Why Blue Origin Loses and Rocket Lab Wins
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- Опубліковано 13 тра 2024
- Blue Origin has been working on New Glenn for a few years.
Rocket Lab recently revealed they are working on a new launcher named Neutron.
Who is more likely to be successful? - Фільми й анімація
This is hidden gem of space videos. Surprised that it have so little views
Thanks. Tell your friends!
Great insights. This video made me realize two additional factors for SpaceX's success that hadn't occurred to me before: (1) Elon, supposedly, was personally involved in the first 3,000 hires at SpaceX, instead of having managers do all the hiring. And (2) SpaceX's top manager, Gwynne Shotwell, was one of the earliest employees and is 100% onboard with the "Mars" focus and company culture, whereas an outside hire likely would not be.
Exactly.
In general, who you hire is tremendously important. To overgeneralize, average managers do not hire great people because they don't want competition, and assholes hire other assholes.
This is exactly why SpaceX has a "no assholes" rule, and they have fired people for it.
Gwynne said she wasn't 100% onboard with Mars in the beginning.
But, she was indeed 100% on board that the space industry needs a revolution, and Elon is that man.
Eric, you are very astute. Many of your observations match my opinions and observations as a non-lead engineer at Blue Origin. I, and many other engineers, who thought that we would do great things at this well-endowed company, were disappointed to find ourselves in a slow organization. Just as you describe, those of us, who could readily find employment in other productive ventures, chose to do so.
However, I think the initial business/profitability analysis of Blue Origin is uninteresting, particularly in light of your later comment (with which I agree) that Blue Origin is a hobby business. Why would you expect them to perform in any sense with respect to conventional metrics? (I'm somewhat rhetorical here; I know you don't!)
To further summarize your observations of Blue Origin, I believe the company *could* perform, but it would require a complete overhaul from the founder, who is the only person who can deal the ultimate consequences (capex approval, hiring/firing, product focus, etc.). In fact, the overhaul would be so involved, that I think the company would be unrecognizable to anyone familiar with its current form.
The cold, hard fact remains that, without other motives for his employees (e.g. profit/loss, imprisonment, fame), the benefactor *must* involve himself, or his vision will be neither communicated nor enacted.
Thanks so much for your insider perspective.
I really, really want Blue Origin to be successful, because the amount of resources that Bezos can bring aren't very common. But I agree with you on what it would take; I noted in another comment that when the military has significant problems with a base/ship they replace all the management.
There's a reason why Lockheed started Skunk Works; they were trying to do things that they knew couldn't be done in their existing corporate culture.
Awesome thank you both for putting out your ideas on the internet for engineering students like me who want to do great things like you.
I love how they call their bigger vehicle neutron... Neutron is heavier than electrons.
I would just love it if rocketlab launched electron at the same time as the Russians launched the proton rocket.
And called the launch hydrogen. 😊
Imo it should have been called Muon. It's literally just an electron, but heavier.
(and then they would have a third name for an even bigger rocket - Taon)
the reason they sell be4s to ula is because that reduces the cost of the engine since they have essentially a "shared cost" between two customers, themselves and ula. this essentially what Tory Bruno said.
I agree with that. But I think it's a little confusing when you are selling to a competitor, as it's not clear what your goal is. Are you trying to make a business out of selling engines to other companies, or are you trying to make a business about launching payloads yourself? How do you decide what your engine price should be; too low and it makes it easier for your competitor to take away business, and too high means you don't make any money selling engines.
And also, when it comes to Blue Origin, money doesn’t seem to be their limiting factor. It really doesn’t matter how much a BE-4 costs when you have Jeff Bezos with substantial liquid assets at his disposal to dump into the company at his discretion. (This is in contrast to Peter Beck; and also to Elon Musk, who, while valued very highly on paper these days, isn’t actually in a position where he could simply open his wallet and throw billions of dollars at a problem.)
And so that points further toward the outside engine contract situation really primary just being a distraction, and a delay, and potentially an annoying engineering constraint wrt compatibility. All in the name of, what, getting some OldSpace legitimacy and making a bit of money that realistically they probably don’t really need anyway?
@@jgottula I just went and looked. ULA has been flying around 8 mission a year, which would imply reasonable amount of Vulcan flights at 12 (maybe more if the constellation work kicks off). That's only 24 engines, and I'd be surprised if there's more than a few million in profit for each (actually, my guess at this point is that Blue Origin has no idea what those engines are actually costing to make). Just not worth it from a revenue/profit perspective.
Though I think it's cool that there's another methalox engine out there.
@@EagerSpace Yeah, good point on the low launch cadence of ULA. Even if they do indeed end up boosting it with launch contracts for… is it overly silly of me to call them “Kuiper belt objects”? 😜
I guess there are basically two ways you could look at the contract to do BE-4’s for Vulcan from BO’s point of view:
1. It gives them some experience ahead of New Glenn and acts as maybe sort of a stepping stone in a way perhaps. Like, they get to deal with running their engine and integration difficulties somewhat before they fully work thru those when they use it on New Glenn. Something like that.
2. Probably the BE-4 as used on Vulcan will not be identical to the BE-4 as used on New Glenn, and so what it’ll really end up doing is delaying New Glenn (because right now they’re mainly working on the Vulcan-integrated variant instead of on the New Glenn variant), and they’ll end up with two different versions of BE-4 that they have to keep making (and maintaining that technical debt for the lifetime of Vulcan), and it’s mostly just a distraction and a detriment to New Glenn.
#2 seems much more plausible to me than #1. And I imagine you agree on that as well.
Really trying to think deeply about *why* BO decided to do the BE-4 deal for ULA leaves me just super confused. The money side of it doesn’t seem to make much sense. The company mission / benefit to NG perspective doesn’t make sense either.
The only things I can think of that justify it are some combination of: making it look more like you’re actually doing things when in fact you’re really not making much substantive big-picture progress; gaining attention/prestige; building/enhancing connections with OldSpace companies to facilitate more work with them (on stuff like HLS perhaps for example); and that’s about where I run out of things. Most of this plausible stuff seems to have no bearing on helping their company mission, or in fact potentially being actively detrimental (e.g. depending on the point of view, making connections with OldSpace companies is like willingly and intentionally making efforts to tie yourself to a boat anchor).
And like, ULA had Aerojet-Rocketdyne all lined up and ready to go with their AR1 engine. So why on earth would you feel compelled to… yeah none of this makes any sense.
I agree that it’s neat to see more methalox in the industry. I kinda wonder if we’re headed in a direction where that ends up becoming as commonplace as RP-1 and Hydrolox.
In principle its use on Vulcan is a bit baffling and maybe unfitting, though, since most of the appeal of Methalox (as I understand it) is stuff like: no possibility of coking (good for reuse); and easier ISRU possibilities. Neither of which ULA seems very interested in. (I mean, yeah, they have that SMART reuse thing written on a whiteboard and/or PowerPoint somewhere, but the likelihood of it ever happening seems… dubious.)
Oh yeah and I guess I’d be a bit unfair if I left out that Methalox has some nice ancillary features like: being non-terrible for use in a fuel-rich or full-flow staged combustion cycle; not involving evil friggin hydrogen; not requiring stupendously hilariously giant tanks (plus massive turbopump volume disparity and tank temperature differential); and just generally being sort of a compromise middle ground between Kerolox and Hydrolox in many respects like density and impulse, which I suppose makes it nice for particular use cases where you don’t exclusively want “lots of thrust in dense package” or “best Isp at all costs please”. (Not sure what use cases those are specifically, but I’m sure they exist.)
You should do one on Relativity space.
Even before their new Terran R design unveiling, they just don't ooze confidence, too much PR and buzzwords, especially from Tim Ellis.
I always have respect for them because they have many ex-SpaceX veterans.
But, you know, those big names could only push you so far.
I've had Relativity on my list of possible topics for a while - along with small launch in general - but I generally chose what I work on based on my level of interest (or sometimes with based on how much interest it will garner, though my record there is poor...), and I haven't found a lot of interest there so far. In their particular case, I find the 3d printing aspect interesting only to the extent that it allows you to do things that are hard/expensive to do with other approaches.
This video came about not because I wanted to dump on Blue Origin, but because I wanted to make a very specific point about business organizations and culture, one that was getting lost in the "Bezos Billionaire Rocket Company" perspective that was (and is) so common.
Btw! Great video! You explained alot of great observations about MBAs in companies!
I'm embarrassed to admit how many years it took me to figure that part out, and wondered what what management said was important - in software, quality and customer satisfaction - was so at odds with what decisions they were making.
I finally figured out that they are playing the "what will get me promoted to partner/VP" game, and the way they behave is based on maximizing that chance (or, to be more charitable for the good managers I knew, they wanted to minimize the chance they made a career-limiting move).
In large software companies, you can use the same outdated methodologies that have been around for 20 years, run your group in a way that drives morale way down and causes a lot of turnover, and it's not going to have a big effect on your career, and there is no way you will get fired for it.
But if you try something different, you will spend endless amounts of time justifying why you are doing something different even if you are wildly successful, and you can count on your peers to do their best to downplay your accomplishments (this is easy because it's hard to tell the difference between an average time doing well on an easy task and an exception team doing well on a very hard task) or even actively undercut you. And if something goes bad, it's a career-limiting move for you regardless of your past accomplishments or whether the bad thing was under control.
This makes *no sense* at all until you realize that it's all about conformance, fitting in, and not making waves. That is what makes a successful career, and actually shipping great software is not a requirement - it's actually a detriment.
Thank you for uploading. I got the chance to see a rocket launch in 2018. Incredible experience. I uploaded a pretty fun montage of the trip to my page.
Back in May of 2010 I took my daughter to Florida to see STS-132. It was definitely worth it.
Hell yeah! Love your presentations/videos!
Thanks.
Excellent video, everything that was new to me was made really clear and your info on both companies was accurate
I would be interested to hear your opinion on whether space x is a well-aligned company?
Interesting question.
Generally, I would say they are well-aligned. Their long term goal is simply "Mars".
Falcon 1 got them experience getting to orbit
Falcon 9 got them experience with a bigger rocket
Dragon got them experience flying a capsule, and then Dragon II got them experience flying humans in a capsule.
Starship is specifically designed for Mars missions.
The HLS "starship moon lander" for NASA is a bit of a distraction; it's kindof aligned with starship but not really. It would provide a nice chunk of cash and give starship PR, but it's not super well aligned.
Starlink is not well aligned - it's not about any step of getting to Mars, it's really about getting enough money to complete their Mars missions. You can argue that it's pushed them to make Falcon 9 more reusable - and that experience is useful - but it's a distraction. Musk recently said that as soon as Starlink is operational - whatever that means - they are going to spin it off as a separate company. That's a good sign that he also views is as a distraction to Mars.
Oh, and Falcon Heavy is a distraction, and Musk tried to kill it 3 or 4 times. Unfortunately, they are contractually obligated to fly it on some missions and it did get them access to the NSSL launches which are quite lucrative, but it's still a distraction.
Great video. I laughed so hard when you said in your dead pan voice "I don't know how to do anything ferociously", you would make a tremendous straight man in a comedy routine (or a bob newhart bit).
This is pure speculation, but I get the feeling that blue origin (bezos) is just waiting for spacex to figure out the tech and the form factor that will work and will then turn around and with the full might of the amazon empire copy the hell out of spacex and out economy of scale them (we already know this is china's MO). Otherwise I don't get their big promises and glacial pace, unless the folks Bezos hired to run blue origin are just blowing smoke up his backside to make sure he keeps footing the bill. Something is fishy or I'm wrong, BO is trying their hardest, and Elon Musk is just the edison/ford/tesla/wozniak that the hype train conductors say he is.
Keep up the good work, I like these long videos with lots of detail.
You have no idea how happy the Bob Newhart comparison made me, but I am by no means worthy. He is one of my all-time favorites. That did trigger a thought; when I used to do presentations for work I would say that I wrote the presentation around the jokes, and I might try to do that a bit more here. Harder to do in this format than live, however.
I spent a little time trolling around Glassdoor and it's pretty obvious that there are a lot of problems and some people clearly believe that Bob Smith's arrival clearly made it worse. I opted not to put that in the video because I also read Rocket Lab's Glassdoor comments and they honestly weren't a lot better.
There's one other comparison I almost made but decided not to. You might be familiar with the cargo cults that sprang up in the Pacific after WWII, where the indigenous people build airfields in hopes that the allied planes would return.
There's a good argument to be made that Blue Origin is a cargo cult aerospace company, and they are making decisions around what an aerospace company should look like rather than what makes sense from a business perspective:
* Big new showy factory in Florida
* Big new showy launch pad in Florida
* Big new showy engine plant in Alabama
* Bidding on NSSL
* Bidding on NASA projects (HLS / Blue Moon)
* Hiring an experience aerospace insider as your CEO
The big new showy spaces are just stupid IMO. Maybe the Florida ones are driven by the choice to build such a big rocket and therefore they needed a big factory that was close by, but you can't tell me that you couldn't lease or buy a nice facility in Huntsville for a whole lot less.
Maybe NSSL made sense to get them development money, but there was 0% chance that they were going to get selected over SpaceX and ULA.
@@EagerSpace Bezos is basically just faking it until he makes it.
The problem is like you said, with the amount of money he has, what you end up with, from the outside, looks like a functioning, healthy company.
I disagree on your take with New Shepherd. What it has done, if anything, is given Blue experience with hydro lox engines, which will be used on New Glenn. Despite the fact that the booster is smaller than the upper stage for New Glenn, it will probably be enough to reduce some of the teething problems other companies have with their second stages - see Firefly for an example.
I think New Shepherd was an okay project for Blue Origin to start out with. I don't think it's clear whether there's a real commercial market for those sort of flights nor whether Blue Origin knows how to run such a business, but I like when companies try new things...
The BE-3 has given them some experience with cryogenic engines and particularly hydrolox engines. It uses a very simple design that isn't very highly stressed, and that's one of the reasons that it took them so long to develop the BE-4; staged combustion - and especially oxygen-rich staged combustion - is much, much harder to develop. There's a reason we don't see combustion
The other issue with New Shepherd is that it doesn't have the same sort of limitations that orbital designs have because the delta v that it needs to generate is low. That makes it easy to build - which you can argue was a good thing for the state of Blue Origin when they built it - but it also means that your engineering organization doesn't learn a lot about building orbital rockets.
My general opinion on New Shepherd is that Blue Origin should spin it off into a wholly-owned subsidiary and let a small group of people see if there's a viable business there.
@@EagerSpace personally, I think New Shepherd should have been a first stage for a smallsat launcher. It would make more sense than whatever they’re trying to do with New Glenn now.
I really don’t like their idea that 1) they will get their massive rocket orbital and reusable with no previous experience and 2) that they will somehow make a reusable upper stage in a timely manner - when we see these test tanks, they aren’t beyond anything SpaceX developed for their SN2/3 vehicles. It makes the whole 2024 date seem ridiculous- how are they going to launch in 2024 for ESCAPADE without having conducted a single integrated test by now?
I have no idea what they’re doing, but I hope they can actually compete.
@@kspkreations3342 It's always hard to explore "what if" with Blue Origin because they publish almost no data about their vehicles, but I pulled some data from a flight...
Falcon 9 gets 3600 meters per second of delta v from their first stage. Some goes to gravity losses, but they net around 2200 meters per second of velocity at around 60 kilometers of altitude. That's pretty much where Electron stages as well - a bit higher, but about the same.
New shepard gets to only 890 meters per second at 60 kilometers. The estimates on the capsule mass vary widely - some suggest 3600 kg, others way up at 9000 kg. Whatever the mass is, they are going to have to reduce it *a lot* to go from the 2300 (ish) m/s of delta v they are getting up to the around 3600 m/s that they need to be a decent first stage.
My quick estimates suggest that their current mass ratio is around 2.1 and they need to get to 3.2 ish to get the delta v they need if they can pair new shepard with a very lightweight second stage.
I can't find a published liftoff mass for the launcher, so I can't give exact numbers, but I would be surprised if they had much payload left.
There's a reason why the majority of launchers that use hydrolox first stages also use solid rockets - the tanks for hydrolox are a lot bigger and they make your launch vehicle a lot bigger and heavier. Pair that with a rocket that isn't actually designed to be a booster and it's probably not going to work well.
But, as I said, blue origin releases almost no numbers so it's really hard to build a real model.
thank you, please more, maybe virgin orbital or astra space
Thanks for the idea; I'll consider it.
Very nice analyse... and I am looking at it 8 month later and it is still on the money...
Thanks.
Company culture really is everything in this kind of situation.
If I were to do the same analysis now, I think I'd add that the success of New Shepard came earlier when the company was much smaller - before it became corporatized.
Damn, the way you presented it shows the problems a lot of companies have. Some could have learned from this and became better. Too late for some.
You Doc, you're good...you...you're very good.....you...no you..
Nice presentation, I think you did a great job elaborating your comparison. I like what you did there at the end, I think Beck will be successful, thanks for that stat on 2016 EY. I have been trying to soak up knowledge on Rocketlab, and I'd like to get your take on the Neutron. I have a good feeling Peter is going to try and scale up instead of multiplying the Rutherfords. What do you think a reasonable time table is on that? What are his chances at succeeding in keeping it electric pump?
I thought the motto and slogan comparisons were insightful. Your take on "when we say were going to do something, we do it" wasn't what I expected. I never thought about the digging themselves in a hole aspect. I like their motto, their slogan, and their naming convention.
My hope is they'll focus on the getting the Neutron to launch out of Virginia, no need to build another launch pad for it in New Zealand till it's successful. However, do build more Electron launch pads around the US. Starting in Vegas or New Mexico, somewhere with a lot of history with the atom. Then other rural areas, like Astra in Alaska. Don't overlook the fact their New Zealand launch site isn't restricted in stoping air or highway traffic.
Great analysis
🇺🇸 USA! USA! USA! 🇺🇸
The biggest question for Neutron is the engine choice as it's engines that drive rocket design rather than the other way around. I don't see them announcing a new rocket without a pretty good plan for that. I *suspect* that they have been working on engine design for a while, and according to what I read in the nasaspaceflight article (and the main engine cutoff peter beck interview), they aren't going to go with electric pumps. Beck also said that he liked a small number of engines.
My prediction is that they are going to try something different, with a few new engines (probably 2-4) for launch propulsion and then a small number of Rutherford engines for landing (and maybe for boostback / entry burns, if they do those).
It makes their new engine easier to design as they don't need deep throttling nor do they need to be able to relight it in flight (maybe), and the weight penalties for the Rutherford as a landing engine is fairly small as it doesn't need to run very long so they don't need many batteries.
WRT to the motto, as it's not an official motto - more of a boast - I don't have a problem with it, and I think Peter Beck's smart enough to adapt when things aren't working.
What do you think of rocket lab vs Astra?
I don't really know enough about Astra to have an opinion that is worth much, but if you insist...
Astra is obviously behind Rocket Lab in what they have accomplished, though they may be close to a successful orbital launch.
The small launcher business has a lot of companies trying to enter; Firefly is hoping to do an orbital launch for customers in April.
In general, I'm not a fan of companies that are big on secrecy; I prefer those that say "we're going to tell you exactly what we're going to do and we aren't worried about competition because we're better than you". Which I think is the SpaceX and Rocket Lab attitude.
Rocket-lab have a cooler logo too.
Been there, management holds meetings, poor workers do what management says and stay employed, good creative and effective workers then get things done in spite of management. As time goes on the good workers slowly evaporate from the company, even more sad they often become bad workers. The effect of management who save money by laying off workers based on political pull or seniority - "You can lay off good workers, but somehow you can never call them back" this was a shop floor motto at a huge and world known aircraft company (still well known but much less respected now.)
Back when IBM had their first layoffs *ever* they gave a very nice severance package to those who volunteered to leave. Many of their best people who could easily get a job elsewhere took a nice paid vacation and then left.
While noting I prefer Rocketlab, I think leaving the engine out of the design section was unfair to BO. Like them or not, BO has more experience with fully cryogenic & closed cycle engines, and has already proven the BE-4, delayed though it was. RL's Archimedes is an unknown quantity.
Edit: I see this video is from 2 years ago, but that's why I specified fully cryogenic. With Vulcan having now flown, I'd still BO has the advantage in design.
I think BE-4 is an important accomplishment, but I don't think they've figured out how to build them in the quantities they need. Two years ago BE-4 was an ongoing joke and I really didn't want to go there. I agree that Archimedes is unproven but I think that maybe Rocket Lab is going to surprise people on that one - I at least do not expect the extended development cycle that the BE-4 took (and is still taking). But engines are crazy hard.
What I've been saying recently is that Blue has the worst "dollars invested" to "hardware in use" ratio of pretty much any active company out there. So much money, so little result.
Blue Origin? More like blue balls, being the base for their New Shepard.
Atleast they will likely launch the New Glenn this year.
Interesting topic, but I don't think is nearly comparable, a single new Glenn would launch 45 tons into LEO even if the neutron would fly at the same time (2024)it isn't in the same class, and big rocket are more efficient than small ones (unless you want to launch a lot of satellite on different orbits).
My point was mostly to look at the two companies and see who I think is more likely to be successful in what they are trying to do. It's certainly true that New Glenn has a higher payload, but it's not true that larger rockets are *inherently* better than small ones; SLS is the obvious example of that.
@@EagerSpace what makes those two companies different it's their long-term plans, blue origin have a goal of launching new Glenn 100 times in a year, if they can launch only 20 times a year would be a failure, on the other side if rocket lab would launch neutron 20 times a year would be a huge success.
I'm not sure if I understand your point...
Are you saying that it's better to have a more ambitious plan to start? Doesn't that automatically reduce the chances of being successful?
@@EagerSpace in theory SLS should be more cheaper than others launching vehicles per kg delivered in space, that wouldn't happen for two reasons first is that it use very expensive main engines (RS-25) and the second is that would fly only once a year, a higher rate of launching is the key of blue origin strategy to low costs, if the initial investment in infrastructure and development of the rocket will be distributed on a great numbers of missions, price of each launch will go down.Obviously it's a big gambling to start with such high ambition but launching at lower rate will increase costs of each launch.
man does anyone on the internet actually LIKE BO lol? every video is like they suck, RL and spacex good.
Many of us have liked Blue Origin in the past, but at this point, it's a lot of money spent, a lot of talk, and precious little accomplishment.
That's where the hate - or lack of respect - comes from.
Very shallow analysis
Tell me more....