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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

#451

Post by sourcegrift »

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?

[flagged]

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

#452

Post by hulitu »

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…

> This is a crushing setback for Blue Origin.

For SpaceX it would have been a success. /s

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

#453

Post by NetMageSCW »

generuso wrote: post #116
xoa wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sedov-Taylor-Rayleigh blast equation, though this video isn't high enough frame rate to more than ballpark it I think. Tower is ~180m high, so 0.2 sec would be a bit over 1 kiloton instead? But definitely not remotely 13 kt. Still serious of course, when SpaceX suffered launch complex damage during some of its incidents it took a solid 6-12 months to fix. Everyone can be glad though that no hypergolics are involved a…

You are talking about the energy of the blast. In my comment I was talking about the heat output. From the followup comments it seems I have not made it sufficiently clear. The energy of the detonation wave in rocket explosions is typically 1-2% of the energy in the fuel, at least that is the ballpark of what people use for estimating the effects of mishaps. We also do not know if the tanks were fully filled -- it th…

I think we do know that the rocket was fully fueled. This was like a WDR with a static fire.

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

#454

Post by mr_toad »

lunar_mycroft wrote: post #389
servo_sausage wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one pad is the bottleneck, and the goal is to ramp up to be a spacex competitor, then build more than one... Falcon has shown the playbook, and the demand for launch... The goal should be 2-4 launch sites in the medium term; with a second site very early to avoid exactly this.

Until recently, SpaceX only acquired new pads because they needed a completely new launch site (SLC-4 in Vandenberg) or needed to launch a vehicle that their existing pad(s) didn't support (Falcon Heavy for LC-39A, Starship for Pad A in Boca Chica/Starbase). Currently, Blue Origin's only orbital launch vehicle is New Glenn, and their Vandenberg pad is still under construction.

Waiting until you need something and don’t have an easy replacement is how you end up with delays and bottlenecks.

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

#455

Post by mr_toad »

sephamorr wrote: post #223
domlebo70 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but at the end of the day you can't be sure right? That doubt would eat away at me

The doubt is supposed to stay with you! You need to make sure there aren't other causes or contributing factors hiding behind 'the obvious'. There have been notorious cases in spaceflight where the issue was 'identified' and 'fixed', only for the same thing issue to happen in the next mission.

> There have been notorious cases in spaceflight where the issue was 'identified' and 'fixed', only for the same thing issue to happen

In software development this is your average weekday.

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

#456

Post by hackeraccount »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #351
LarsKrimi wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon is a true genius, up there with Euler and Feynman. So when things don't go perfectly with his initial idea surely it must be a conspiracy to get him down

: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.

I hear what you're saying but ... clearly SpaceX has made some broad technical decisions - I'm think of using metholox or making starship out of steel or falcon first stage re-usability - that seem to have been the correct choice.

I doubt Musk originated these idea but he was the one who ultimately made the decision on them. There were a lot of other people who had the same choice and either didn't come down that way or took a lot longer to come to the same place.

Like I said, genius? I personally wouldn't use that word. He's not an idiot though. He might be the minimum viable product for technical knowledge combined with a large amount of money but that's still pretty remarkable.

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

#457

Post by perilunar »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #358
ponector wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Both China and EU have pretty much the same capabilities for space exploration. China maybe soon, but the EU is not close. Ariane 6 is in no way comparable to either SLS or Starship or New Glenn. It does 10t to low-earth orbit, 4t to lunar-transfer orbit.

For comparison, the Saturn 5 was 140 tonnes to LEO and 43.5 tonnes to TLI.

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

#458

Post by lunar_mycroft »

mr_toad wrote: post #454
lunar_mycroft wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently, SpaceX only acquired new pads because they needed a completely new launch site (SLC-4 in Vandenberg) or needed to launch a vehicle that their existing pad(s) didn't support (Falcon Heavy for LC-39A, Starship for Pad A in Boca Chica/Starbase). Currently, Blue Origin's only orbital launch vehicle is New Glenn, and their Vandenberg pad is still under construction.

Waiting until you need something and don’t have an easy replacement is how you end up with delays and bottlenecks.

Launch pads are not something you just buy on a whim to keep around just in case you need them. They're very expensive pieces of infrastructure that you only acquire when you have an actual, known need. That's how every launch provider that I know of behaves, including SpaceX.

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

#459

Post by j1mc »

jeffrallen wrote: post #203
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…

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

ah, yes ... there's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all.

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

#460

Post by NetMageSCW »

bruckie wrote: post #274
kolinko wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t help much, sadly. Getting to orbit is about speed, not height — you need 27000 kph to get to orbit, and having an air launched platform would shave off 1k kph off it at most, perhaps 5k with some insane hypersonic engineering.

It helps a bit more than you imply, though: if you can launch from a higher altitude, you have less atmosphere to plow through. That lets you use more of your propellant to speed up instead of to push air out of the way.

That isn’t very helpful considering rocket launches only spend a few seconds in atmosphere mostly going vertically to get above the majority as quickly as possible .
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