Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 588 posts

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#51

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hgoel wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission Just a rover [1]. Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. Does Blue Origin not have another pad? (Did they blow up a pad or a test stand?) [1] https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-t...

>Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. That isn't my impression of NASA/government opinion. Starship HLS is seen as the eventual option, as is obvious from the testing campaign. It'll get there eventually and offer unprecedented capability, but it's very clearly several years out. Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having…

> Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having a less risky critical path

Source? (Not doubting, and it sounds vaguely familiar.)

> the landers aren't actually the current bottleneck in the program. The space suits are in total development hell

The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate the actual bottlenecks. I still think launch is it, since even without spacesuits you can do robotic construction. (Hell, even without HLS you can ship nuclear power stations and solar panels and rovers.)

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#52

Post by _moof »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
dgrin91 wrote: post #30

I would guess this puts a big dent in NASA's moon plans. I think Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission. Now they are going to be grounded _again_. They just got off grounded status last week! And this is not even going to mention the significant ground equipment damage they have to deal with. Very unfortunate all around. I hope BO finds a way to keep the timelines.

> Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission Just a rover [1]. Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. Does Blue Origin not have another pad? (Did they blow up a pad or a test stand?) [1] https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-t...

They blew up LC-36.

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#53

Post by gjrq »

debatem1 wrote: post #44
gjrq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counting frames on YouTube, I get about 0.3s for the blast front to reach the top of the 600ft towers. That gives an estimate of around 600 tons TNT so definitely nowhere near all the fuel exploding.

how did you compute that?

The estimate is roughly E = rho*R^5/t^2 with rho the density of air: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor%E2%80%93von_Neumann%E2%...

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#54

Post by xoa »

debatem1 wrote: post #44
gjrq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counting frames on YouTube, I get about 0.3s for the blast front to reach the top of the 600ft towers. That gives an estimate of around 600 tons TNT so definitely nowhere near all the fuel exploding.

how did you compute that?

Sedov-Taylor-Rayleigh blast equation, though this video isn't high enough frame rate to more than ballpark it I think. Tower is ~180m high, so 0.2 sec would be a bit over 1 kiloton instead? But definitely not remotely 13 kt. Still serious of course, when SpaceX suffered launch complex damage during some of its incidents it took a solid 6-12 months to fix.

Everyone can be glad though that no hypergolics are involved at least!

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#55

Post by hgoel »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #51
hgoel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. That isn't my impression of NASA/government opinion. Starship HLS is seen as the eventual option, as is obvious from the testing campaign. It'll get there eventually and offer unprecedented capability, but it's very clearly several years out. Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having…

> Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having a less risky critical path Source? (Not doubting, and it sounds vaguely familiar.) > the landers aren't actually the current bottleneck in the program. The space suits are in total development hell The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate the actual bottlenecks. I still think launch is it, since eve…

I was speaking mainly off my reading of the discussions on the internet in recent months, but I'm assuming the impression stems from this OIG report https://oig.nasa.gov/news/artemis-lander-program-faces-sched...

It seems to point to rising costs on SpaceX's end, and in my reading, is very critical of them compared to BO.

>The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate the actual bottlenecks. I still think launch is it, since even without spacesuits you can do robotic construction

I believe that suits are still important because you can't really do much with a crew there without them. There aren't even new EVA suits available. And, of course politically, it's going to be seen very poorly if they can't do a "One small step for a man..." moment.

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#56

Post by dylan604 »

decimalenough wrote: post #28

On the upside (or maybe that's tightly bolted down side), at least the rocket stayed static, unlike this one in China: https://youtu.be/IlQkeKa4IKg?si=nu-0D73-7hNg6jW3

I think my mom could have taken better footage of that, and I swear she was the worst. I realize that the person holding the camera was looking at the thing directly and getting lost in the moment rather than looking at the camera, but for someone whose job it's been to operate a camera that is incredibly irritating to watch. It's right up there with the Artemis II launch (okay that's a bit harsh, but they were meant to be "pros")

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#57

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hgoel wrote: post #55
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having a less risky critical path Source? (Not doubting, and it sounds vaguely familiar.) > the landers aren't actually the current bottleneck in the program. The space suits are in total development hell The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate the actual bottlenecks. I still think launch is it, since eve…

I was speaking mainly off my reading of the discussions on the internet in recent months, but I'm assuming the impression stems from this OIG report https://oig.nasa.gov/news/artemis-lander-program-faces-sched... It seems to point to rising costs on SpaceX's end, and in my reading, is very critical of them compared to BO. >The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate…

That’s a fair criticism. I’m just never remembering anyone thinking BO was the safer option.

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#58

Post by frakkingcylons »

hgoel wrote: post #37

Ouch, losing the rocket is unfortunate, but the damage to the launch infrastructure is going to easily mean over a year of repairs. I hope they're going to take this as an opportunity to update the infrastructure from lessons learned from the flights so far, and to be able to support some of their future ambitions (e.g. Jarvis).

Eric Berger of Ars Technica:

> I'm hearing that it is possible that Blue Origin decides to go directly to the larger 9x4 variant of New Glenn after this failure. Obviously no decisions like that will be made without more data review.

https://xcancel.com/SciGuySpace/status/2060190522539401631#m

Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

#59

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
hgoel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was speaking mainly off my reading of the discussions on the internet in recent months, but I'm assuming the impression stems from this OIG report https://oig.nasa.gov/news/artemis-lander-program-faces-sched... It seems to point to rising costs on SpaceX's end, and in my reading, is very critical of them compared to BO. >The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate…

That’s a fair criticism. I’m just never remembering anyone thinking BO was the safer option.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN