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Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launches NASA's ESCAPADE Mars probes (www.upi.com)

submitted 4 months ago by PapaSkwat@lemmings.world to c/technology@lemmy.today

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is a big achievement for both Blue Origin and spaceflight in general in the area of reusable spacecraft, but my count that makes the 4th launch system that puts commercial, scientific, or military payloads in space with a large portion of the stack being reusable:

STS (Shuttle orbiter and SRBs reusable)
SpaceX Falcon/Falcon Heavy
SpaceX Starship/SuperHeavy
....and now Blue Origin New Glenn

Blue Origin being able to "return to launch site" as SpaceX has in the past also shows that this technology is not confined to SpaceX, which is good for everyone.

Other nations and private companies are also working on reusable systems including have hardware built, some even flown and recovered (but without reflight yet). These are great developments for spaceflight as a whole.

Congratulations Blue Origin!

[–] PapaSkwat@lemmings.world -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yep! This is awesome. Strange to think that I grew up, dreaming of this kind of stuff. And now it's almost common enough that people don't even seem to care that much about launches anymore. lol

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

I was a huge spaceflight fan, but I admit my interest has waned in the last 5 years or so. The titans of spaceflight are largely...not good people. Its hard to cheer for the success of their organizations when their leaders are so destructive for society in their other pursuits. There are exceptions to this, like RocketLab's Peter Beck. Half credit positive for ULA's Tory Burno for being an areospace nerd as well as CEO, but half negative credit for his company's efforts to use its entrenched interests to block other rocket companies from growing just to preserve the ULA market. Richard Branson gets some positive as well and an "A for effort", but Virgin Orbit folded entirely, and Virgin Galactic is circling the drain.