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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

#291

Post by zamadatix »

coarise wrote: post #279
xethos wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

>feels very Elon why

The history of rocket accidents involving problems handling liquid oxygen is long and considering a sniper as the reason was considered quite unique perspective for someone to propose.

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

#292

Post by nixass »

infinitewars wrote: post #268
xethos wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

The real concern was Russia, given SpaceX has always been a MIC project, now publicly manifest as "Golden Dome" .. a program which undermines M.A.D. and obviously greatly incentives sabotage. There just happened to be a ULA building nearby that was in range and investigated as a possible vector of attack.

> now publicly manifest as "Golden Dome

"Golden" goes perfectly in line with the current president's office decor

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

#293

Post by m4rtink »

lunar_mycroft wrote: post #217
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…

No, this would be crushing regardless. Even if Blue Origin had dozens of rockets ready to go, they can't fly without without the pad, which will take around a year to repair (based on previous examples).

This was an issue already in the Soviet times, with a couple cases of early rocket explosions destroying the pad and causing long delays, including one spectacular N1 explosion leveling its pad and needing lengthy expensive rebuild.

As a result they went to extensive lengths to avoid pad damage, including never terminating rocket thrust in the first (IIRC) 60 seconds of flight. Better let the rocket crash into something nearby than to explode at the pad.

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

#294

Post by shafyy »

chriswait wrote: post #290
shafyy wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Elon Musk, a rich kid that got lucky by investing his money in to "cool shit" with some of the most significant scientists and mathematicians of humankind is just wrong.

I think that's the joke

Ah, didn't get the /s :D

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

#295

Post by small_model »

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

[flagged]

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

#296

Post by m4rtink »

mongol wrote: post #277
jillesvangurp wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What were the high profile failures in the Apollo program that proves your point?

Not to mention there being a lot of launch failures pre and during the Apollo era, including pad explosions (there are nice compilations on youtube). But that was not really that much of an issue, as this was expected and there were dozens of pads built for these launches, so the testing cadence was not affected.

There was no fatal launch failure for Apollo & pad explosion would be a problem with just 2 pads available.

There were a couple Saturn V stage explosions during testing but again - those damaged test stands, not the pad.

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

#298

Post by Cthulhu_ »

block_dagger wrote: post #172
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…

[flagged]

Imagine is a good word to use. Before offering a solution, understand the problem first - is "debugging speed" a problem that needs solving, in this case?

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

#299

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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).

I think that if companies want to scale up rocket launches (and let's disregard the cost / environmental impact / etc for now), they also need to scale up launch sites, at the moment they seem like single points of failure.

I have only armchair amateur half a world away knowledge of this, but I want to believe all they need is an exhaust diffuser thingy and refueling capabilities; the former can probably be built cheap enough anywhere, the latter can be made portable.

(of course then you also have the challenge of assembling and loading a rocket, lmao. But a hub-and-spokes setup with VAB(s) and launch sites spread out around it like an airport could work. Bonus evil villain points if the launch sites are underground to contain explosions in case of failure.

(this post is just imagination / castles in the sky)

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

#300

Post by robocat »

tmtvl wrote: post #188
AustinDev wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss of human life in a static fire is criminal. Why would anyone be that close? There was no loss of life in this static fire failure.

No one should ever be that close, but it's a worst case scenario within the realm of possibility (people do get themselves into danger sometimes, for example by wandering onto a railroad track when there's a train approaching). I don't think it's unreasonable to reserve the 10 on the 1-10 scale for 'loss of human life'.

  The train driver saw a man on the track ahead holding a cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear to block the noise.
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