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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

#251

Post by Markoff »

onionisafruit wrote: post #94
Markoff wrote: post #84

I will remember this when someone tells me how my little fireworks once a year is bad for environment.

sweep up after yourself and we’re good, but if you leave your firework trash out for a week we have problems. You’ll have to watch me passive aggressively clean up after you.

I always clean up after myself, often even just to be sure water it, I became fan of fireworks just recently after Czech gov basically banned them because "think of the animals", yeah, big cities are natural animal habitat as everyone knows, especially dogs barking and shitting everywhere every single day 365 days a year, but God forbid we have once a year firework, think of the poor dogs.

Now they came up with maps where fireworks are allowed and apparently 90% of Prague is covered with beehives (you can't have firework within like 250m from beehive), it doesn't matter bees don't really care about them at all in freezing 1st January, but let's protect them and ruin fun for everyone!

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

#252

Post by audunw »

866-RON-0-FEZ wrote: post #187
mrcwinn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rocket appears to have crashed into an open plain. It was a village?

I'm referring to a different Chinese launch failure in 1996. There is some VHS footage on YouTube surreptitiously shot by Americans on-site supporting the payload which became a guerrilla documentary. The village was annihilated but the official number from the CCP was 6 dead. 6.

It’s not the only time the CCP has reported an unbelievably low number of casualties in a large catastrophe. Seems like the number of dead is always around 6-7 (sorry) no matter how big the incident is. Like the flooding of that tunnel a few years ago where the authorities tried to hide how many flowers were put up by the tunnel

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

#253

Post by Laremere »

trhway wrote: post #208

It looks to me like the initial explosion was at the upper part of the rocket. Reminded the Starship explosion https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1935548909805601020 where on 0.25 speed also visible what the start of the catastrophe was at the upper part. Interesting that just 2 days ago NASA picked Blue Origin instead of SpaceX for this year Moon flights. On a sidenote, one can wonder how much, giving coming Space…

Analysis video by Scott Manley notes that other comparable tests did not have visible fire at all, so it seems it started lower on the rocket and that the upper fire ball was either a secondary explosion or something coming up the transporter stand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaR6yEE-Myo

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

#254

Post by malux85 »

red75prime wrote: post #245
malux85 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was saying that an AI would more likely hallucinate an incorrect answer than correctly diagnose the root cause failure. At no time was I comparing an AI to a human, thats the bit you made up.

So, your message is "Unspecified AI models with or without additional training aren't ready to do aerospace fault analysis and they can lead experienced engineers astray." OK, it might or mightn't be true depending on the free parameters in your statement.

I used the word "likely" meaning there is a chance, your re-phrasing of what I said into a certainty ... and then refuting that certainty, is another textbook strawman argument, you made the same logical fallacy again.

Also I said "intermediate and junior" engineers - meaning INexperienced engineers, not experienced ones, so you quoted me wrong in that part too.

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

#255

Post by adev_ »

swiftcoder wrote: post #194
userbinator wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and the forces involved here are genuinely new I remember growing up with things proudly advertised as "space-age technology"... which largely meant the 1950s and 1960s, and of course it's what got us to the moon, multiple times. Yet more than a half a century later, new rockets just don't seem that impressive in comparison.

> Yet more than a half a century later, new rockets just don't seem that impressive in comparison We have 15x reduction in payload-to-orbit costs, 20x increase in launches/year, significantly increased reliability during missions (test explosions like this one are tests for a reason), and reliable vertical landings with reusable lower stages. The current crop of rockets may not be as visually impressive as a Saturn 5…

> and reliable vertical landings

We know how to do reliable vertical landing since the DCXA in 1991. Meaning more than 25y ago [1]

> reliability during missions (test explosions like this one are tests for a reason)

Static fire tests are routine since the 60s, nothing new here either [2].

> We have 15x reduction in payload-to-orbit costs

This is about manufacturing optimization and it has very little to do with rocket safety.

> hey are well on their way to making orbital space flight a commodity

They are not. It is at best marketing speech. The access to space is at best cheaper but will never be commodity.

The parent post is right on point: Rockets todays are still fundamentally the same giant bomb filled at 85% with explosive that we were making in the 60s. And this is unlikely to change and unlikely to ever be safe.

There is very valid reasons to that: we still did not find anything better than chemical propulsion to go in the last 80 years. It is the only 'working' solution in term of the energy density required to bring us there:

- Ion thrusters have amazing Isp but nowhere the Thrust/Weight ratio required to launch from Earth.

- Nuclear propulsion is good on paper but controversial in practice for pretty obvious reasons.

So we are still stuck. Stuck with burning 1'000t of highly inflammable Ergols in few minutes to just push any blob in orbit. With very thin engineering margins, way thiner than in airplane manufacturing or currently pretty any other domain.

And that make it unlikely to ever be really "safe" and accessible to the mass.

At least, not before we find a better solution to the problem.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBar3FyI_cA

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rP6k18DVdg

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

#256

Post by AdamN »

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

Rockets are hard for sure but also almost nobody notices if there's a minor bug in your delivery app that causes it to crash every once in a while - but it can matter alot if there's a microscopic crack in a rocket engine that makes it blow up. Defect rate might be the same but the (literal) blast radius is much higher.

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

#257

Post by thrdbndndn »

jdnier wrote: post #81
lorenzohess wrote: post #66

Video: https://xcancel.com/nasaspaceflight/status/20601649284728548... Another angle: https://xcancel.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696...

That "Another angle" truly is spectacular.

In the video, some debris seemed to fly away from the explosion in a wavy path (top left). I thought things only moved like that in video games. What causes that kind of movement?

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

#258

Post by Markoff »

russdill wrote: post #237
Markoff wrote: post #84

I will remember this when someone tells me how my little fireworks once a year is bad for environment.

Might not be that bad for the environment but holy hell does it turn air quality to shit the next day.

I am not sure whether you talk about those fireworks for few minutes/hours or these quite common rocket explosions + EV fires...

Personally I don't even own a car, so don't go on me with some carbon emissions and polluting enviroment, 95% of year I use public transport (most of the time electric trams), only 1-2 a year a ride a car when visiting mother/father.

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

#259

Post by AdamN »

appplication wrote: post #117
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…

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.

> trying to do as best they could

There's another comment that it wasn't the weld but even if it was the welders would build to spec and "better" (if it's known what better is) only if it's straightforward. There are certainly scenarios where a fabricator could design a better jig or use a more precise process but if the spec doesn't call for it then it's probably not going to happen because there are also the dimensions of time and money that matter as well.

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