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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

#461

Post by Rover222 »

steve1977 wrote: post #412
Rover222 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling Blue Origin a vanity project is so ridiculous.

What would you say is Jeff Bezos' motivation behind it?

Oh you know, probably his clearly stated intentions of driving industry off-earth and into orbit.

Is SpaceX also a vanity project? No, Musk actually wants to expand human civilization beyond one planetary sphere.

Just because they're billionaires doesn't mean they're full of shit. In fact, in both of their cases, it means they're extremely driven by... real ambitions.

So obvious.

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

#462

Post by Rover222 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #426
steve1977 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say is Jeff Bezos' motivation behind it?

Jeff Bezos loves space exploration. He loves O'Neil's vision of orbital colonies, and he firmly believes that moving heavy industry to orbit will leave Earth better off. That's not a vanity project. The Washington Post, on the other hand, he purchased as a trophy. That's the vanity project.

Lots of Americans are only capable of this logic for now: billionaire bad

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

#463

Post by hackeraccount »

domlebo70 wrote: post #147
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…

How does one even go about finding a root cause so exotic?

Nah, there'll be a lot of people who think they know what happened and there'll be one person someone at BO who really knows what happened they just don't know they know it yet. In the course of the analysis that person will hear a couple of known facts and there will be feeling in the pit of your stomach when all doubt goes away. Worst case scenario is that it's something they signed off on.

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

#464

Post by somenameforme »

lunar_mycroft wrote: post #458
mr_toad wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't disagree at all, but I'm quite curious where the cost actually comes from. Even including all the harnessing and other hardware, it doesn't seem like something that should be a bank-breaker when we're casually talking about vehicles worth tens of millions of dollars blowing up, if not being discarded after a single launch.

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

#465

Post by NetMageSCW »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #202
kitd wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting post. I'd never thought of it that way. Not consciously anyway. Might that make an air-launched system more reliable? Even if it's less efficient, the TCO would be lower using a winged system for the initial phases of launch.

There are some companies working on that and / or there have been some experiments with it, but there's two factors there; the one is of course how much weight an aircraft can carry. The other one is the altitude and / or angle; a big plane goes to about 10 kilometers (maybe more, idk), but that's a 'flat' flight, ideally you launch while angled upwards and that's a bit more involved. But that's how a lot of the X pr…

There’s actually been commercial launch services using air launch - Virgin Orbit, which went bankrupt, and Northrop Grumman’s (acquired as part of Orbital ATK) Pegasus, which hasn’t launched since 2021 and has one launch planned in 2026.

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

#466

Post by NetMageSCW »

awongh wrote: post #250
kitd wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting post. I'd never thought of it that way. Not consciously anyway. Might that make an air-launched system more reliable? Even if it's less efficient, the TCO would be lower using a winged system for the initial phases of launch.

That’s what Virgin Galactic was.

No, Virgin Orbit. Virgin Galactic is still in business and does sub-orbital tourist flights.

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

#467

Post by 51Cards »

100ms wrote: post #434
51Cards wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No worries, it's going to be fascinating to hear what the investigation uncovers. Did the sensor data stream send back anything useful in the milliseconds before those sensors ceased to exist? I would assume there were no warning signs or they would have done a stand down on the test itself. So many questions!

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

#468

Post by mr_toad »

hparadiz wrote: post #447
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could land at 500 km/h on wheels and use breaks to stop. This makes it much safer and lowers how much propellant you need to bring to the moon by a lot. Similarly it makes getting back into lunar orbit much safer and easier because you can use electric motors to propel a craft to around 500 km/h before ditching the wheels and starting your chemical rockets. This lowers your propellant mass by 30%. Also the landin…

> you can use electric motors to propel a craft to around 500 km/h before ditching the wheels and starting your chemical rockets.

Makes me wonder if you could accelerate to orbital velocity using something like a maglev train and not have to worry about rockets at all.

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

#469

Post by NetMageSCW »

adev_ wrote: post #255
swiftcoder wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet more than a half a century later, new rockets just don't seem that impressive in comparison We have 15x reduction in payload-to-orbit costs, 20x increase in launches/year, significantly increased reliability during missions (test explosions like this one are tests for a reason), and reliable vertical landings with reusable lower stages. The current crop of rockets may not be as visually impressive as a Saturn 5…

> and reliable vertical landings We know how to do reliable vertical landing since the DCXA in 1991. Meaning more than 25y ago [1] > reliability during missions (test explosions like this one are tests for a reason) Static fire tests are routine since the 60s, nothing new here either [2]. > We have 15x reduction in payload-to-orbit costs This is about manufacturing optimization and it has very little to do with rocke…

Falcon 9 is as reliable and safe as an airliner flight - what more do you want?

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

#470

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hparadiz wrote: post #447
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could land at 500 km/h on wheels and use breaks to stop. This makes it much safer and lowers how much propellant you need to bring to the moon by a lot. Similarly it makes getting back into lunar orbit much safer and easier because you can use electric motors to propel a craft to around 500 km/h before ditching the wheels and starting your chemical rockets. This lowers your propellant mass by 30%. Also the landin…

> lowers how much propellant you need to bring to the moon by a lot

Rough estimates? Mass drivers make sense. I haven’t seen the numbers for just compressing and leveling regolith.

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