Happy landings seem to be in order

In article , says...
True, but apples and oranges. Delta-V for a suborbital hop is
trivial compared to the delta-V required to achieve orbit. That and
the fuel for Blue Origin is LH2, which won't coke in cooling
passages and the like, which some people think might be a risk for
the Merlin engine (LOX/kerosene).

The first stage of a Falcon 9 doesn't itself reach orbital velocity
right? How much faster than Blue Origin is it going at cut-off?

I'd not thought about the coking - I guess the AGW crowd has me
fixated more on CO2


One poster to an online forum said for another Falcon 9 launch:

I picked 100.2 km and 7400 km/hr (2055.6 m/s) off the screen
at staging for the Cassiope launch.

Note that Blue Origin's suborbital vehicle *coasts* to just past 100 km
in altitude, so its velocity at the same altitude is essentially zero.

Also, the payload for Blue Origin's suborbital stage is just a capsule.
For the Falcon 9 first stage the payload is sometimes a capsule but that
payload always includes a fully fueled second stage with a single Merlin
engine.

There really is no direct comparison between the two. Apples and
oranges.

Jeff
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On 4/9/2016 3:18 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
Well, some of it profit to plow back into R&D. And some of it to go
towards lowering the price charged for a launch. From that same El
Reg article:

Also, don't forget the Demand curve from Economics 101. As the price
for launches goes down, the demand for launches will inevitably increase.

So even if SpaceX keeps their profit per launch constant as reuse drives
down their prices, they make more money overall because they will be
selling more launches. Even better, their fixed expenses (all of their
infrastructure and development costs) now become smaller on a per-launch
basis.


Vaughn