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

Post by brookst » Fri, May 29, 2026, 2:06 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #178

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…

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…

Post by Jackson__ » Fri, May 29, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

MPSimmons wrote: post #352

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…

I worked at SpaceX at the time, and I cannot speak for the company, but I can tell you that approximately nobody inside SpaceX took the idea of a sniper seriously. There was a lot of internet talk about it, and it was one of hundreds of avenues that were explored, and ruled out basically as soon as it was explored. The very interesting part of the liquid oxygen failure (and this was published in the investigative fin…

Post by cmiles8 » Fri, May 29, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

ponector wrote: post #347

cmiles8 wrote: post #346

An unfortunate setback but rockets are hard. The fact that the US has multiple extremely active commercial ventures plus a vibrant government programs with launches every few days just highlights har far ahead the US has become in this area of tech. Many people have never seen a rocket launch ever and yet for a big part of the US looking up in the sky and watching the amazing sight of a rocket going through staging i…

Achievements of SpaceX are enormous. But is US actually far ahead? Both China and EU have pretty much the same capabilities for space exploration.

Post by pphysch » Fri, May 29, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

Hugsbox wrote: post #336

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…

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?

Post by Rover222 » Fri, May 29, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

sumeno wrote: post #354

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:D I am starting to understand why his stock is as high as it is. Musk is a competent manager, amazing bser, but he is not a genius. edit: Competent manager is not a slight. There are very few competent managers these days.

The people I know who have worked for him would not call him a competent manager