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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

#541

Post by [deleted] »

generuso wrote: post #128
_moof wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TNT equivalent is defined as 4.2 MJ/kg. It isn't this simple for liquid oxygen and methane mixtures, and there's a great deal of disagreement between industry and regulators over what the right percentage of TNT equivalence is. Naturally, industry thinks the percentage is low, and regulators are skeptical, so there's a government-run test campaign going on as we speak to collect data for proper modeling.

The TNT is relevant, because the atomic bomb energy output was defined in terms of TNT equivalent. Not the energy of the blast, but the total output. For Trinity this was 20 kt, or 20*4.2 TJ. This serves as a basis of comparison for this deflagration. If we are considering specifically the appearance of the late fireball, the heat output is the relevant figure of merit. Assuming about 10-15% of the total bomb energy…

[deleted]

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

#542

Post by beAbU »

hackeraccount wrote: post #456
iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

: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…

> making starship out of steel

The whole reason for this was because of SS's supposed strength under the heat of reentry. Yet they now need to cover the whole thing in thermal insulating tiles. So I wonder if a composite Starship would not have been a better decision?

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

#543

Post by hgoel »

adev_ wrote: post #525
hgoel wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> that we had landing orbital class boosters sorted out in 1991 SpaceX first stage boosters are not orbital class. They reach around Mach 6 (Up to my knowledge) at top course and around Mach 3 on descend before the landing burn. Valid criticism however would be that the DC-X was intended for a return head first with a belly flip. Not tail first like SpaceX boosters. As such, it is much more similar to Starship spacec…

An orbital class booster isn't a booster that goes to orbit, it's a booster that is part of an orbital rocket stack.

The important distinction is that the DC-X prototype was, at best, supersonic given the low altitude and flight time record, while any efficient booster powering an orbital spaceflight is easily going hypersonic by the time it's returning to Earth.

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

#544

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #257
jdnier wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "Another angle" truly is spectacular.

In the video, some debris seemed to fly away from the explosion in a wavy path (top left). I thought things only moved like that in video games. What causes that kind of movement?

A COPV tumbling & venting gas as it does so.

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

#545

Post by GMoromisato »

hulitu wrote: post #452
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

The difference is the 'U' in Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Blue Origin just had an "unscheduled" disassembly, whereas the latest Starship explosion in the Indian Ocean was "scheduled"--it was meant to happen that way and no one was surprised.

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

#546

Post by verzali »

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.

There are rarely mentioned cases where you do actually want to be able to pierce a rocket with a bullet. Mostly related to recovery (or not...) post-flight.

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

#547

Post by hparadiz »

taneq wrote: post #537
NetMageSCW wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

“There was that time that a robot failed, therefore robots cannot succeed” isn’t the slam dunk that you seem to think it is.

Wanna explain to me why a robot never took this photo? https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fd02_for-pao/

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

#548

Post by angry_octet »

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...

Is Elon inside SpaceX? I don't think he's had any role at the company other than owner.

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

#549

Post by VectorLock »

somenameforme wrote: post #464
lunar_mycroft wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm guessing its a combination of needing to acquire a massive amount of land among a limited number of candidate locations and then layering logistical constraints on top of that.

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

#550

Post by g8oz »

Rover222 wrote: post #381
steve1977 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I would call the vanity project of one of the richest people on earth an "underdog". Btw, "If they're lucky, it's just a stupid mistake" is actually interesting. If you're at that stage and spending so much money, I would consider making stupid mistakes to be catastrophic.

Calling Blue Origin a vanity project is so ridiculous.

They are going to have to do a lot more than they've done to escape that label.
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