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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

#511

Post by hgoel »

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…

Really not convincing that you know what you're talking about if you're taking the DCX prototypes flying up to 3km as meaning that we had landing orbital class boosters sorted out in 1991. That was a hopper vehicle comparable to the original SpaceX Grasshopper prototype.

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

#512

Post by LooseMarmoset »

steve1977 wrote: post #486
Rover222 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Musk actually wants to expand human civilization beyond one planetary sphere. Does he want to expand human civilization for the benefit of human civilization or does he want to be the man who made that expansion possible? I can absolutely see real ambitions behind them, I just think these ambitions are driven by vanity (and other "vices")

Why can't it be both?

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

#513

Post by enragedcacti »

lukeschlather wrote: post #436
hgoel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Falcon Heavy has a much smaller max payload diameter (~4.6m) compared the New Glenn (7m), I doubt the landers (MK2 especially) can be retooled to fit without essentially starting from scratch.

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

#515

Post by eichin »

christophilus wrote: post #305
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

It reminds me of my younger self when I encountered inexplicable behavior in my own software, “I think I found a bug in Firefox!” … “Oh, nope. I forgot to add an event handler.”

We formalized that as "if you didn't find a kernel bug yesterday, you didn't find one today either" (while implicitly glaring at the java developer who kept blaming everything but his own code.) The funny thing is that we actually had one guy who found two kernel bugs (spread over a couple of years, but still) while hunting down weird product issues - we didn't think the kernel was perfect, just that "you need to have exhausted the possibilities in your code before considering blaming the kernel" was well supported by evidence...

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

#516

Post by mapt »

BurningFrog wrote: post #510
bell-cot wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that article - > The “sniper” theory > The lack of a concrete explanation for the failure led SpaceX engineers to pursue hundreds of theories. One was the possibility that an outside “sniper” had shot the rocket. This theory appealed to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who was asleep at his home in California when the rocket exploded. Within hours of hearing about the failure, Musk gravitated toward the simple answer o…

Also, if your billion dollar rocket can be destroyed by a $2 bullet, maybe you need to look at hardening your design.

A sufficiently advanced technological field is one where any expert would start laughing at you for suggesting "hardening" against bullets. The denominator for rockets is always mass. Most of the difficulty is derived from not just doing a thing, but doing it in as lightweight a way possible. There are rocket stages that won't even stand up under their own weight, we have to inflate them like balloons just to move them.

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

#517

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

xoa wrote: post #54
debatem1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did you compute that?

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…

> Everyone can be glad though that no hypergolics are involved at least!

Well, only a little bit - they do use hypergolic ignition.

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

#518

Post by Hugsbox »

brookst wrote: post #376
Hugsbox wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So purely so that China doesn't get the bragging rights? I guess I don't see the big deal but I'm sure it's more important than it seems on the surface.

Some of that, and also because it’s a benchmark of program maturity. Think of it as not wanting China to be able to do things the US can’t, with some overtones of military capability, American exceptionalism, the symbolism of China not even being in the race that the US won 56 years ago, etc.

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for your patience with my smooth brain

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

#519

Post by Hugsbox »

pphysch wrote: post #377
Hugsbox wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

China isn't looking at it just for bragging rights, but as a step towards the first moon base. Some see it as a race for the frontier and territorial claims.

Is a moon base a practical or even useful thing to have? I mean, it sounds really cool, but what would be the benefits?

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

#520

Post by NetMageSCW »

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.

Actually SpaceX is in the process of building multiple Starship launch pads in multiple locations with only an expected theoretical need.
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