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

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

#111

Post by bombcar »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #58
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

I know it's not, but darned if that doesn't sound like "it exploded real big, so build a bigger one!"

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

#113

Post by userbinator »

Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg

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

#115

Post by hvb2 »

trollbridge wrote: post #91
mholt wrote: post #89

Is it normal to load ALL the propellant when doing a static fire? (I presume that's the case, anyway, given the sheer magnitude of the kaboom.) I know a WDR typically would, but I don't think they perform an ignition for those.

Isn’t that the point of the test fire? To find out if there’s a problem that will make it go boom

You don't need to fill it all the way up for that. If in flight your engines burn for 2 minutes, but your static fire is only a few seconds you can see why.

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

#116

Post by generuso »

xoa wrote: post #54
debatem1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

You are talking about the energy of the blast. In my comment I was talking about the heat output. From the followup comments it seems I have not made it sufficiently clear.

The energy of the detonation wave in rocket explosions is typically 1-2% of the energy in the fuel, at least that is the ballpark of what people use for estimating the effects of mishaps.

We also do not know if the tanks were fully filled -- it the past, rocket companies have called 10 second static fire tests a "full duration static fire test." We will probably find out later what it actually was meant to be.

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

#117

Post by appplication »

mandevil wrote: post #93
mholt wrote: post #89

Is it normal to load ALL the propellant when doing a static fire? (I presume that's the case, anyway, given the sheer magnitude of the kaboom.) I know a WDR typically would, but I don't think they perform an ignition for those.

In September 2016 almost exactly the same thing happened to a Falcon 9 at the Cape, also on a static fire. New Glenn is bigger, so bigger bang, but pretty much exactly the same thing. Off the top of my head, I recall in SpaceX's case it was a helium tank failure- a helium tank weld failed and the helium tank itself shot through the cryogenic oxygen, hit the far wall, and gave off a spark. But that sort of failure is…

I think this makes sense, but then what’s the learning - dont make bad welds? I imagine they were already trying to do as best they could. Or perhaps “however stringent you think your checks are, they need to be more stringent”. And then learning that repeatedly is somewhat spectacular.

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

#118

Post by xeonmc »

userbinator wrote: post #113

Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg

aerospace is operating at the absolute limit of what can be asked of known materials science

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

#119

Post by 0xffff2 »

hparadiz wrote: post #101
0xffff2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, why? I can't speak for BO, but at NASA, we're all learning what the technology can and can't do just like everyone else. You can bet your ass that no one is vibe-coding any part of the rocket without thorough review of every line of code and thorough testing at multiple levels though.

As long as the thorough reviews are done that is 100% reasonable.

I think it can be hard for anyone who hasn't done safety-critical software before to understand just how much testing goes into it. Even for non-human spaceflight, the stakes are so high, we have all of the testing you would expect as far as unit tests, system integration tests, end to end testing, but then we also have full human in the loop software sims, full hardware in the loop sims both at multiple levels of integration, and on and on. For every line of code I've written for a spacecraft, I'm 100% confident that if that line is responsible for a bug in flight, there are at least 10 other people who would share the blame with me.

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

#120

Post by oconnor663 »

mholt wrote: post #89

Is it normal to load ALL the propellant when doing a static fire? (I presume that's the case, anyway, given the sheer magnitude of the kaboom.) I know a WDR typically would, but I don't think they perform an ignition for those.

I don't know anything about this particular launch, but one reason static fires sometimes load more fuel than you'd think is that the hold-down clamps aren't rated for the total thrust of the vehicle. Launch thrust is usually 1.2-1.6x the launch weight (if it's <1x you will not go to space today), so after subtracting gravity you've got 0.2-0.6x the weight acting upwards on the clamps. But rockets are mostly fuel by weight, so if you static fire it nearly empty, then that gravity term goes to ~zero, and the clamps have to hold the full 1.2-1.6x. You could overbuild them to handle that -- which isn't the end of the world, because they don't need to fly -- but it can be easier to just add extra fuel and detank it afterwards.
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