NASA awards launch contract to Blue Origin’s unlaunched New Glenn rocket
NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin the launch contract for its smallsat ESCAPADE Mars orbiter mission, set to launch in late 2024.
ESCAPADE will launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Space Launch Complex-36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Launch is targeted for late 2024. Blue Origin is one of 13 companies NASA selected for VADR contracts in 2022. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contracts. As part of VADR, the fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts have a five-year ordering period with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts.
NASA’s VADR program is designed to give contracts to higher risk contractors to help those launch companies develop their rockets. Since New Glenn is years behind schedule and as-yet unlaunched, this contract is an attempt to help change that. Note however that it is fixed price, and does not set a deadline for Blue Origin to launch.
ESCAPADE will actually be two orbiters designed to study the faint artifacts of Mars’ magnetosphere left over from its past.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
NASA yesterday awarded Blue Origin the launch contract for its smallsat ESCAPADE Mars orbiter mission, set to launch in late 2024.
ESCAPADE will launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Space Launch Complex-36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Launch is targeted for late 2024. Blue Origin is one of 13 companies NASA selected for VADR contracts in 2022. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contracts. As part of VADR, the fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts have a five-year ordering period with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts.
NASA’s VADR program is designed to give contracts to higher risk contractors to help those launch companies develop their rockets. Since New Glenn is years behind schedule and as-yet unlaunched, this contract is an attempt to help change that. Note however that it is fixed price, and does not set a deadline for Blue Origin to launch.
ESCAPADE will actually be two orbiters designed to study the faint artifacts of Mars’ magnetosphere left over from its past.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It’s nice to see NASA giving contracts to those underfunded starter rocket companies that have limited funds and are in danger of going broke. That being said, Why the heck are they giving it to Bozo’s? Oh, thats right, Amazon did not make a profit last year.
BO has become just like the aerospace contractors of old. Eventually they will be as big a Boeing and Lockheed.
And not have to actually produce anything but jobs.
Jobs and campaign funds.
Oh, thats right, Amazon did not make a profit last year.
Well, in fairness, Jeff Foust just noted on Twitter what the award amount for the ESCAPADE launch is: $20 million. I don’t think that’s going to do much for Amazon’s bottom line!
For all my criticisms of Blue Origin, I really *do* think it would be beneficial to the U.S. to have New Glenn in operation, the sooner the better. I don’t mind this award, which is really just a small nominal fee to give NG a (non-important, non-urgent) payload on its first test flight. What does puzzle me is the assumption that Blue Origin would actually have New Glenn ready for a launch in 4Q of next year.
Keep in mind that this is a contract for services, not a handout or subsidy. The press release uses the word “foster,” which gives a certain impression that these Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contracts are unearned. The government and many companies often will sign contracts with unlaunched launch vehicles, which shows confidence in those company and their rockets. It is why so many recent rockets have had their first launches with payloads rather than the traditional mass simulators. ESCAPADE isn’t even a payload for New Glenn’s first launch but for a launch late next year.
https://tdglobal.ksc.nasa.gov/servlet/sm.web.Fetch/NASA_LSP_Fact_Sheet_for_Venture_Class__5.21.21.pdf?rhid=1003&did=50162&type=released
Since NASA is turning to commercial launch providers, this is merely another example of this trend. When NASA chooses a variety of launch providers, it helps to ensure that there will continue to be a competitive market, which has become a major goal for NASA’s Launch Services Program. A competitive market will ensure that additional efficiencies will be found or developed.
Inefficiency was a problem for the first half century of spaceflight. Governments were the main launch providers as well as the main customers, and as monopolies — and monopsonies — they did did not have incentive to improve their launch services. However, they did incrementally improve their launch capacities. Launch services remained expensive and difficult to obtain, since there was such a high priority of government launches over private or commercial launches. The number of launch vehicles was limited and the launch cadences were low. SpaceX has changed this philosophy, and Rocket Lab is working to follow in these footsteps. Half a decade ago, we thought Blue Origin was nipping at SpaceX’s heels, too, but that turned out to be mired in difficulty. Blue Origin has yet to become efficient in its development process.
Blue Origin receiving a contract to launch on an untested rocket is not as unusual as the comments here seem to imply. Like ULA’s Vulcan rocket (its first launch also has a customer), Blue Origin’s New Glenn is likely to work. The real question is whether these rockets can operate profitably in today’s competitive launch market. For those signing launch contracts, the question is whether the vehicle can get their payloads to orbit reliably. Once reliability has been proved, price and availability become important factors, and these depend upon efficiency.
ESCAPADE isn’t even a payload for New Glenn’s first launch but for a launch late next year.
Are we sure about that?
Say what you will of SLS.. we got a long core test where the nozzles gimbaled like mad—thumped a multi ton object BEO after taking a hurricane to the face.
What has Bezos done?
Jeff Wright asked: “What has Bezos done?”
His is the third private company to take people into space, a task that twenty years ago only three nations had ever managed to do. As Virgin Galactic has shown, this is no small feat. It is difficult, it is costly, and it is still dangerous.
SLS may do better than any of Blue Origin’s vehicles, but SLS has the resources of a powerful nation with three quarters of a century of rocket experience behind it. From one perspective SLS may seem impressive, with its madly gimbaling nozzles, but from most other perspectives Bezos is more impressive.
I often complain that Blue Origin does not yet do rapid development, but neither do the various national space programs. NASA has worked on a return to the Moon for two decades, has more resources than it had when it started the first trip to the Moon, yet it is taking more than three times longer to get man back to the Moon. From that perspective, even Richard Branson is impressive.