Would be really curious to learn more about how rocket scientists are using (or not using) LLMs.
The suggestion being that some software here was vibe coded??
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
#32Very unfortunate, but strategically this changes nothing for US spaceflight. If anything, SpaceX will continue to increase its dominance.
Blue Origin is challenging SpaceX - they are not the incumbent. I'm not sure how you can say that SpaceX will increase dominance despite this.
Please look at total mass launched to space by SpaceX vs the rest of the world combined. They are the most incumbent launcher in history.
Unless you're talking about moon landers specifically.
Anyway, competition is good and this is a bummer.
Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX had to blow up plenty to get to where they are.
Yeah, but the vast majority of those were planned, and at least most exceeded expectations. Was this an expected outcome? It doesn’t sound like it, but I’ve not really investigated it deeply.
SpaceX has had several unplanned explosions on the launchpad.
Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#34Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#35Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#36It 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…
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Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#37Ouch, 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).
Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#38It 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…
The methane is not mixed with oxygen when it's still in the rocket tank, so it can't all explode - most of it will just burn off.
It's still a big boom, but not anywhere close to what world occur with optional mixing.
Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#39It 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…
Counting frames on YouTube, I get about 0.3s for the blast front to reach the top of the 600ft towers. That gives an estimate of around 600 tons TNT so definitely nowhere near all the fuel exploding.
Re: Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
#40I would guess this puts a big dent in NASA's moon plans. I think Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission. Now they are going to be grounded _again_. They just got off grounded status last week! And this is not even going to mention the significant ground equipment damage they have to deal with. Very unfortunate all around. I hope BO finds a way to keep the timelines.
> Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission
Just a rover [1].
Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust.
Does Blue Origin not have another pad? (Did they blow up a pad or a test stand?)
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-t...