Blue Origin's Starship Killer?

This video talks about Blue Origin's reusable second stage design based on information from their patents.

Blue Origin Patent

NASA paper on active cooling

Rocket Nozzle Types – an Ex Rocket Man’s take on it

00:00 Introduction
00:59 New Glenn is too big
02:00 New Glenn copies starship
02:20 Blue Origin Patented reusable upper stage design
04:34 Requirements for any reusable second stage - starship
05:23 Requirements for any reusable second stage - Blue Origin and Stoke
05:48 Aerospike engine efficiency in vacuum
09:23 Vehicle shape and reentry heating
10:19 Does active cooling work?
10:35 Outtro

@Eager_Space on Twitter
Triabolical_ on Reddit

[guard]

The fact that a patent was granted for "20 to 150 combustion chambers, or fewer or more" and "maybe with extra gas nozzles for cooling or maybe active cooling" is a good sign of how broken IP law is. Instead of "I came up with a design, don't steal it." it's "I don't want anyone else to be able to come up with a design unless they pay me."

[savethedeveloper]

Blue Origin started BEFORE SpaceX, and yet has never reached orbit.

[ryelor]

I'm guessing Blue Origin is really just planning on being a patent troll company.

[codedlogic]

Blue Origin is almost there. All they need to do is BUILD a prototype to test suborbital landings. Then BUILD a landing ship. Then BUILD a prototype rocket can make it to orbit. Then BUILD a working model. I mean, if you think about it, it's really its Starship that is behind . . . (enjoy the gaslight)

[damienkramer]

You need to be more careful. “Big Nozzle” ruined my life my making sure I can never get USB-A in the right way first time.

[MarkDenovich]

Happy to see you mention Ex Rocketman’s blog. I’ve been reading it for years. It’s an incredible resource.

[unclerichard]

Sounds to me like Blue Origin is still in the "All Talk, No Substance" stage. They can run on and on about how successful their rocket will be, but unable to say a word about what will make it successful.

[citizenblue]

I think Stoke Space has a more feasible design.

[williamsullivan]

Big Nozzle was my nickname back in high school.

[ericpopcorn]

The size of New Glenn is not weird to me as it was likely to allow for duel launch to GEO with a reusable first stage. Unlike Falcon Heavy, New Glenn has a large enough fairing to carry two GEO satellites at once. This is the same mission Ariane 5 did as it's bread and butter with it having 10 ton to GEO and Arian 6 having 11.5 with 4 srbs. This is discussed in the New Glenn payload user guide from 2019 in section 2.5 Dual Manifest Capability, with the target mass of 6, 200 kg per payload.

[effervescentrelief]

I'm guessing they are going the stainless steel route as the body can double as the tank wall, gets stronger with crygogenics, is resilient, can be easy welded and worked, and it's cheap. I think we will see more and more stainless steel ships in the future.

[Xavier...]

I always love videos about blue origin because it's so secretive. I would love to know what they are up to now

[bearshrimp]

Just found your channel and it's fantastic. It's right at my knowledge level as a 51 year old man who wanted to be an astronaut until I sprouted to 6'5" and my vision went to 20/400 😅. Now my wife is angry because all I want to do is watch your videos. Great job and I love your analysis. I am also a Boeing kid (Tacoma) and my father in law built Minuteman III. Just hard watching them as with Starliner they are bringing a gun to a knife fight. The maned spaceflight paradigm has really changed over the past 4 years! Looking forward to the next 30 hours of your videos 😊

[marksinclair]

Good assessment.
Are you familiar with Aerojet's Thrust Augmented Nozzle? It seemed too good to be true almost, except they actually built and tested it. You inject more fuel+oxidiser into the nizzle, like an afterburner. Allows a large nizzle to be used at sea level. Gains above 40% thrust at sea level, and actually better improved net Isp over the whole launch profile. I'm surprized that it hasn't been picked up by anyone - probably means I'm missing something.

[happilyham]

Comparing SpaceX to Blue Origin is like comparing Tesla to Rivian. There's really no competition at this point. They're not even in the same league.

[JulianDanzerHAL]

7:50
this may vary a bit with different aerospike design but you will get a similar problem with all of them
also, these are probably plotted for ambient pressure at that latitude but behind a supersonic rocket you'll ahve al ower surrounding pressure from its movement
same effect backwards you want to use sea level optimzied engiens for slowing down a rocket on reentry, in additio nto wanting ot use the same engiens for landing

[MikeMaris]

I wouldn't say they are copying Starship seems pretty different to me. But I think this was probably a feasibility study outcome they are probably only focusing on Glenn and there lunar lander

[STSKSP]

The aerospike/dome design does look cool. Thats all im qualified to say.

[michaelreid]

The Starship re-entry demonstrate the challenges to the second stage re-use. I wonder what special materials New Glenn will use. At the moment the demonstration units appear to be fabricated from aluminium, which is OK for launch but not so much on reentry.

[donjones]

Something tells me a Chinese reusable upper stage will resemble Starship a lot more than Jarvis. This isn't a slam at the Chinese, I expect if Relativity and Firefly survive long enough to go for a bigger rocket and second stage reuse they'll also use the Starship approach.