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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

#221

Post by card_zero »

jeffrallen wrote: post #203
wahern wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crushing only because their cadence is so slow compared to SpaceX. Their process seems much closer to the highly risk averse methodology of traditional incumbents than to SpaceX's style. Failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rockets are ridiculously complex. Slow-and-steady wins the race makes sense for many individual components, depending on how well understood the problem domain is, and your ability to rigor…

Failure is not only an option, but is required. The more smaller failures you have, the more big successes you can have.

Well, they just had a failure, so that spells great success, right?

I'm unclear on the point of why having a rocket blow up when you're being slow and careful is more of a setback than having one blow up when you aren't.

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

#222

Post by worldsavior »

areoform wrote: post #138
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

I've talked about this a few times before but – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726133 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726078 - to repeat myself; It's because we're a very primitive species, and the forces involved here are genuinely new. It's physically not possible at our current level of technology to make this "safer" due to the distances and energies involved. I will let John Young explain it his…

"very primitive" - primitive in relation to who? As a species we control the planet, we rule every other species currently known to humans, how is that primitive?

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

#223

Post by sephamorr »

domlebo70 wrote: post #206
elzbardico wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet lots of telemetry, comprehensive design and change documentation, along with engineers tacit knowledge. Something like: telemetry shows dramatic drop of temperature on this, that given the location of the sensor could only be caused by a specific LOX line leak, and vibration sensors show data compatible with friction as the ignition event and not a short circuit because the relevant telemetry doesn't show any…

Yeah, but at the end of the day you can't be sure right? That doubt would eat away at me

The doubt is supposed to stay with you! You need to make sure there aren't other causes or contributing factors hiding behind 'the obvious'. There have been notorious cases in spaceflight where the issue was 'identified' and 'fixed', only for the same thing issue to happen in the next mission.

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

#224

Post by regnerba »

WalterBright wrote: post #209

> A source indicated that one of the lightning towers may not be salvageable, and that the transporter-erector may also be damaged beyond repair. My first thought is why wasn't the t-e moved away before launch?

It was a static fire, not a launch. Also means that payload was not lost as out wasn’t yet integrated

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

#225

Post by adt »

overfeed wrote: post #170
mandevil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Was that when a SpaceX engineer demanded immediate "roof" access to ULA's pad because they suspected someone at ULA had used a sniper rifle to shoot at the Falcon? Crazy times. Edit: yes it was https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/spacex-pushed-sniper-t...

Incredible.

>Externally, they sent the site director for their Florida operations, Ricky Lim, to inquire whether he might visit the roof of the United Launch Alliance building... ULA told SpaceX’s Ricky Lim to get lost when he wanted to see the roof of their building in Florida.

The FAA letter:

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Space...

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

#226

Post by infotainment »

tristanj wrote: post #204

SpaceX Starship also exploded during a static fire test on June 18, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-starship-upper-stage-exp...

The major difference is that this is currently the only New Glenn launchpad, which is likely to cause major launch delays.

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

#227

Post by shamefulkiwi »

petesergeant wrote: post #189
atmavatar wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Not really. Rocketry is hard . You deal with extremes in temperature (both high and low), extremes in speed and acceleration, and you're doing it all atop massive amounts of extremely explosive fuel. And, if you feel really crazy, you do it all while a…

This feels like more a matter of scale than anything else? We’re able as a species to do some absolutely insane wizard shit elsewhere (chip fab?), we just haven’t launched enough rockets yet to get there.

Less than perfect chips are printed every day but the consequences of a less than optimal chip is ending up in a cheaper laptop vs. causing a big boom. I think we are doing wizard shit in rocketry, mistakes are just very loud.

Definitely unexpected from BO, knowing that everyone is okay, I feel for their engineers right now.

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

#228

Post by generuso »

generuso wrote: post #21

It is not clear what "full duration static fire" means, but if the stage was fully fueled, the fuel tank would have contained 1000 tons of methane. The heat of combustion of methane is 55 MJ/kg. TNT equivalent is defined as 4.2 MJ/kg. In terms of heat output (not blast or other effects) this would have been equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT. The first atomic bomb had yield of 20 kt TNT, of which about half was in heat…

Correction: The first stage of New Glenn carries only about 260 tons of methane. The 1150 tons is the full propellent load, liquid oxygen and liquid methane combined.

The heat from combustion of this amount would be about 3.4 kt, which is roughly the same as the heat in the late fireball of the Trinity test.

The mushroom cloud from the New Glenn explosion was also substantial: https://photos.app.goo.gl/a7uPVjsB5n453SJA7

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

#229

Post by jillesvangurp »

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).

It's an understandable but wrong attitude. If you don't have high profile failures like this, you aren't taking enough R&D risk. It's a fiercely ambitious industry and these launch attempts amount to what literally are moon shots. The race is on between various companies and countries as to who gets there first.

Boeing is pretty much out of the race at this point. Just too busy navel gazing and lobbying. There's a big risk that the next person on the moon might be from China. Blue Origin and SpaceX are the best things to happen to the rocket industry in decades. So, yes Blue Origin had a RUD with New Glenn. They should, learn and adapt and launch the next one. It would be good for SpaceX to have credible competition. And New Glenn seems like it could become that.

But if they only get their lessons every few years, they'll be competing against a fully reusable Starship rather than Falcon 9 & Falcon heavy by the time this thing becomes a serious launch vehicle. The goal posts are moving.

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

#230

Post by makerofthings »

areoform wrote: post #138
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

I've talked about this a few times before but – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726133 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726078 - to repeat myself; It's because we're a very primitive species, and the forces involved here are genuinely new. It's physically not possible at our current level of technology to make this "safer" due to the distances and energies involved. I will let John Young explain it his…

We might well be the most advanced species in the universe. Seems unlikely, but we really don’t have anything else to measure against at the moment.
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