At long last the secretive space venture of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has gone public. The video of the test hop is very informative to the rocket afficionado. Note what you do not see: rocket ‘bells’ and flames. The lack of expander nozzles and the large number of small engine ports in the bottom are strongly indicative of an aerospike engine; the lack of flame means they are probably running a high efficiency cryogenic engine using LOX/LH.
These features, plus the shape of the vessel have a long commercial space history. The prototype of this design was Gary Hudsen’s ‘Phoenix’ of the 1980’s. In the early 1990’s, Bill Gaubatz of McDonell Douglas actually built something much like it, but without the aerospike. Bill used the easily available RL-10 LOX/LH engine for his ‘boilerplate’ test ship. (Some months ago I posted a picture of the remains of this test vehicle).
I have been waiting a long time for someone to actually try this configuration. Some say it cannot be made to fly single stage to orbit; others swear vehemently that it can. Noone, however, disagrees that it can do a fine suborbital job or that it is a much more effective general purpose space vehicle than anything with wings.
I had to rush the writing of this in between editing audiocasts at the JPMorgan Healthcare 07 conference in San Franciso and do not have time to go back over it for errors. However, I feel this is very important news so I just dumped it on y’all anyway.
Still fascinating, however hurriedly done!
One thing that intrigues me is how many technology benefactors are now involved in the new space race. Is there an index of who is funding what available? Obviously we know about Carmack, Bezos and Elon Musk but are there any others around?
I suspect that the Microsoft-funded project, should it exist, has discovered a new way of plummeting to the core of the Earth … had to get that one in 🙂
Umm, I think the tech demonstrator is powered by hydrogen peroxide monoprop. I could be wrong, though.
Blue Origin? – I hope a hat-tip to Blue Streak.
Is this going for powered vertical landing? I always thought that one of the major problems with any launch system is the proportion of mass required for its fuel compared to the payload. Surely powered vertical landing simply means taking up even more fuel.
I live 4 miles from their Kent, WA facility… on purpose.
As for the Microsoft-funded project, they took the Ansari X-prize.
Looks great to me too! Unlike Rutan’s design this one has clear development path to an orbital vehicle. Even if SSTO isn’t possible a “zero stage” which flys straight up and down will make reaching LEO possible with some useful payload.
The fuel required for vertical landing of this kind of vehicle isn’t all that much. The terminal velocity is only of the order of 100M/s for a vehicle with a decent mass ratio, there are lots of engines for excellent redundancy and the simplified thermal protection of this design(you might even use some LH2 as a heat sink) mean that it is a much better design than a winged spaceship.
Now where do I get a T shirt with that really cool Blue Origin insignia?
Mike
Thanks for the clarification! It’ll be great when they to sub-orbital.