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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

#331

Post by GolfPopper »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #42

There's got to be better way than burning a shittonne of fuel. Anyone else know?

Nukes.[1] Lasers. [2] (Doesn't work, yet.) Balloons.[3] (Floating megastructures in the upper atmosphere is hard.) Giant cannon. [4] (Downside - huge g-forces on payload.) Extra fun with angular momentum.[5] (Even higher g-forces.) Exotic materials[6], with novel failure modes.[7]

Humanity has not been idle when it comes to imagining alternate ways to get to orbit. But so far, the only one that works in practice is rockets.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP_Aerospace#Airship_to_Orbit_...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinLaunch

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

7. https://www.gassend.net/publications/FateOfABrokenSpaceEleva...

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

#332

Post by rhubarbtree »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #229
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 bi…

Is there any reason to doubt that the Chinese will get (back) there first?

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

#333

Post by rhubarbtree »

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 think more you’re just at the absolute margins of engineering to get to escape velocity. Those constraints haven’t changed, so until some major material or fuel advance happens things will continue to go wrong.

Probably the mistake is to keep relying on rockets and propellants. Need to think more revolutionary. But hard for a startup to do that, usually needs gov backing.

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

#335

Post by Aboutplants »

RivieraKid wrote: post #260

Blue Origin's tortoise slow-and-steady approach to development ia increasingly looking stupid.

There does seem to be a certain amount of failure that is necessary to be able to get it right. One would expect that number to decrease over time with each new rocket company but I don’t believe it decreases as much as each company would like to believe.

Move fast and blow things up early rather than slowly. The minimum number of explosions must be met!

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

#336

Post by Hugsbox »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #229
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 bi…

Forgive my ignorance, but why would China being the next on the moon be such a bad thing? Aren't moon missions mostly just "look what I can do!" sorts of things?

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

#337

Post by _kb »

ceejayoz wrote: post #307
audunw wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or on a larger scale, their publicly disclosed COVID deaths.

You mean like this https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef5697, or this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8354557/.

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

#338

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

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

Starting/igniting a liquid fueled rocket engine is an inherently complex process - everything has to be sequenced just right to get engines chilled, turbo pumps up to speed, any gaseous fuel vented and harmlessly ignited before it builds up, ignition of fuel, etc.

Here's a 1hr video from the Everyday Astronaut explaining the process and everything that can go wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAUVCn_jw5I

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

#339

Post by ClarityJones »

xethos wrote: post #248
GMoromisato wrote: post #133

This is a crushing setback for Blue Origin. I feel for the engineers. They have been the underdogs for so long, but with the recent successful recovery of the New Glenn booster, it finally seemed like they had some bragging rights. Now they're looking at a year minimum before they get back to a regular launch rhythm. The question now is: What went wrong? If they're lucky, it's just a stupid mistake. Maybe an incorrec…

> They even requested access to a ULA building to see if a sniper could have taken a shot at the rocket. > It turned out to be an exotic failure: liquid oxygen had gotten caught inside a buckled liner I gotta say, suspecting "Rival company hired a sniper" before "Dealing with liquid oxygen is very fucking hard and incredibly flammable" feels very Elon

We hear about how dealing with liquid oxygen is hard. I don't know that we hear about industrial sabotage.

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

#340

Post by oefrha »

wongarsu wrote: post #314
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the winners will merely be those The best outcome is we get two Moon bases. I say this as someone who remains a fairly patriotic American. But we need competition and, more darkly, we need a backup.

I believe that's the inevitable outcome. The Chinese will build a moon base, as a sign from the Chinese government to the Chinese people that China is capable of cutting-edge engineering and science (notably a demonstration to their own citizens - when was the last time you heard about the Chinese space stations outside China?). America seems a bit shaky in their determination to actually build a moon base, though ha…

> when was the last time you heard about the Chinese space stations outside China?

Last year, when negative news of delayed astronaut return was all over American news, e.g. [1][2]. Apparently makes American astronauts onboard Boeing ship being stuck in space less embarrassing.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/science/space/china-space...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/05/china/china-shenzhou-20-a...

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