown of the capsule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhdlIor-do?t=8576
 
The New Shepard rocket hovers for so long on landing, unlike the Falcon 9. This is somewhat sad. Blue Origin can do it because NS has so much extra (wasted) propellant on board. After all, it's doing next to nothing, as it is just lifting a capsule to the edge of space.

You can see it here in today's flight: https://youtu.be/uEhdlIor-do?t=9011
The booster lands smoothly at 5MPH, where-as the capsule thuds down at 14MPH.

The hoverslam the F9 does is both far more precise and dangerous: thrust until velocity reaches 0, which needs to happen at the exact moment effective altitude is also 0. If the computers mess that up, it's going to land hard (boom). This can be seen with many of the early F9 landing attempts, as well as the Starship landing attempts (although those mostly had issues with feeding the Raptor engines after coming out of the descent dive; a somewhat harder problem). The F9 can't hover, because that would imply carrying extra propellant to lift that extra landing propellant. E.g., a waste of resources for a ship whose primary purpose is to lift a payload to orbit.

Not that anyone is yet doing propulsive landings with people on board, but were I on board, I'd prefer to ride something doing it the way the NS does it, with a nice smooth hover + landing. SpaceX has a long way to go and lots to prove before people ride a Starship to landing.
 
I don't know where you got the 14 mph...but that is not correct...mostly likely the last bit of data before touchdown. The dust kicks up right before it lands as jets of air cushion the landing at the last second. So it looks worse than it is. The Russians use a similar systems...but with rockets if i recall.
 
Learjet said:
I don't know where you got the 14 mph
Watching the video of the landing as it happened. I went back and looked again, and it does look like it deaccelerated in the last 2 seconds before the dust hit.
 
Jeff Bezos’ mom saved ‘Star Trek’ toys he made as a kid — William Shatner just took them to space
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/william-shatner-took-jeff-bezos-childhood-star-trek-toys-to-space.html
 
Learjet said:
I don't know where you got the 14 mph...but that is not correct...mostly likely the last bit of data before touchdown. The dust kicks up right before it lands as jets of air cushion the landing at the last second. So it looks worse than it is. The Russians use a similar systems...but with rockets if i recall.
The "soft-landing jets" mentioned in the movie "Gravity"
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKqpt4g5_yY at around 2:30, they refer to retro-rockets. They then talk about if somehow only 1 of 3 parachutes deployed, that they have additional safety mechanisms.
 
I watched https://www.amazon.com/Shatner-in-Space/dp/B09NCH5D56 (Shatner in Space) last night on Amazon Prime. I enjoyed it but of course, I'm a huge Trek fan.
 
cwerdna said:
I watched https://www.amazon.com/Shatner-in-Space/dp/B09NCH5D56 (Shatner in Space) last night on Amazon Prime. I enjoyed it but of course, I'm a huge Trek fan.

I'll check that one out. I know there is some angst about millionaires (or billionaires) flying to "space" but I think its great, good way to push technology foreword. Same with EVS too, you expect new tech to start expensive. And it gets some science/space coverage, which is a bonus.
What I really want to see is someone build a rotating space station to test artificial gravity levels and humans, and that could double as our first manufacturing facility. I really think the next gen space telescopes and other structures will need to be built in space. And if starship is a success, you will be able to launch tons of materials. A space depot.
 
Back
Top