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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

#431

Post by redfloatplane »

Yizahi wrote: post #407

Hypothetical scenario - if the entire New Glenn rocket exploded up to highest point in under 4 seconds and if there was a passenger capsule on top with a SLS/Saturn size escape rocket, would it manage to escape in those 2-3 seconds? Would humans survive acceleration?

Probably yes. Humans can survive a lot of Gs for a short time. John Stapp survived up to 38 Gs with liveable injuries and some ejector seats are around 32 g [0]. They could fairly easily get 500m away within 3-4 seconds.

This has happened before on the Soyuz in 1983[1], hitting up to 17 Gs, and everyone was fine, modulo some bruising.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No.16L

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

#432

Post by lukeschlather »

Markoff wrote: post #258
russdill wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might not be that bad for the environment but holy hell does it turn air quality to shit the next day.

I am not sure whether you talk about those fireworks for few minutes/hours or these quite common rocket explosions + EV fires... Personally I don't even own a car, so don't go on me with some carbon emissions and polluting enviroment, 95% of year I use public transport (most of the time electric trams), only 1-2 a year a ride a car when visiting mother/father.

I've never been downwind of a rocket explosion or an EV fire, Fireworks are something that make me annoyed at the air quality degradation quite often.

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

#433

Post by alterom »

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

>why

hubris

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

#434

Post by 100ms »

51Cards wrote: post #420
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…

What you're seeing is not a 'side' of the rocket sliding down, it's the rocket itself. The other part on the right is the erector stand it was mounted to. Looks like the bottom of the rocket blows out first and begins to collapse. The rocket begins to slide vertically before it all becomes one large fireball. The erector stand didn't survive the explosion either in the end.

That makes a lot more sense, and sibling comment's higher res clip makes it a lot clearer. I knew I was posting a crappy analysis in the hopes someone who understands this stuff would post something more interesting, there is a dearth of technical speculation from googling around

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

#435

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hparadiz wrote: post #96
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.

The South Pole of the moon will end up one giant mega city due to it's constant sunlight. It will be a lot easier to get there once there is even one landing strip.

> landing strip

Why are landing strips the big unlock? Blast effects? Tiny landing legs?

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

#436

Post by lukeschlather »

hgoel wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

>Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. That isn't my impression of NASA/government opinion. Starship HLS is seen as the eventual option, as is obvious from the testing campaign. It'll get there eventually and offer unprecedented capability, but it's very clearly several years out. Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having…

Really the least risky thing right now would probably be if BO retooled their lander to fly on a Falcon Heavy. If asked, SpaceX could probably launch 4 Falcon Heavies to orbit before Blue Origin could launch as many New Glenns.

I really don't think there's anything particularly derisked about NG + Blue Moon 2 compared to Starship HLS.

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

#437

Post by NetMageSCW »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #404
hparadiz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South Pole of the moon will end up one giant mega city due to it's constant sunlight. It will be a lot easier to get there once there is even one landing strip.

I don’t know why we are wasting all this money making it habitable for humans when robotics have taken such strides the last few decades. Manned missions made sense when we didn’t have these compute and robotic abilities we have today. Now, they are undue risk and cost and offer no real functionality but some misplaced national pride perhaps.

Talk to me about the Mars rover that was unable to digna small hole to sample.

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

#438

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #404
hparadiz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South Pole of the moon will end up one giant mega city due to it's constant sunlight. It will be a lot easier to get there once there is even one landing strip.

I don’t know why we are wasting all this money making it habitable for humans when robotics have taken such strides the last few decades. Manned missions made sense when we didn’t have these compute and robotic abilities we have today. Now, they are undue risk and cost and offer no real functionality but some misplaced national pride perhaps.

> when robotics have taken such strides the last few decades

One of those strides has been in characterising just how magnificent the human eye, mind and hand are at picking weird shit out of a background.

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

#439

Post by superxpro12 »

teraflop wrote: post #399
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

the clip is wild. There's definitely anomalies originating from the bottom.

Then the spacecraft structure starts falling and tilting.

Then the explosion ripples up through the core and pops out the top.

Then the massive explosion occurs due to the complete loss of fuel integrity.

It looks like the bottom fell out, and then caused the pressure to ripple up through the structure causing complete structural failure. Wild.

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

#440

Post by NetMageSCW »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #299
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 che…

Any large rocket needs a water deluge system to prevent damage to the launch pad and reduce sound volume so echoes don’t damage the rocket. The amount of fuel required for these large rockets can’t really be portable. A Starship launch uses hundreds of methane truck tankers worth of fuel.

But it is cadence that drives SpaceX to have multiple launchpads plus specialized capabilities and orbital dynamics for F9.

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