h/t Instapundit[Spectrum.ieee] The commercial space business has blossomed over the past decade. Two companies, though, have grabbed the spotlight, emerging as the most ambitious of them all: Blue Origin and SpaceX.
At first glance, these two companies look a lot alike. They are both led by billionaires who became wealthy from the Internet: Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin earned his fortune from Amazon.com, and Elon Musk of SpaceX got rich initially from Web-based businesses, notably PayPal. Both companies are developing large, reusable launch vehicles capable of carrying people and satellites for government and commercial customers. And both are motivated by almost messianic visions of humanity’s future beyond Earth. This coming year, we’ll likely see some major milestones as these two titans continue to jockey for position.
Over the past few years, SpaceX has become one of the most active launch companies on the planet. In 2018 alone, SpaceX performed 21 launches, representing about 20 percent of roughly 100 worldwide launches.
The company stands out in another way‐it’s the only one to recover and reuse its rockets. Landings of its Falcon 9 first stages have gone from being novelties, often with explosive failures, to a routine aspect of most missions. Last May, SpaceX introduced its latest version of the Falcon 9, called the Block 5, the first stage of which is designed to be flown 10 or more times.
Although the Falcon 9 will be SpaceX’s workhorse for years to come, the company added a new vehicle to its stable three months before introducing the Block 5. Last February, the company launched the first Falcon Heavy, which includes three Falcon 9 first stages lined up in a row. The Falcon Heavy is capable of placing more than 60 metric tons into low Earth orbit, far more than any existing launch vehicle can accomplish.
But even the Falcon Heavy pales in comparison with what SpaceX is now developing, a vehicle that until recently was called the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. (The R-rated interpretation of that acronym wasn’t lost on the rocket’s developers, who initially used it as the informal code name for the project.) In late November, Musk announced a name change for the BFR‐to Starship for the crewed upper stage, and Super Heavy for the lower booster stage. That booster will have 31 of the company’s Raptor engines, which are under development, while Starship will be outfitted with seven Raptor engines. Both stages are intended to be reusable, and Starship will be able to carry dozens of people to destinations far beyond Earth orbit.
SpaceX has modified the design of this colossal vehicle a couple of times since conceiving it in 2016. The most recent version was described at a press conference this past September at the company’s California headquarters. This version, Musk said, would be able to place 100 metric tons on the surface of Mars, provided that the spaceship’s upper stage was refueled in Earth orbit before departing for the Red Planet.
"I think it looks beautiful," he added, noting the similarity to a fictional rocket ship of graphic-novel fame. "I love the Tintin rocket design, so I kind of wanted to bias it towards that."
Speaking in early September at an event to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, said that the company will begin making the first "hop tests" of the BFR’s upper stage (Starship) in late 2019.
Blue Origin, by contrast, has yet to launch anything at all into orbit. But the company has similarly big ambitions. It’s working on a rocket it calls New Glenn (named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth), which is scheduled to launch for the first time in 2021. The two-stage rocket will be able to place 45 metric tons into low Earth orbit, with its first stage designed to land on a ship at sea and be reused up to 25 times.
"We’re in build mode right now," said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, during a space policy workshop in Washington, D.C., this past October. The company has completed a new 70,000-square-meter (750,000-square-foot) factory for constructing the rocket just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, and it’s currently building a testing and refurbishment facility nearby, which is expected to be completed in early 2019. Blue Origin is also modifying a dormant launchpad at nearby Cape Canaveral for its operations and has signed up several commercial customers for New Glenn.