Omitted information on Blue Origin landing number 3

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#1 Omitted information on Blue Origin landing number 3

Post by bernomatic »

not that many people are talking much about what Blue Origin is doing with their New Shepard vehicle, but I was looking around and found this blurb on their site:
New Shepard flew again on April 2, 2016 reaching an apogee of 339,178 feet or 103 kilometers. It was the third flight with the same hardware. We pushed the envelope on this flight, restarting the engine for the propulsive landing only 3,600 feet above the ground, requiring the BE-3 engine to start fast and ramp to high thrust fast.
https://www.blueorigin.com/news

That means that they didn't even try to restart they engines till they were a little over a half mile above the ground. It is apparent they are trying to see how far they can push there equipment (and skill).

Another not touted item about New Shepard is that it is operated from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site, not on of NASA's sites. This may not seem like much at first, but it means they are not beholden to the government for a launch platform.
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#2 Re: Omitted information on Blue Origin landing number 3

Post by luke strawwalker »

Personally, I'm much more interested in their work on the methane engine for the Air Force to replace the Russian-built RD-180 on the Atlas V... I can see a LOT of uses for a big methane burning engine (and getting the experience will put them in the catbird seat to develop smaller, say ORION-SM size methane engines, or Mars ascent vehicle methane burning engines, in the future.

As blackshire would doubtlessly point out, there's a LOT of advantages to the methane burning engines. First, methane is NON-COKING, which makes reusability of methane engines MUCH easier than with kerosene engines. (Kerosene "cokes" up the coolant tubes in the engine combustion chamber and bell nozzle when the engine shuts down, because when the kerosene stops flowing, the extremely hot combustion chamber and nozzle rapidly start boiling the kerosene sitting in the thin nozzle/chamber wall tubes, or thin channel wall nozzle/chamber, and as the kerosene boils off it creates a "crust" of carbon "coke" (like coal "coke") that adheres to the inside of the tubes and channel wall, which builds up and can impede flow or create "hot spots" the next time the engine is fired, and builds up over time. Of course the Merlin, being a kerosene burner, is susceptible to this as well, but apparently SpaceX has it licked-- think I read somewhere that they purge the engine nozzle cooling tubes with ammonia to eliminate coking??) Methane, although it has a much lower boiling point, does not create coking residue in internal engine parts and doesn't require a secondary purge system and operating fluid (like ammonia or whatever) to prevent coking.

Second, methane, despite being the lightest of the hydrocarbon fuels (1 carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms) is MUCH denser than hydrogen itself, making it a good fit for first-stage propulsion. Due to the "heaviness" of the carbon atoms, the peak exhaust theoretical velocity is lower, thus the ISP is lower than hydrogen (whose lightweight atoms accelerate rapidly and much more energetically in chemical reactions, leading to the highest theoretical ISP's of common chemical rocket fuels, which is why hydrogen is SUCH a good propellant on upper stages, despite the low density and enormous fuel tanks required to hold it). On first stages, all-out ISP is less important than sheer raw thrust, and keeping the size of the stage as small as possible to reduce vehicle size and mass. Kerosene tanks are usually pretty small volumetrically compared to the oxygen tanks for kerolox first stages; methane tanks would be larger than an equivalent energy kerosene tank on such a stage, but not RADICALLY bigger like a hydrogen tank would have to be, which is MANY times larger than the LOX tank on a hydrolox powered vehicle stage.

Third, methane, while a cryogenic liquid, is a "low cryogen" like liquid oxygen. Both are liquids at broadly similar temperatures, and easier to store and maintain as liquids with less boiloff. Liquid hydrogen, on the other hand, is a "deep cryogen" with a temperature as a liquid FAR colder than liquid oxygen, which creates a plethora of problems due to the difference in temperature of the two propellants. Oxygen can be frozen solid by liquid hydrogen, so the two tanks must be carefully insulated from each other (especially on common bulkhead tanks) and of course the much "warmer" LOX will cause LH2 to boil off at high rates if they're not properly insulated from one another. LH2, due to its EXTREMELY low temperatures (-423 degrees F) creates a lot of headaches for vehicle designers and ground handling problems, due to the formation of liquid air (free liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen, which can explode or cause extremely severe fires) if propellant lines and surfaces are not properly contained in vacuum or insulated. Additionally, the incredibly small hydrogen molecules (H2) are inordinately difficult to seal and contain in the propellant tanks, lines, valves, and system, and quite prone to leaks. LO2 at -297 degrees F, and LCH4 at -258, cannot form liquid air and are close enough in temperature that it is much simpler to insulate the two different temperature propellants from each other, especially across common bulkheads. The larger LO2 and LCH4 atoms are also less prone to leakage and much easier to seal, and both are common "industrial gases" that are handled much more easily in their liquid state than LH2. LCH4 (Liquid methane, also known as "LNG" or liquid natural gas) is easily and commonly handled and shipped around the world on LNG tankers, so it can be handled by commonly available "off the shelf" ground handling equipment and storage tanks, which are MUCH more common than the exotic and specialized equipment required to handle LH2.

I'd be a LOT more impressed if they fielded a large orbital-capable booster using an LNG/LO2 reusable first stage and LNG/LO2 disposable upper stage, based perhaps on their BE-4 engine they're developing for the Air Force Atlas V. It'd be the "next evolution" up the ladder from the Falcon 9, with its kerosene burning Merlins. (Well, maybe more of a "convergent evolution" of the same idea). At any rate, it'd be MUCH more impressive than some little reusable sounding rocket or uber-rich suborbital hop rocket so they can blow $200,000 for five minutes of weightlessness.

As for "independent of NASA/gubmint launch sites", well, SpaceX is building their own launch site on South Padre Island just off the Texas coast near Brownsville, so they were there first as well. LOL:) SpaceX already has their McGregor, TX test site (which I've attended a rocket launch in a nearby field there years ago in MacGregor; in fact we witnessed a Merlin test firing during the day's activities!

Later! OL J R :)
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#3 Re: Omitted information on Blue Origin landing number 3

Post by luke strawwalker »

Oh, I forgot "fourth" above, and since I don't see an 'edit' button...

Fourth, methane is fairly easily attainable for in-situ resource utilization for deep space missions. (ISRU). Robert Zubrin built a "pilot plant" for turning the commonly available CO2 of the Martian atmosphere into methane rocket propellant via the Sabatier process, using a supply of hydrogen brought from Earth. If water on Mars were easily obtainable, the process could operate INDEPENDENTLY of any propellant constituents brought from Earth. Bringing a tank of hydrogen from Earth was determined to be an acceptable method, ie no "show stoppers" there, as a relatively modest amount of hydrogen was required, but NASA kind of freaked out at the prospect of relying on hydrogen carried all the way from Earth-- their argument was "what would happen if the tank sprang a leak" and you couldn't make propellant on Mars?? The answer, of course, is the same as if ANY propellant tank sprung a leak on the surface of Mars, bleeding off all the ascent propellant-- they'd be stuck there! SO basically the risk was no higher than it would be if ALL the propellant were carried from Earth, which is the NASA 'standard" for their design reference missions (how NASA would intend to go to Mars).

Basically, you suck in CO2 from the Mars atmosphere, react it with hydrogen brought from Earth, and the result is methane (CH4) and oxygen (O2). Both of which make really nifty rocket propellants when used together! Since the CO2 molecules are MUCH heavier than the H2 brought from Earth, the landed mass is very small for such a system compared to bringing the much heavier O2 from Earth, and the difficulties of storing LH2 immersed in a planetary atmosphere on the surface of a (relatively, from hydrogen's POV) warm planet surface (Mars) would be no greater using ISRU than using an LH2/LO2 ascent stage with ALL the propellant being hauled from Earth and landed on Mars. In fact, due to the much smaller amount of LH2 required for the Sabatier production of methane/LOX propellant, it's simpler and easier to do the ISRU methane propellant than it is to do pure LH2/LO2 of terrestrial origin.

IF water can be easily extracted from the subsoil of Mars, surface ops (recovering snow) or condensed from the tenuous and extremely dry Martian atmosphere in usable quantities, the process would be self-sufficient and require NO feedstock hydrogen brought from Earth-- the hydrogen can easily be produced in-situ via electrolysis of water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The hydrogen gas thus produced can be fed into the Sabatier process reactor as a feedstock along with Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide (which is 98% of the Mars atmosphere) to produce methane and MORE O2 as a byproduct, which could then be sent with the oxygen gas produced from the electrolysis unit to a compressor to store it as compressed gas for use in breathing for the Mars surface crew or creating atmospheres in habitats, or liquified using a special plant to create rocket fuel, or to power rovers. Liquid oxygen and liquid methane could be useful for rover fuel, permitting basically planet-wide surface exploration using rovers pulling their own tankers to supply fuel, which is converted to gas and burned in an ordinary internal combustion engine, which, instead of getting its oxygen from "intake air" would instead receive pure oxygen and methane gas from a pair of vaporizers like those commonly used (but upscaled of course) in propane-burning internal combustion engines here on Earth. LNG and LO2 are both commonly transported as liquified industrial gases here on Earth in tanker semi-trucks. While the Mars rover would of course have to be of much lighter and more "flight worthy" design and made to operate on an unimproved surface (no roads) and with absolute reliability (or absolutely reliable backups) it's certainly possible to design a Mars rover "semi tanker" capable of going on extended forays across the Martian surface, or even the possibility of landing automated processors capable of drilling for water or extracting it, processing it with the Mars atmosphere, and then compressing and storing the produced methane and oxygen in remote locations across Mars, to serve as remote "gas stations" in the distant Martian deserts the rover(s) would traverse, so they could periodically "fill her up" as they made their jaunts across the Martian landscape. For simplicity, such "automated gas stations" could just be equipped with tanks to bring hydrogen from Earth to produce fuel from the Mars atmosphere, or even could be automated surface rovers themselves, landed on Mars, filled up with locally-produced hydrogen at the main processing plant in the landing area, and then remotely piloted from Earth to remote areas of the planet to produce fuel for rover expeditions once they were "waiting on station" with their fuel already produced and waiting. Such rovers themselves could be powered by solar energy or by methane/oxygen internal combustion engines, driven on "one way trips" to remote areas to provide a "refueling supply" for the manned rovers coming later.

There's a LOT of ways that methane just makes the entire idea of a Mars expedition a lot easier.

Later! OL J R :)
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#4 Re: Omitted information on Blue Origin landing number 3

Post by Commander »

Hey Luke,

See the post in the Chalk Board regarding buttons
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