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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

#391

Post by m4rtink »

MPSimmons wrote: post #13
RattlesnakeJake wrote: post #6

NSF is also reporting that it took out one of the lightning rod towers. It'll be interesting to see how much damage the pad and ground equipment sustained.

It was very likely the largest explosion in Florida spaceflight history. Considerably larger than when SpaceX blew up AMOS-6 in 2016, and that required a full rebuild of the pad infrastructure over 18 months.

I'm wondering about how it compares to AMOS-6. New glen is bigger than Falcon 9 & uses fully cryogenic propellant, so there would be definitively more energy involved.

On the other hand a lot of the damage on the Falcon pad was IIRC due to burning kerosene getting everywhere on the pad & melting everything.

In this case I would expect all the liquid oxygen and methane to either be involved in the explosion or quickly vaporize, possibly resulting in a different damage pattern on the pad.

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

#392

Post by delichon »

Jackson__ wrote: post #373
MPSimmons wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No one inside SpaceX, except for Elon Musk himself? https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/spacex-pushed-sniper-t...

> After ULA won an $11 billion block buy contract from the US Air Force to launch high-value military payloads into the early 2020s, Musk sued in April 2014.

This guy is so visionary that he sued for an event that wouldn't happen for over six years. Having the prescience of Paul Atreides explains a lot of his success.

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

#393

Post by m4rtink »

Polizeiposaune wrote: post #123
mholt wrote: post #89

Is it normal to load ALL the propellant when doing a static fire? (I presume that's the case, anyway, given the sheer magnitude of the kaboom.) I know a WDR typically would, but I don't think they perform an ignition for those.

The weight of the propellant helps hold the rocket on the pad during the test fire, reducing how much force the hold-downs need to exert to keep the rocket on the pad, and stressing the rocket's structure in the same way it will be stressed at launch. Test fires with a near-empty rocket would put considerably more force on the pad's hold-downs and the corresponding parts of the rocket's structure. Blue also had a fue…

It is also more realistic to do it fully loaded - very different forces are acting on a rocket based on how much propellant is loaded.

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

#394

Post by hgoel »

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?

For decades, Americans have been propagandized into the position that they alone are exceptional. Thus, anyone that challenges that belief becomes the enemy. It's gotten so bad, that "China might get there first" is the only way to get American politicians to actually stick to a target for more than 4 years.

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

#395

Post by chihuahua »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #332
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…

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

Not first. Seventh.

The successful manned moon landings so far:

1. United States of America

2. United States of America

3. United States of America

4. United States of America

5. United States of America

6. United States of America

Now we're watching a riveting race for 7th place.

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

#396

Post by pfdietz »

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

> 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?

Not really. The performance metrics on rocket engines are utterly insane.

The jet kinetic power of a Merlin 1D engine at sea level is 1.3 GW. The work output of a nuclear power plant in a device weighing half a ton and costing maybe $400K.

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

#397

Post by bradyd »

m4rtink wrote: post #293
lunar_mycroft wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someth…

[dead]

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

#398

Post by teraflop »

delichon wrote: post #392
Jackson__ wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one inside SpaceX, except for Elon Musk himself? https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/spacex-pushed-sniper-t...

> After ULA won an $11 billion block buy contract from the US Air Force to launch high-value military payloads into the early 2020s, Musk sued in April 2014. This guy is so visionary that he sued for an event that wouldn't happen for over six years. Having the prescience of Paul Atreides explains a lot of his success.

You're misreading that sentence. The contract was awarded for launches "into the 2020s". It wasn't awarded in the 2020s.

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

#399

Post by teraflop »

100ms wrote: post #304

The video angle published by the BBC is better, it appears to show one side of the rocket disintegrating and sliding down non-explosively before the large explosion really kicked in. Would hate for this all to be described by a few missing bolts https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cvgz0pdg32mo edit: the failure appears to start at the bottom, this seems to have damaged the structure enough to cause the sliding to start…

That clip is fairly low-res (at least for me). Here's the higher-quality source from Spaceflight Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O90WZJALYc

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

#400

Post by MarkusQ »

card_zero wrote: post #221
jeffrallen wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure is not only an option, but is required. The more smaller failures you have, the more big successes you can have.

Well, they just had a failure, so that spells great success, right? I'm unclear on the point of why having a rocket blow up when you're being slow and careful is more of a setback than having one blow up when you aren't.

Information theory. If you are doing lots of small, incremental tests, burning through a lot of hardware doing all sorts of characterization and qualifying tests, learning a little bit from each one, you can make steady progress, finding your mistakes as you go.

If instead you try to work out everything in painstaking detail, build a small number of prototypes that your calculations assure you should work, and one blow sup, you learn that...your calculations are wrong.

Imagine developing software with no CI tests, where you only get to run one full system test every couple of months. Slow and careful means avoiding lots and lots of early learning opportunities.

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