How long will it take to rebuild Blue Origin's launch pad?
16 points by rbanffy
by ramaseshanms
1 subcomments
In order for rocket launches to reach 1000+ per year in a decade, we need more innovations and business models in launch pads. 18 months to restore a launchpad is going to hamper progress significantly.
We need to build as many launchpads as we can and allow private companies to rent them.
Ofcourse each rocket design and their launchpads are intricately coupled by various factors, and this would make building generic launchpads a bit difficult.
But the oppurtunity and necessity exists nonetheless. Blue Origin would agree until the next 18 months.
by drob518
0 subcomment
As an engineer, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the SpaceX and Blue Origin teams. All engineering is inherently difficult and even more so when you’re doing it on a big stage. On days when I made a mistake on a hardware design, I might have let some magic smoke out of one of the chips on the board. But it didn’t make the global news feed. Not only are these folks solving really hard problems, they are doing so in public, with lots of cameras watching.
by metalman
0 subcomment
reading comments here, and there are wildly
unrealistic expectations around building rocket infrastructure, and rockets in general.
"rockets are hard", aint a cute little off the cuff quip.
here is the most basic reality, a rockey needs fuel that burns very very quickly, as velocity is limmited by the speed of the "flame front" which must be orbital velocity to reach orbit, and escape velocity to reach an interplanetary speed.
one of many issues is if the speed of the flame front goes to fast, it detonates the fuel, which is part of what happened @ blue origin last week, likely in a malfunction of a turbo pump, but perhaps any of a dozen other causes is responsible.
the true nightmare scenario would be bieng unable to determine the cause, with some indication that it might have been ground equipment, ie: the pad blew up the rocket, and some indication the rocket blew up itself, and the pad.
and the whole giant shower of sparks the was raining out of the mushroom cloud, was burning rocket stuff, there is a lot of the equipment that simply vaporised and does not exist in order to be investigated.
an indication of how much data they have and for what will be the first indicator of how long return to flight might be.
data of actual failed equipment would be
exceptionaly good news.
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