The fourth landing of the New Shepard: scientific experiments, a parachute failure test and the first full launch broadcast

Last Sunday, the fourth launch of the same New Shepard rocket with a suborbital ship took place. This time scientific experiments flew in an unmanned ship, the ship itself tested the success of landing in the event of the failure of one of the parachutes, and, most importantly, we saw for the first time a full translation of the launch. Now we were able to observe the full flight cycle, close-ups of technology and we can tell how the flight goes, what technical solutions the designers used, and how they mixed the ideas implemented in the Energiya launch vehicle and the Apollo and Soyuz ships.

Short educational program

New Shepard - reusable rocket and ship for suborbital tourism. The rocket makes a "jump" into space, rising with the ship above 100 km, then the ship and the rocket make a soft landing. The flight takes about ten minutes, while weightlessness lasts 3-4 minutes in a ship. The rocket and the ship are named after Alan Shepard, who in May 1961 made the world's first suborbital space flight. The developer is Blue Origin, under the leadership of Jeff Bezos.

The flights of the New Shepard complex began in 2015, with the first successful landing on November 23. Since then, the same rocket has already made three successful flights (and three soft landings), the flight on Sunday was the fourth.

Scientific experiments

At this time, the flight was first taken from the payload of scientific experiments, which were to be carried out within a few minutes of weightlessness. The fact is that weightlessness can be obtained by jumping in a car / bus on a bump (less than a second), in an airplane (up to 30 seconds), in a suborbital flight (a few minutes) or in an orbital flight (as needed). Obviously, each subsequent version is much more expensive than the previous one. Some experiments may be enough suborbital flight, which is cheaper than the orbital. And participation in the test run gives an additional discount.
On New Shepard flew the following experiments:
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Collisions Into Dust - the study of the collision of solid objects with dust. University experiment can help to understand the processes that occurred in the emerging solar system, and now occur, for example, in the rings of Saturn. Judging by the video, the university conducted experiments on the plane - the laboratory of weightlessness, and here they got almost an order of magnitude longer.



3D Wetting - the study of wetting processes in zero gravity. A version of this experiment has already flown on the ISS, and here in zero gravity there was a camera of a new form (spherical). The study of wetting processes in zero gravity allows you to create more advanced space units, in which, for example, fuel will be better placed in engines, and thanks to the knowledge accumulated in this field, astronauts and astronauts can now drink coffee in zero gravity from special cups , rather than a plastic closed package .



Microgravity Experiment on Dust Environments in Astrophysics-B is a German experiment in which dust balls colliding in zero gravity can help to learn more about the processes that occurred during the formation of planets of the Solar system from a protoplanetary disk.

Flight tests

In addition to the associated payload, this time in the ship, they intentionally turned off the system of ejecting one of the three parachutes. There are no spare parachutes on the New Shepard, so if one of the main parachutes fails, the ship must still make a soft landing. Curiously, the announcers said that the ship should make a successful landing even in case of failure of two of the three parachutes, it is possible that such a test will be carried out in the future.

Broadcast

Here is a video broadcast:





Interesting things start almost from the first frame. It turns out that New Shepard is taken out on a trailer, in a horizontal position. For a small rocket, using an ordinary truck tractor is rational, and horizontal transportation is the easiest . On the upper part of the rocket, the upper stabilizers are visible, under conditions when there is no pressure in the servo-mechanisms, they occupy a position under their own weight, therefore the lower stabilizers are opened.



The next surprise - it turns out, Blue Origin designers were inspired by the idea of ​​the starting and docking unit "Block I" of the launch vehicle "Energy":



The launch-docking unit allows, in comfortable conditions of the assembly and test facility, to connect the rocket-block connectors and then install the rocket with the docking unit into coarser block-start connectors. This solution can save man-hours on the installation of the rocket, thereby simplifying and cheapening the launch. As can be seen from the subsequent frames, the starting team is only a few people.

At 07:05, one can hear "pshiki" from checking the rocket gas rudders. In general, the rocket has many different control units - lower handlebars, upper stabilizers, gas engines, brake plates. For comparison, the Falcon 9 has only the upper lattice steering wheels and gas engines, and the landing legs open just before the landing itself and do not have time to work with either stabilizers or brakes.



The following are checked brake flaps. They will be used for braking during descent, so they open from the bottom up. In this case, the hydraulics (or pneumatics) will not have to overpower the flow of incoming air, on the contrary, he will open the shields himself.



Then the landing pillars are checked. At the bottom of them are installed shock absorbers, which, like the bumper of a car, will wrinkle in case of too hard landing. Falcon 9 has similar shock absorbers, only they are inside the telescopic leg drives:


The photo also clearly shows the release of gas from gas engines



Pay attention to the tower not far from the start. In the future, it will be visible to the left and below the rocket and it may seem that it is very close. We will talk about this tower a little later.



A simple and beautiful solution - the cables of the launching table after undocking just hang on the ropes. It is much easier to develop and maintain than undocking the cables and hoses of some other missiles.


Saturn V, for example

Starting from approximately T-30 minutes, not a single person is visible at the site; obviously, the preparation for the launch from this point is automated. This is already a familiar solution to save money and man-hours.



Rocket refueling starts at about T-20 minutes. Pay attention to the smoke from the tower. Almost certainly (if there is not one more farther out of the frame) this is a tower of drainage of liquid hydrogen. The fact is that liquid hydrogen has a very low boiling point, so it is necessary to refill it up to the last seconds before starting it into tanks and get rid of evaporated. Hydrogen gas is explosive, so it is usually taken away and set on fire:



Curiously, in the case of the New Shepard, the drainage tower is located close to the rocket, and the hydrogen seems to be simply dumped into the atmosphere. Of course, it is lighter than air and immediately rushes up, but with the hydrogen burning system, the situation at the start would be safer.



The rocket already looks shabby, the paint peels off on it. This is the result of exposure to the atmosphere during ascent and descent. If reusable systems are successful, the kind of shabby rocket will become familiar. By the way, there is no frost on the rocket. If you can do without the insulation of tanks on oxygen-kerosene rockets, and, for example, "Soyuz" are covered with ice and turn white:



In the case of an oxygen-hydrogen rocket, hydrogen cannot be used without thermal insulation, but oxygen is isolated “for company”. Therefore, for example, on Saturn-V, frost at start is poured only from the first, oxygen-kerosene stage.





The engine start procedure starts at T-0, and the rocket starts to rise in T + 07 seconds. This is normal; a liquid-propellant rocket engine cannot immediately reach full thrust.



Plot of maximum velocity head. At this point, the rocket is experiencing the maximum load from the oncoming air flow, which then becomes weaker due to the falling pressure. Please note that the exhaust is almost invisible - as a result of fuel combustion, oxygen-hydrogen engines produce water without soot or other visible particles (except for the RS-68 engine on the Delta-IV PH, the heat insulation of the nozzle burns there and the flame has a distinct red tint) .



139 seconds A wide trail behind the rocket indicates that the engine has shut down. Except for the push when separating the rocket and the ship, weightlessness has already come.



The apogee is 101,042 meters.



Please note - the ship gives impetus to gas engines to go sideways from the rocket. The launch is made vertically, so the rocket and the ship must disperse to the sides in order not to collide.



The height is slightly less than 9 km. The open top stabilizers and brake covers are visible.

At an altitude of 3 km, you can clearly hear the clap from overcoming the sound barrier when braking. This is completely normal.

Interestingly, the engine starts to run at one and a half kilometers when the speed is 600 km / h.



At a height of several meters, the rocket suppresses the speed to almost zero and is landing at a constant speed of 8 km / h.



After a successful landing of the rocket, the capsule opens two brake parachutes that stabilize the fall.



And, as provided by the program, two of the three main parachutes are deployed. In general, the technological solution “two brake and three main parachutes” is the parachute system of the ship Apollo, which has already become a classic. And in his history there was a case when, after the successful opening of all three parachutes, one collapsed.



Then the Apollo 15 astronauts made a successful landing, because this option of failure was provided for in the design. But the Apollo sat on the water, which softened the blow. And here, as we see, the rate of decline is 30 kilometers per hour.



And here, it turns out, Blue Origin engineers were inspired by the Soyuz landing system - special soft landing engines turn on just before the touch and soften the blow. On the "Union" it looks more beautiful:



It is curious that the New Shepard opens the parachute very low - the ship was dropping from the opening of the main parachutes to the touch of the ground for about a minute. For example, the "Union" is reduced by parachute for about fifteen minutes. But there you need to have time to open a reserve parachute in case of failure of the main one.

Conclusion

In the future, according to the announcers, testing of the rescue system at the site of the maximum velocity head (max Q) is expected. It will be a very beautiful sight - on a flying rocket the ship will catch fire and fly away. According to Bezos, people can fly to New Shepard as early as 2017. The same factors as the reusable Mask rocket act on the Bezos reusable rocket, and it may end up being unprofitable, but if you have an extra $ 200,000 for space tourism, I would advise New Shepard on the level of security and technology advancement among suborbital tour operators they lead.