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I re-watched that video. It’s amusing that BO acts like it alone is inventing reusable rockets, particularly given that New Glenn was designed just a few years ago with a non-reusable 2nd stage.
I remain skeptical of the feasibility of asteroid mining on a large scale, to say nothing of the scale required to build just one functional O’Neill cylinder which would require many megatons of metal. To extract material from asteroids, crush it, separate it, refine it, and then turn it into structurally useful metal will require vast amounts of energy and massive automated factories in the belt. And then you have to move all that finished material to the location where you are going to use it. Unfathomably large amounts of delta V required. If you move the raw or refined material to someplace like the Moon and do the manufacturing there, then you have to launch it back into space, same issue.
And once the cylinder is built you have to finish the inside of it and then actually make it functional and maintain it. The pretty fantasy images in the video are, in my opinion, just fantasies. And I say that as someone who spent much of my childhood reading Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, Niven, Andersen, Dick, and others and enjoying them all.
It seems much easier to build human habitation on the surface of Mars; a stable environment where structures can be created using much less energy to build them and they will be simpler to maintain and expand. Of course it will still be an extremely challenging enterprise. But I think mining asteroids to build O’Neil cylinders is likely orders of magnitude more difficult.
Math doesn’t check out here. Stepping past whatever dubious agenda is behind the dismissive presentation:
- There’s clearly no intimation from Blue that they alone are responsible for reusable rockets, unless one applies extreme bias to Blue’s use of “we”
- There’s clearly no intimation that Blue invented reusable rockets
- While obviously not part of the subject vid, it’s worth noting that Blue is in fact the first entity to completely reuse a rocket that’s been to space…
It’s important to not conflate visions or timelines here—Blue is clearly presenting a very generational, long term vision for space. It should be obvious that’s much more aspirational than the nearer term “set up shop on mars” concepts; applying a culture-of-no type analysis is pretty unwarranted.
If we try to better apples-to-apples the concepts:
- For a very long time it will be significantly easier to develop (and expand) a habitat in earth orbit or on the moon than an equivalent sized/function one on the surface of Mars. The proximity to earth is by far the major factor; its 10+ times easier to get material from earth to LEO than to Mars.
- There’s really no difference in the level of effort required to actually extract and refine resources from any extraterrestrial body—for a very long time all of the equipment to do so will originate on Earth, and see above on moving material.
- The major difference in total difficulty of extraterrestrial mining is location/distance. After the moon, NEOs are the logical next step, as many are much easier to access than Mars.
- The delta V required to get to an object in the asteroid belt from earth is actually not that different than the surface of Mars from earth (and potentially less than Mars, depending on how you do the math). The landing burn onto Mars’ surface is a huge ∆ V suck vs simply circularizing a transfer orbit to Ceres or whatever.
Interestingly, one of the longer term visions out there for space mining is to move material from rich deposits in the belt to Mars (vs earth) since Mars obviously is much closer to the belt. You’d need habitats not unlike Blue is visioning to do that…
Nope, that title goes to the US Air Force's X-15 Flight 91 on August 22, 1963
X-15 Flight 91 - Wikipedia
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/470842main_X_15_Frontier_of_Flight.pdf
Not that it matters.
Don't think I've seen this yet here. A few months old, but decent promo all the same on BE4. They might not have a rocket for it yet, but nobody could accuse Blue of not having production value in their YouTubes. 
Sorry that’s stretching the truth a bit too far. A rocket going straight up above Karman line and coming straight back down is not the kind of reusability we are talking here.
Bezos' Blue Origin wins NASA astronaut moon lander contract to compete with SpaceX’s Starship
The SLD program was effectively a second-chance contest that NASA organized after Elon Musk's SpaceX was the sole contract winner in 2021.
www.cnbc.com
Nikxice
Active Member
Competition is good. Successful development of Starship and/or the Blue Moon lander will instill a sense of urgency within both companies. I don't have faith believing NASA's Artemis 5 declaration is any kind of a lock for BO's HLS. That comes with a lot of assumptions. As with Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon 2, whoever is safe and ready goes to the moon...Bezos versus Musk...could be lining up for a lunar version of Capture the Flag.
I understand the appeal of suggesting that it's a personal race between two men, but it does irk me to say that it's a face off when some fifteen thousand people in the trenches are the ones actually making it happen. The two men are certainly the motive force behind the financing and the vision - critically important - but the process of achieving the technical objectives lies with the troops. Blue Origin vs SpaceX.
I don’t see it that way. NASA wants more than one service provider for the lunar lander for flexibility and to encourage competition and innovation (my reading of their process). SpaceX is the obvious first choice based on its history of successes and current human spaceflight capability. The second choice was less clear, but a choice has been made.
This isn’t a case of “may the best man win” (to use an outdated sexist phrase). It is almost certain that the first two human landings on the Moon in this century will be made with the lunar version of Starship.
For now, I’d just like to see BO actually reach Earth orbit. Doesn’t look like it will be this year…
Bezos' Blue Origin wins NASA astronaut moon lander contract to compete with SpaceX’s Starship
The SLD program was effectively a second-chance contest that NASA organized after Elon Musk's SpaceX was the sole contract winner in 2021.
Umm....
Nikxice
Active Member
The last few years there's been several instances of both personal and company rocket competition. I think most people see these as friendly feuds..... Elon and Tony Bruno, jabbing on Twitter about SpaceX's FH versus ULA's Delta IV....Elon and Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg over who will be first to land on Mars....The Boeing Starliner versus SpaceX's Dragon 2.... Elon and Bezos poking at each others claim of having produced the first reusable Space booster.....BO and SpaceX demonstrating radically different HLS. It's all good serious competition....and public fun.
It's hard to predict or ignore how the MSM runs with these feuds. We can now all see the benefits of the commercialization of Space, so let the chips fall as they may. It was only two years ago that NASA was still sticking to their declaration of a human walking on the moon before the end of 2024. As this decade ticks away, I want whatever it takes to get back on and off the lunar surface....safely. To quote Elon responding to Muilenburg on Twitter......"Do it!"
It's hard to predict or ignore how the MSM runs with these feuds. We can now all see the benefits of the commercialization of Space, so let the chips fall as they may. It was only two years ago that NASA was still sticking to their declaration of a human walking on the moon before the end of 2024. As this decade ticks away, I want whatever it takes to get back on and off the lunar surface....safely. To quote Elon responding to Muilenburg on Twitter......"Do it!"
From that article:Bezos' Blue Origin wins NASA astronaut moon lander contract to compete with SpaceX’s Starship
The SLD program was effectively a second-chance contest that NASA organized after Elon Musk's SpaceX was the sole contract winner in 2021.
I wonder what this means:
And is there any information available regarding how much payload the BO lander can deliver to the lunar surface? Seems like it would be far less than what the lunar Starship plans to achieve.
Also, I’ve read that the BO lander will also require an in-orbit propellant depot, like Starship.
How quickly the group is solving problems in the early going.
Blue Moon is supposed to be able to land 20 tons for the cargo variant in a reusable mode. If expended, 30 tons. Starship HLS is supposed to be able to land 100 tons in reusable mode. If expended 200 tons. For comparison, the Apollo Lunar Lander cargo variant was designed to deliver 5 tons to the lunar surface in an expendable mode.
The original Artemis minimum requirement was to deliver 865 kg and then return to orbit.
Note that I'm speculating a little on the reusable and expended modes of Starship HLS. Aarti Matthews, HLS program manager, said 100 tons without qualification, and Wikipedia says 100-200 tons. I'm interpreting that to mean reusable-expended.
Really? That’s just two people and a few hundred pounds of supplies. Doesn’t seem right.
Thanks for the BO and Starship payload numbers. I read criticism online of lunar Starship about how many refueling flights will be needed to get it out to the Moon, but the critics seem to fail to appreciate how many tons it is capable of delivering, which is a massive amount compared to BO.
New article by Eric Berger about the BO lunar lander.
Good luck with that! And SpaceX will face a similar though not as difficult a challenge in keeping it’s propellants stable during the time on the lunar surface.
Some interesting quotes from the Source Selection Statement:
So.. within the next year and a half? To land on the moon? Really?
And human missions in 4-1/2 years. Ostensibly, their lander will require New Glenn, which has yet to make it's first test flight. And it will not only debut, but will be human rated in that time, despite discussion here of a reusable system like Starship needing 50+ flights before being human-rated?
Oh. Well maybe those timelines are a tad optimistic.
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