Jeff Bezos’ Lunar Lander Is a Modular Multipurpose Landing System – Jalopnik

There are two smartly-identified loopy wealthy guys building rockets straight away, and whereas Elon Musk and SpaceX are inclined to salvage many of the eye—mostly because of they are finally doing valid issues in dwelling—Jeff Bezos and his company, Blue Origin, had been rising some attention-grabbing launch vehicles and other dwelling hardware, including a brand current lunar landing machine unveiled yesterday. The lander is known as Blue Moon, and it’s attention-grabbing in that it’s now not a single-motive lander fancy the Apollo LEM, but appears to be like to be a platform for more than one lunar landing mission kinds.

The lander form of appears to be like fancy the descent stage of the Apollo LEM after years of figuring out, intense accessorizing, and a huge boost spurt.

The Blue Moon lander is able to landing over 14,000 pounds of payload on the moon, and that cargo will most definitely be allotted between compartments within the principle body of the lander and on the upper deck, which might per chance lower rovers and other cargo all the map down to the outside with particular crane mechanisms.

The payload bays meet the ESPA payload interface usual, and on-board gasoline cells present energy neutral of access to sunlight.

The well-known engine on the lander is a liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen-fueled re-startable, throttleable engine called BE-7 that makes over 10,000 pounds of thrust. That’s nearly the actual identical because the usual Apollo lander’s descent stage engine.

A crewed version of the Blue Moon has been deliberate as smartly, including a pressurized ascent stage on the upper cargo deck, mighty fancy the genuine Apollo LEM.

It’s price noting that the landing pads seem cramped when put next to Apollo hardware, but it surely appears to be like, in step with Bezos, that the Apollo landing pads were outsized because of no person became once finally certain how dense the lunar surface would finally be.

We haven’t seen any steady plans for when the lander will finally drag to the moon, but Bezos urged that a landing by 2024 became once a aim—a date echoed on the Blue Origin web put.

Elon Musk has lunar ambitions as smartly; presumably the 2 billionaires can organize to land on the moon at the a similar time, and treat the universe to a one-sixth-gravity lunar billionaire fight.