- Hi, it's me Tim Dodd,
the Everyday Astronaut. Blue Origin, perhaps the sleeping giant of the aerospace industry will be going from a tiny
little suborbital rocket to one of the biggest rockets ever made. Now you guys have been
asking and asking me to do a video all about Blue Origin and their massively
ambitious New Glenn rocket. But I've withheld, why? Well, to date we really didn't
have that much information, just some pretty animations, a few videos of them
firing their BE-4 engine and a few basic specs of the vehicle. Blue Origin has been awfully quiet about this monster rocket, until now. Finally, Blue Origin blessed us or really their future customers with a Payload User's Guide. Ah, that sounds like the
lamest announcement ever. But in all reality it's
super, super exciting as we finally get those
nitty-gritty details that I been waitin' for. So today we actually get to do a quick rundown on Blue Origin. We're gonna talk about their
upcoming, New Glenn rocket and then we're gonna compare it to some other heavy-lift launchers that it's going to be competing against. Finally, I've been waiting
a long for this one. Let's get started. - Three, two, (rocket roaring) All engines running. Lift off, we have a lift off. - Okay since I haven't really done any videos on Blue Origin yet, let's do a super quick
rundown on who they are. Blue Origin was founded in the year 2000 by the richest human alive,
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. That's right. They were actually founded
two years before SpaceX. So wait, they've been around
for almost two decades and have no shortage of money. What the heck have they been up to? That's actually a fair question. Blue Origin is extremely tight-lipped and we often don't hear
about what they're working on until one day they're like, "Oh, hey! "We did this." and with their company motto
being gradatim ferociter, Latin for step by step ferociously, they're conservative on their time lines, slow to show off their details but just as ambitious as the rest of them. So with that in mind, Blue Origin started chasing the suborbital tourism game first. And they still are to this day. In 2005 Jeff Bezos discussed plans for a vertical takeoff and landing suborbital spaceship called New Shepard. Their first tests begin
all the way back in 2006 with the launch of their
subscale demonstrator called Goddard, named after the pioneer of the liquid-fueled rocket
engine, Robert Goddard. This little guy was the company's test bed to learn how to propulsively land, a key technology they'd be utilizing in their upcoming New Shepard program. Think of this like SpaceX's
Grasshopper program which served a similar purpose for SpaceX. The only publicly released
flight reached 86 meters and lasted 25 seconds. The vehicle flew at least
three times in total with the last known flight in 2007. In 2011 Blue Origin
began testing a version of their booster for the New Shepard, climbing to over 13 kilometers in altitude and reaching Mach 1.2 in the process. In 2012 the company did a pad abort test of their crew capsule. By 2015 they began testing their first full New Shepard system which is an 18 meter
tall booster and capsule designed to kiss the edge of space with up to six passengers on board for a 20 minute flight. It's a single stage liquid-fueled booster powered by their BE-3 engine running on liquid hydrogen
and liquid oxygen. Their plan was to separate the booster and the passenger capsule
after main engine cutoff and have the capsule
safely land via parachutes, nice, simple and proven, while the booster was going
to attempt a rocketry first, land propulsively after
touching the edge of space. Their first flight on April
29th, 2015 was a partial success with the capsule and booster just about kissing the Karman line or the boundary of space,
before returning to earth. Now the important thing is the capsule was safely recovered via parachutes however, their first
attempt at landing a booster was not successful, citing a
failure of hydraulic pressure in the control system, leading to a complete loss to the vehicle. It only took seven months
for Blue Origin to return to their Texas launch site
with a new New Shepard rocket, ready to continue testing
their new suborbital workhorse. Their launch on November 23rd,
2015 was picture perfect. After successfully reaching
100.5 kilometers in altitude, the booster and capsule came
rushing back down to earth. The capsule popped it's parachutes and was recovered exactly as planned, however, the booster continued
falling back to earth, just falling and falling and falling, gaining velocity with each passing moment, the ground coming closer
and closer and closer, 'til suddenly, it's engine
ignited exactly as planned and it performed the world's
first propulsive landing after reaching the edge of space. Sorry for the drama, I just wanted to spice it up a little bit. So, yeah, they absolutely
nailed their second flight. And not only that, they actually reused that exact same booster again, taking it up to space
and landing it precisely. And then they did that same thing again three more times for a total of five times with the last flight even doing something even more impressive. It performed an inflight launch abort, which is where they literally
lit a solid rocket booster on top of the main booster and it still survived. Now, that is absolutely mind blowing. They've since retired that second booster which is now sitting at their factory and they're now on to
their third New Shepard. It's flown three times to date with the last one also being an abort test but at apogee. This validated their abort system throughout every portion of flight, providing extras confidence that their passengers are safe no matter the circumstances. So the New Shepard is
crazy, crazy impressive, setting many space flight firsts and getting really close
to finally launching people and I know it's just a suborbital rocket and although the total energy
and velocities involved in these little hops is nothing
compared to orbital flight, it's still an absolutely
incredible rocket. Okay, so now I hear ya. You're sitting there going, wait, I thought the video title was, Will Blue Origin Be the
King of Heavy-lift Rockets? How is this anywhere
comparable to Falcon Heavy? Well, seeing as New Shepard
isn't even that much taller than one of Falcon Heavy's landing legs, yeah, you're right. But now, let's check out
Blue Origin's next rocket. Whoa, wait, wait, wait, they're
going from this to this? From a Cessna to a 747? From a canoe to a cruise ship? From an ant to an elephant? This can't be right, can it? Well it is and it's called New Glenn. Are you seeing a pattern yet? From Goddard, a guy who tested rockets to New Shepard, as in Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in
space on a suborbital flight, and now, New Glenn, as in John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. But come on, anyone can draw
pictures of a giant rocket and say it's going to be super, super big and have really powerful lasers and stuff. So, how seriously can
we actually take this? Ahh, does this answer your question? (roaring engines) Whoa, design work began in 2012 to develop a partially
reusable heavy-lift rocket and in 2015 Blue Origin
made their plans public. But they dropped another fun hint claiming this rocket
would be their smallest of their orbital rockets. Not only that, it's maiden
voyage is scheduled for 2021 and Blue Origin is
historically fairly accurate with their dates so this
might actually hold. New Glenn will initially launch from LC-36 at Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station in Florida. This pad has hosted over 140 launches, formerly launching the
Atlas II and Atlas III. Their factory at Kennedy Space
Center's Exploration Park is located in very
close to their launchpad only about 15 kilometers away. Blue Origin is also working
on securing a launchpad Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. I'll be curious if they'll
have to build another factory. Kinda doubt it. Or if they're going to ship
it through the Panama Canal like many other rockets. New Glenn is gonna be powered by seven of the companies BE-4 engines. The BE-4 is racing to become the first operational
orbital class rocket engine to run on methane. The other is SpaceX's Raptor engine. They're both crazy impressive engines, but they take on the task
in pretty different ways. The Raptor engine is a full-flow
closed cycle methane engine that's approximately the same size as SpaceX's Merlin engines. While the BE-4 is a closed cycle engine that's closer in size to the RS-25 Space Shuttle main engine, which means it's very, very big. The BE-4 is very far
along in it's development. They've successfully
hot-fired full-scale versions of the engine many, many times, including some tests
lasting over 200 seconds. The performance of the engine
has been so attractive, it was chosen by ULA to
be the engine they'll use on their upcoming Vulcan rocket. The upper stage of the
New Glenn will feature two vacuum optimized versions
of their BE-3 engine, that same engine that powers
their New Shepard launcher only these will be called the BE-3Us. Combined they produce just
over a meganewton of thrust. We can kinda speculate similar efficiency to the RL10 vacuum engine. Perhaps the United States' most
prolific upper stage engine. Like the RL10 the BE-3U will
be an expander-cycle engine but interestingly it will be
an open expander bleed cycle and not a closed cycle expander. The only other currently operating open bleed expander cycle,
at least that I know of, is being used by Japan on
the LE-5 series engine. Blue Origin is also planning on using autogenous pressurization on both stages. This means they won't use an inert gas like helium or nitrogen to maintain pressure in the
fuel and oxidizer tanks, which can be cool because
it can decrease complexity. SpaceX is also planning
on using the same system on their upcoming
Starship and Super Heavy, previously known as BFR. The rocket's fuselage
is made out of aluminum, like most other rockets. There were rumors of Blue Origin making a carbon composite upper stage. But, at least for the initial version, it's going to be aluminum. There will be a common
bulkhead on the upper stage, a technique first seen on the Saturn V. Okay, all this is pretty impressive but we haven't got to the
coolest part of New Glenn. Blue Origin will be recovering
and reusing the first stage. Blue Origin is actually
quoting up to 25 reuses out of these massive boosters and seeing how well they've
done with New Shepard, I really hope that's
a metric they can hit. That's super impressive and will certainly help
bring the cost down. They'll be doing a similar technique to what SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavys do most of the time by propulsively landing downrange on a large ship in the ocean. Now before you accuse them
of ripping off SpaceX, two notes, first off, if
they did, would it matter? Why wouldn't you replicate
an awesome system that works so well? But, second off, just to throw
a little salt at some haters, Blue Origin actually filed a patent for reusable rocket booster landing on a seagoing platform in 2010. Crazy. After a bit of a dispute
between SpaceX and Blue Origin the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board canceled Blue Origin's patent claim, meaning the case was lost and SpaceX was given the go-ahead to continue pursuing landing on a ship. But like I said, I don't
really care who did it first or whose idea it was first, it's clearly a great idea and it's what helps allow
a significant payload to be lofted into orbit while having enough propellant
margin to propulsively land. Unlike SpaceX's Autonomous
Spaceport Drone Ship, Blue Origin's ship is
actually a full-blown Stena Freighter container ship called the LPV or
landing platform vehicle. Another notable difference is the LPV will actually be moving
while the rocket lands on it. This helps keep the
landing platform stable, allowing recovery during rough seas. And I know, you're probably
sittin' there going, that sounds impossible, how could they land on a moving ship, isn't that super, super hard? Well, I actually don't think it's gonna be that much different. The rocket can kind of know the trajectory and I'm assuming they've
figured this all out and they know how to work it
out so I think they'll be fine but I'm excited to see them do it. The actual physical landing area is almost the same size as SpaceX's, at around 4500 square meters, although theirs is a
little skinnier and longer and SpaceX's is closer to a square. And although the propulsive landing might actually look
similar to the Falcon 9, the hardware Blue Origin uses before that couldn't be more different. Instead of grid fins at
the top end of the booster, the New Glenn will use some small fins similar to the New Shepard. And although I don't think these fins are going to retract into the booster, they are used for the same purpose which is to steer through the atmosphere. The New Glenn also has
what could be described as some small wings or strakes on the lower portion of the booster. These increase the surface area, helping allow the fuselage
to generate more lift which can give the booster a little more cross-range capability and also gives the atmosphere more time to bleed off more energy. Just like if you were sky-diving, your terminal velocity
would be a lot slower if you were belly first
compared to feet first. We can also see SpaceX
perform a little bit of this with their Falcon 9s, but with some additional surface area, New Glenn might almost be able to fly and slow down a substantial amount. Another fun thing to note is how far downrange these
boosters will likely land. One of the fun little details to come of this New Glenn
PayLoad User's Guide is how long the first stage
will actually burn for. The first stage will burn
a whopping 199 seconds or three minutes and 19 seconds. Compare that to SpaceX, whose longest burn times are often not much over two minutes and 40 seconds. An additional 30 seconds or
more of vehicle traveling at well over 2000 meters per second, yeah, that's gonna put the recoveries pretty far downrange. Now again, we don't know
the exact flight profile or MECO velocity, but judging by the fact that SpaceX's furthest
drone ship landing is around 680 kilometers downrange, New Glenn will probably
land significantly further. Blue Origin's website does state that New Glenn will land nearly a thousand kilometers downrange but I might venture to guess
it'll go beyond that even. What do you think? Place your bets now by voting here! (lively contest music) Okay, so now that we're finally
done giving you a rundown and we're getting pretty heavily
into the comparison mode, it's time we actually stack up how the New Glenn will perform against the other launchers in this class that are going to be flying
around the same time. Some notes here before we get started. If we include all the heavy-lift launchers from around the world, our chart and our screen is
gonna get pretty cluttery. So we're just gonna compare the five United States
heavy-lift launchers that will hopefully be near operating when New Glenn goes online. All five of these rockets either are already flying
payloads for the U.S. Air Force or they've won contracts by the Air Force. That's another reason
why I put these together. We're also gonna be leaving out any super heavy-lift launchers
like the Starship/Super-Heavy, previously know as BFR and the SLS, since those rockets are in a completely different class on their own. Ooh, I love doing these. And this one is very interesting. So first up is SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the only other reusable
launcher in this class. Now, next up is another
three core heavy-lifter, ULA's mighty Delta IV Heavy. Then we have ULA's other
launcher the Vulcan. Now do note, this is not the Vulcan Heavy which won't be online for awhile longer, but even with just the standard
Vulcan with six solids, it's right within the same specs
as all these other rockets. Then we have Northrup
Grumman Innovation Systems upcoming Omega rocket, but a quick note, they too will probably be making a heavy version of the Omega. But, who knows when that will come out and there's really not
that much information out about this rocket so I had to
fudge a few of these numbers but I think they're pretty close but take them all with
a little grain of salt. And of course we have
Blue Origin's New Glenn, which if you need a recap on this rocket, just rewind five minutes. So let's start with the most
obvious thing, their heights. That New Glenn is massive,
standing at 95 meters tall, it's much taller than Falcon
Heavy at 70, Delta IV Heavy 71, Vulcan at 66 and the
Omega at 60 meters tall. New Glenn is also the widest by quite a large amount too, Now compare that to 3.6 meters, well, times three in the Falcon Heavy, five meters, again times
three of the Delta IV Heavy, 5.4 meters of the Vulcan
and five meters of Omega. Next we need to check
out their fairing sizes. Now here's where New Glenn
is in a class of it's own. It's internal volume is massive, a whopping 458 cubic meters compared to the Falcon Heavy which shares the same
relatively small fairing as the Falcon 9 at 145 cubic meters. Then there's the Delta IV which can have up to 233 cubic meters. Now I can't find the exact
numbers on Vulcan or Omega but I believe they're
probably going to be around that same 230 cubic meter-ish region. This massive fairing allows the New Glenn to do dual payloads with up to 10,000 kilograms in either the upper or
lower payload births. This is something that ECA's Ariane 5 has done very well with and now it looks like
New Glenn's taking a note from it's playbook. Now let's talk engines. There couldn't be a wider variety of engines on these rockets. The New Glenn, of course, has those seven BE-4
engines running metholox on the first stage and two BE-3Us on the upper
stage running hydrolox. The Falcon Heavy has 27 Merlin 1Ds running keralox on the first stage and a single vacuum optimized Merlin 1D on the upper stage running keralox also. The Delta IV Heavy has three RS-68As running hydrolox in an upper stage with an RL-10B also running hydrolox. Then we have the Vulcan which actually has the same
main engines as the New Glenn, the BE-4, but again it only has two. However, you can have up to six powerful strap-on solid rocket boosters. It's upper stage has two
RL-10Cs running hydrolox. Then there's the Omega rocket which is just solids on solids and a dash of hydrolox on top. It's a three-stage rocket
with a Castor 600 main booster which is similar to the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters
but only has two segments instead of four. Then it has a Castor 300 solid stage and then it's upper stage
is similar to the Vulcan as it too is RL-10C powered but down to just one,
which also runs hydrolox. And it can have up to six GEM 63XL strap-on solid
rocket boosters as well. Okay, now let's get on to the fun stuff. Thrust. The New Glenn delivers a
more middle-of-the-road 16,800 kilonewtons of thrust, much, much less than the Falcon Heavy which has 22,815 kilonewtons but that's much more
than the Delta IV Heavy at 9,420 kilonewtons. The Vulcan almost ironically comes in at virtually the exact same
amount of thrust as New Glenn despite having literally
the exact same engines, well but, two instead of seven. But what it lacks in BE-4s
it makes up for in SRBs, winding up with almost the exact same total thrust at 16,812. The Omega rocket has a combined 21,798 kilonewtons of thrust
with seven SRB's firing. That sounds crazy. I can't wait to hear one of those fly. Okay, so thrust is great and all, but what can these things
actually deliver to orbit. Now before we get too far into this, I do want to point out, I'm going to be quoting
the three booster recovery for Falcon Heavy, one at sea, two at land, as I think that's how
we're gonna see it fly most of the time. And we're also going to be
quoting the first stage recovery of New Glenn, as I don't
think they ever intend to expend one. So keep that in mind when
we're looking at those numbers. So first, how much can these
rockets get to low earth orbit? New Glenn can launch a
massive 45 tonnes to LEO, Falcon Heavy 30, the Delta
IV Heavy can take 28 tonnes, the Vulcan 27.5 tonnes, and the Omega, I can't find an exact number on but it's probably around 30 tonnes. And lastly, let's compare
how much they can shoot off to a geostationary transfer orbit. New Glenn can loft 13.6 tonnes,
Falcon Heavy eight tonnes, Delta IV Heavy 14
tonnes, Vulcan 13 tonnes, and Omega 10.1 tonnes. A few reasons we see
such massive differences in capabilities between these vehicles again is due to their recoverability, the efficiency of their engines and in some cases their physical size. And of course, the other
big factor here is price. And at this point we just don't
have good enough information on all these launchers or at least not accurate enough to wisely factor them in here. So that being said, I do think Falcon Heavy
will be the one to beat, at least as far as price goes. I'll be very curious if New Glenn or any of the others
will be able to beat it. So, all in all, New Glenn is shaping up to be a super impressive rocket. By the numbers, it will be the largest and most capable rocket
flying when it goes online. Well that is of course
unless SLS makes it online, which I highly doubt it will do by 2021 or if SpaceX's Super Heavy
starts flying by then, which we'll see, but the race is on. I have a feeling the
New Glenn is going to be impressively cost competitive as well, seeing how they're planning
to reuse the booster 25 times, how they can do massive dual payloads and with streamlined operations, like having their factory
right next to their launchpad, this might shake up the industry. I for one am extremely
excited to see this thing fly. And as you may or may not know by now, I'm not really a big fan of tribalism or just picking a favorite
rocket or a favorite company, so of course, I'm going to
be cheering on Blue Origin and their New Glenn rocket
all the way to orbit. 2021 can't come soon enough. So I'm sure the comment
section is full of Jeff who, and other whatevers about
Blue Origin and New Glenn. I don't really care what you guys think. I'm super, super excited for this and I'm just a big fan of being positive and cheering on everyone
in the aerospace industry. So I encourage our community
here to do the same thing. So while you're down there
in the comments section, let me know if you have
any other questions about Blue Origin, about
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It is still unbelievable to me how large these rockets are.
So much hope for BO and New Glenn, but I have a hard team seeing them creep past SpaceX or ULA.
Anyone know when it is supposed to fly?
Cant wait to see this beast fly...and I love that the launch market is getting this competitive.
The private space race is on!!
I am really hoping that New Glenn will be successful.
As for being competitive, we know that SpaceX has a very non-traditional aerospace culture; they like to move very quickly and they focus very much on cost reduction; the fact that they can build 10 Merlin engines plus two stages and still launch at a profit for 60 million is a good indication how different they are.
I don't see any sign that Blue Origin has that same culture; they seem to be operating in a "plentiful funds" environment, and my experience is that without the driver needing economy for the company to be successful, economy is not something that comes naturally.
So I expect that New Glenn is going to be significantly pricier to build than Falcon 9 or FH. Whether Blue cares about that is another matter; SpaceX has to be profitable to fund what they want to fund, and it's not clear what Bezos thinks about that as he has such deep pockets.
One thing that is frustrating though is that fairing sizes are always rounded up. The New Glenn, while having an incredibly large fairing, is closer to 6.3 m in diameter rather than 7 m.
These numbers look great and I hope they succeed for sure, but that’s all they are, is numbers. Until New Glen flies and shows this can do as it promised I’ll be a little skeptical. I was this way with the falcon heavy, and tbh I still kind of am based on its single flight, and will be the same way as I said above. Can’t wait until it flies though!
That faring size really convinced me. Would love to see something like that on a BFR competitor.