This star is going to the moon

Chapter 445 World's Richest Man Bezos: Sorry, but money can buy anything. Lu Yun: Hard to say.
The New Glenn rocket is a two-stage design, 7 meters in diameter and 98 meters high, with a fairing width of 7 meters, a takeoff mass of approximately 1500 tons, and a thrust of 1750 tons.

As a new type of large rocket using liquid oxygen and methane fuel, Bezos envisions it as not performing full-explosion missions, but only recovery missions.

In its first-stage rocket recovery mode, its low Earth orbit payload capacity is 45 tons, and its geostationary transfer orbit payload capacity exceeds 13 tons.

It began development ten years ago, was officially announced in 2016, and was initially planned to make its maiden flight in 2020.

But 2020 was last year.

The New Glenn rocket never even took off; people have never even seen it in its complete state.

Even in Blue Origin's own promotional photos and videos, people can only see half a fairing, a few liquid oxygen methane engines, and parts of the rocket body in the large factory.

New Glenn's initial competitor was the Falcon 9, with a recovery capacity of 45 tons compared to New Glenn's 17 tons, and a fairing diameter of 7 meters compared to New Glenn's 5 meters, giving New Glenn a clear advantage.

Even though the Falcon 9 took off first, and the new Glenn rocket's opponent became the more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, Bezos's "slow is fast" belief remained unshaken.

And without fail, they cash out $10 billion from Amazon every year and give it to Blue Origin.

After all, the Falcon Heavy rocket has inherent shortcomings, so its strength is only theoretical. Its fragile core stage structure with a diameter of 3.7 meters simply cannot support the launch of a heavy object weighing more than 60 tons.

Furthermore, its "narrow" fairing, with a diameter of 5 meters and a height of 13 meters, cannot accommodate the delicate spacecraft weighing more than 60 tons.

Unless it only launches a 60-ton iron lump.

Even though the Falcon Heavy rocket has a geostationary transfer orbit payload capacity of 26 tons, twice that of the New Glenn's 13 tons, Bezos still believes that the New Glenn has the advantage!
The synchronous transfer orbit payload capacity of the Falcon Heavy rocket is also limited by the size of the fairing.

Most current geostationary transfer orbit satellites weigh 6 tons, with larger ones weighing 8 tons. However, the Falcon Heavy's fairing can't even fit two of them, let alone three.

If only one unit is installed, the Falcon 9 can be used for transportation, so why would customers spend more money to use the heavy-duty Falcon?
The New Glenn is different; it has the advantage of a large fairing, allowing for the launch of two rockets at once, making its overall cost lower than that of the Falcon 9.

That's why Bezos is confident!

Then, without warning, Blue Star Aerospace suddenly appeared on the Chinese side.

However, as the world's richest man, he initially looked down on Blue Star Aerospace, a small company.

After all, the Wanhu rocket's reusable payload capacity is only 10 tons, which is more than half less than that of the Falcon 9.

Ignore him!

Within two years, Bluestar Aerospace had developed the space shuttle.

That's... not bad, considering Blue Origin's business doesn't include orbital-class manned missions.

In terms of impact, the Space Shuttle is also targeting Elon Musk's Crew Dragon commercial space tourism business.

Bezos was quite happy!
But soon... the ticket price for the "Wooden Kite" class space shuttle was $150 million!
Wang Defa?
The price of this orbital-level space tourism is almost catching up with the price of his suborbital "space tourism".

For the world's richest man like him, $25 and $150 million make no difference.

Not to mention he even considered raising the price from 25 to 50.

But this situation is utterly ridiculous!
The appearance of the Long March 10 rocket later really made Bezos a little panicked.

After all, he didn't care about the Falcon 9 or the Falcon Heavy. The fragile 3.7-meter rocket body structure and small fairing could not threaten the huge New Glenn with a diameter of 7 meters.

The Long March 10 rocket, with a body structure that is 5 meters in diameter, can use a fairing with a diameter of 7 meters, which is the same size as the fairing of the New Glenn rocket.

Although the Long March 10 rocket has a reusable payload capacity of only 25 tons, which is 20 tons less than the New Glenn's 45 tons, there is currently no need for humans to carry 45 tons. On the contrary, there is a considerable need for 20 tons.

Putting aside other things, the space station missions of China and Laos alone can provide a lot of orders.

While the federal government has several commercial space station projects, they are relatively slow in terms of time and weigh only ten to twenty tons. The only limitation is that the Wolf Act prevents cooperation with China, forcing them to use China's New Glenn rocket.

For example, the "Orbital Reef" commercial space station project, in which Blue Origin has a stake.

In addition, SpaceX is also involved in a commercial space station project called "Harbor," whose modules can be fitted into the fairing of the Falcon 9.

None of these can highlight the advantages of New Glenn's large load capacity.

The same applies to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) payload capacity. The new Glenn GTO has a payload capacity of over 13 tons, while the basic Long March 10 GTO has a payload capacity of 10 tons. However, by simply adding a flat upper stage propulsion device to the Long March 10 GTO, it can achieve the same payload capacity as the new Glenn GTO ...

In that case, the new Glenn would only have a theoretical advantage in terms of large load capacity.

However, Laos and China also have the Long March 10 heavy-lift rocket under development, which is a behemoth with a recovery capacity of over 80 tons and is not limited by structure and fairing.

Because they also have a 7-meter diameter fairing.

Bezos's ability to become the world's richest man suggests that his various philosophies are certainly sound. However, the rapid changes in the fields he has been leading in recent years have rendered his "slow is fast" theory ineffective, turning it into "slow is slow."

This made him lose his composure.

In particular, the maiden flight of the new Glenn was postponed from last year to this year, and earlier this year the technical team told him that it would be postponed again.

And it's not just postponed to next year, but directly to 2024!

Two or four years?
By 2024, it was already the crucial moment for returning to the moon, so what was the point of New Glenn?

Furthermore, he is currently suing NASA and SpaceX over NASA's selection of the SpaceX lunar module, and wants to fit his own "national team" lunar module into it.

The "national team" lunar lander was launched using the New Glenn launch system.

You're telling me it will be two or four years before New Glenn can have its first flight?
Thank goodness he didn't chat with Lu Yun. If Lu Yun had told him that New Glenn didn't make its maiden flight until 2005 in his previous life, he probably would have exploded!

More money! We absolutely need to pay more!
"The new Glenn must make its maiden flight next year alongside the SLS rocket and the Long March 10 heavy-lift rocket!"

Bezos said, "I don't care if you poach talent from other companies, further improve the company's R&D efficiency, or any other method, I just want results!"

“I know that doing all this requires money, so I can put the $30 billion that I plan to invest over the next three years into the company’s account in advance, and then add an additional $10 billion.”

"If the new Glenn can make its maiden flight next year, then the rest of this 40 billion will be your bonuses."

As soon as this commitment was made, Blue Origin's technical team immediately began operating at full capacity!

Previously, because of his own philosophy of "slow is fast," no one in the company was in a hurry, which meant that the company never operated at full capacity.

Space Fork is known for its speed; not only do they use "explosion" to quickly obtain data, but their employees also work in three shifts.

Now Bezos himself is getting anxious, and has changed his "slow is fast" philosophy to "money means you can do whatever you want".

The Blue Origin also started spinning at high speed!

Blue Origin's major move quickly became known worldwide, and the reasons behind it were soon analyzed.

External pressure is too great; the "slow and steady wins the race" philosophy is no longer applicable.

Reporters wanted to interview Lu Yun for his opinion, but they couldn't get a chance to meet him.

In fact, Lu Yun's idea was very simple, which was...

"It's hard to tell!"

(End of this chapter)