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Old October 2nd 17, 03:18 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Default NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...
Note that Musk figures that in the next few years SpaceX will capture
half of the entire satellite launch business. In the face of that and
BFR, NASA's 'lunar orbiting space station' makes even less sense (and
it made very little in the first place - what's it for, exactly?).

Possibly. But Blue Origin isn't sitting still either, so SpaceX could
have some competition. Real competition is a good thing.


True, but New Glenn appears to me to be on a slower track than Falcon
Heavy, which is its direct competition. I don't think Blue Origin has
anything like BFR in their pipeline.


The follow-on to New Glenn is envisioned to be New Armstrong. I doubt
it's "in the pipeline" since they've yet to actually launch anything to
orbit (one step at a time). Here is a cite:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...es-details-of-
its-monster-orbital-rocket/

From above:

Moreover, New Glenn is also, as Bezos repeated Tuesday, "the
smallest orbital rocket Blue Origin will ever build." In the
future, even larger boosters are coming, such as the previously
teased New Armstrong rocket. The tech mogul has recently said
that lunar exploration is the next logical step for human
activity in space.

Bezos has grand visions for his launch vehicles as well. Since Bezos
does steadily fund Blue Origin and since SpaceX has been known to be a
bit overoptimistic with schedules, we may eventually see some actual
commercial competition in US between launch vehicles in the SLS class
and larger. This encourages me more than anything else.


The real problem here is that all we have about New Armstrong is the
name. BFR (which doesn't have a 'real' name) seems much, much further
along. New Glenn seems to sort of be pacing Falcon Heavy, but I think
it's a couple years behind. New Armstrong isn't pacing anything
because so far as we know it doesn't even exist as napkin drawings
while BFR has engines and is close to bending metal with a (very
aggressive) schedule. The one place Blue Origin seems to have it
better than SpaceX is that Bezos can sell a billion dollars worth of
stock every year (which is what he's been doing) to fund things while
Musk is financing out of operations.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw