Blue Origin first human flight

[Sparko]

If you want to watch it live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMHhXzpwupU

not sure if this embedded video version will work but:

[Cow Poke]

Absolutely amazing to watch!

[Sparko]

Absolutely amazing to watch!

Yeah. It looked like the air jet to slow them down at the end didn't work though as far as I could tell. Looked like they hit at the full 16MPH.

[Sparko]

Yeah. It looked like the air jet to slow them down at the end didn't work though as far as I could tell. Looked like they hit at the full 16MPH.

Looking at the replay, I think the puff of dust at the last second was the air cushion, but from the narrator's description it was supposed to start at 6 feet above the ground and slow them down to a point that the touchdown was "like sitting in a chair" - didn't look like that to me.

But dang, did you see how fast it left the tower? None of that really slow take off like on the Space Shuttle or Apollo rockets (might be because of scale though, the BO (hmm that's an unfortunate acronym) rocket was much smaller, so maybe it just looks faster by comparison. But whoosh! it was off the launchpad in a second and climbing fast.

[Stoic]

Yeah. It looked like the air jet to slow them down at the end didn't work though as far as I could tell. Looked like they hit at the full 16MPH.

It looked to me like it worked fine. It doesn't take long to slow from 16 mph to 1 mph, even if you limit it to 3 or 4 g's.

[Sparko]

It looked to me like it worked fine. It doesn't take long to slow from 16 mph to 1 mph, even if you limit it to 3 or 4 g's.

Well if you do it in a tenth of a second it doesn't do much good. I thought it was supposed to start at 6 feet above the ground. Looked like it started at about 6 inches.

[Stoic]

Looking at the replay, I think the puff of dust at the last second was the air cushion, but from the narrator's description it was supposed to start at 6 feet above the ground and slow them down to a point that the touchdown was "like sitting in a chair" - didn't look like that to me.

But dang, did you see how fast it left the tower? None of that really slow take off like on the Space Shuttle or Apollo rockets (might be because of scale though, the BO (hmm that's an unfortunate acronym) rocket was much smaller, so maybe it just looks faster by comparison. But whoosh! it was off the launchpad in a second and climbing fast.

Yeah, it's one third the height of the shuttle, and one sixth the height of the Saturn V.

[Stoic]

Well if you do it in a tenth of a second it doesn't do much good. I thought it was supposed to start at 6 feet above the ground. Looked like it started at about 6 inches.

From 6 feet, it should take a little over half a second to slow to 1 mph, and since it's just air, you might not notice it until the capsule is a lot closer to the ground.

[Sparko]

From 6 feet, it should take a little over half a second to slow to 1 mph, and since it's just air, you might not notice it until the capsule is a lot closer to the ground.

Could be. They appeared to be fine.

[Sparko]

Interesting factoid: Oliver Daemen, 18 is the youngest person ever in space and Mary "Wally" Funk, 82, was the oldest. Quite a range.

[Sparko]

And Bezos wore a cowboy hat into space. First Space Cowboy I guess.

[Sparko]

If they got the price down to around $5.000 for a trip, I would go in a heartbeat. Once I saved up the cash by eating Ramen noodles for a year.

[Stoic]

If they got the price down to around $5.000 for a trip, I would go in a heartbeat.

Me too, but I don't think it'll ever get close to that cheap.

[Sparko]

Me too, but I don't think it'll ever get close to that cheap.

Good thing about capitalism is competition and technology drives the price down pretty quickly. If they (or someone else) can scale up the number of people they can take up, maybe like take up 10, then 20, 30, 50 people at a time, the cost per person would drop. I think the biggest cost is labor and fuel. The more they do it the more routine it becomes and the labor gets cheaper, as does the technology through mass production and standardization.

[Cow Poke]

Yeah. It looked like the air jet to slow them down at the end didn't work though as far as I could tell. Looked like they hit at the full 16MPH.

But it looks like they were fully prepared for that, as well, and suffered no apparent ill effects.