r/BlueOrigin • u/hypercomms2001 • 8d ago
The Wait Is Over: Blue Origin's New Glenn Takes Center Stage
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is finally on the pad and ready for its highly anticipated maiden flight. This marks a monumental moment for the space industry as Blue Origin takes a leap into orbital spaceflight. From the innovative Blue Ring payload to booster recovery on Jacklyn, we dive into everything you need to know about this historic launch. Plus, a detailed look at New Glenn’s BE-4 engines, giant fairings, and future missions, including Blue Moon and Project Kuiper. Will this launch set the tone for Blue Origin’s reusable rocket ambitions? Join us as we unpack the details.....
https://youtu.be/4qfT1BMnh30?si=_m-d7URPbsQMpQ-J
and...
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u/seb21051 7d ago edited 7d ago
Monumental moment for the space Industry?
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u/HMHSBritannic1914 7d ago
Potentially, a second, very large partially reusable orbital class rocket entering into service most certainly will be! This will undoubtedly enable the launch of Blue Moon, both Mark 1 and 2, for CLPS and Artemis missions, along with their respective infrastructure.
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u/seb21051 7d ago
It would be competing directly with Falcon Heavy, which is capable of a greater payload. What makes that monumental? There is very little on NG that has not been done before. I'm not dissing their efforts, just the hyperbole of calling it "Monumental".
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u/sidelong1 7d ago edited 7d ago
NG will follow the process to be certified to be human rated and FH is not following this process. NG has a future involving sending people, with associated operating equipment, to Orbital Reef, a future Orbital Capsule, CIS Lunar, and to the Moon. The manifest for 2025 after this first launch includes 8 launches, with at least one to the Moon.
The launch booster is to be reusable for NG and not for FH. As a mostly reusable rocket, unlike FH, it seems preferable to utilize NG in conjunction with Blue Ring and Orbital Reef.
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u/ackermann 7d ago
I would guess that New Glenn probably has a more direct path to full reuse than Falcon Heavy?
It’s designed with an eye towards a reusable second stage in the future (Jarvis?), which would make it more of a Starship competitor, although with less payload?If second stage reuse were added, the smaller payload wouldn’t matter much if the $/kg were lower (not clear yet where costs will ultimately end up for either company)
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u/seb21051 7d ago
Well, lets see how many of those targets have been achieved in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years from today.
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u/atactical_dad 8d ago
Jumping the shark a bit…
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u/strcrssd 8d ago
Yes, but they are the opposite of SpaceX in approach. This is a high stakes mission that will prove a tremendous boon if it works. It'll be a huge setback if it doesn't.
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u/atactical_dad 7d ago
Well, for one, it’s not the pad according to the NSF camera.
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u/BigStill9920 7d ago
Arent we not supposed to use nsf if were not launch critical. Or was that hotfire only
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u/Robert_the_Doll1 7d ago
Spaceflight Now also has cameras and attempted to cover the static fire. They will most likely try a livestream of the launch as well.
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u/seb21051 7d ago
Obviously its monumental for BO, and I wish them all the greatest success, but the entire Space Industry? That is stretching credulity a touch.
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u/strcrssd 7d ago
SpaceX needs a competitor. There are some up and comers, but Blue, frankly, needs to prove itself and has the bankroll to do so. SpaceX was able to be successful on a tiny budget because old space was sufficiently corrupt and wasteful that they had missed out on innovation and were able to be disrupted.
SpaceX isn't there yet, but there are some indications -- costs going up and a huge speculative launch system with a few of Shuttle's pitfalls. We, space fans, need a competitor. I'm on the cusp of writing Blue off. They're so non-communicative and slow, I don't know if they're legitimately a competitor.
We'll see how this launch goes, and if it fails, how they'll communicate and how quickly they'll try again. I suspect it'll be years in the event of a failure, with minimal communication, based on their history and processes, but hopefully it'll go well, they've caught all the bugs, and they might have something competent and able to compete.
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u/seb21051 7d ago edited 7d ago
The reason SX developed so fast was exactly because they were on the edge of bankruptcy a lot of the time. Continual hunger is a powerful motivator. EM's paltry $100 million could only take them just so far. They HAD to start making money, or fold.
BO was, initially, a hobby, a think tank, for a man with more money than he knew what to do with. It took a long time for him to get motivated, because he never was ever as hungry as the other guy. I still wonder if he is hungry enough. The next 5 years will tell.
Rocket Lab is another interesting case. Beck was hungry, and so developed a marginally profitable launcher quite quickly. Now that they have their SPAC, they have more money, but they are a lot closer to the edge than BO. Which is why they work a lot harder. 50+ Orbital Launches since 2017 is very respectable.
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u/Martianspirit 7d ago
Yes, a competitor is needed. But I see one problem with this. Blue Origin, and Amazon Kuiper can afford to operate at cost. SpaceX needs a big profit margin to afford Elons Mars plans. Can Blue Origin/Amazon cut deep into the SpaceX profit margin? Will they?
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u/RealisticLeek 6d ago
how is this jumping the shark?
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u/strcrssd 6d ago
Upon reviewing English idioms, it's not.
jump the shark verb
To undergo a storyline development which heralds a fundamental and generally disappointing change in direction. To experience a decline in quality, appeal, popularity, etc.
I had a mistaken understanding when I wrote above. I stand by the remainder though. Blue has a tremendous amount of engineering time into this. It needs to work, and on damn near the first try. Rework and reengineering is very expensive with this style of big bang (no pun intended) capital engineering. This practice is occasionally required -- one generally doesn't want to live or fly in a proof-of-concept or early test sample.
Historically, many space vehicles were crewed only. Computers and command and control have advanced sufficiently that manned vehicles are no longer obligatory. Blue doesn't seem to have grokked that the natural extension of unmanned spaceflight engineering is to dramatically lower the fidelity, thus time, thus expense, of the modeling. Reminds me of a... Spirited argument I had with an engineering professor about iterative/successive approximation in engineering and how the real thing, instrumented, trumps models. All models are wrong. Some are useful and wrong. The trick is knowing where to draw the line. It's not where Blue thinks it is, based on what we know of this vehicle and their processes.
Let's hope it goes well though.
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u/Affectionate_Letter7 4d ago
I don't think uncrewed is a new development due to advances in computers. All rockets have the origins in missiles and obviously those are uncrewed. DC-X was doing uncrewed VTOL tests in the 80s. All the first rockets were uncrewed. And they didn't try to get things completely right even with the crewed tests. It was understood and accepted that people were going to die.
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u/strcrssd 3d ago
That's somewhat fair criticism, and I don't disagree with any of the assertions/evidence.
The counterpoint is that, historically, humans could potentially perform repairs on orbit or otherwise service the vehicle (even, to a limited degree, on a rocket in flight by adjusting parameters). Hence the flight test heritage of manned spaceflight.
Unmanned, with primitive command and control, your vehicle was going to have a very limited (if any) ability to adjust its flight. The metaphorical tape was read and played without much ability to add logic. Modern command and control and computers allow for much more complex logic and decisions, for example SpaceX's aborted tower catch on the last IFT.
But you're probably not wrong.
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u/Affectionate_Letter7 3d ago edited 3d ago
Here is my view:
In primitive times iterative hardware rich development is the norm. It's not a new thing. It's an old and very normal thing. It's even a stupid thing. That's literally how Tesla described what Edison was doing. However even stupidly done it tends to be very effective.
So then why don't we use it? Because of social scaling. As corporations socially scale up they acquire bureaucracies. At least that is the only way we figured to do this as a species. Bureaucracies tend to think in a certain way and favor certain things. Generally it ends up leading to bigness, stupidity and extreme inefficiency.
This video provides a good idea of the mindset: https://youtu.be/JAk448volww?si=HJN7q2pXtTETok0f
I guess what I'm trying to say is many thing are done in a certain way are due to social and political reasons. Not technological ones.
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u/Affectionate_Letter7 4d ago
It's not a huge setback. It's a small setback. This is a big problem with the Blue approach....grossly unrealistic expectations and fear of failure.
This launch is a great thing even if they fail completely.
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u/strcrssd 4d ago
No, given their history and speed, it's likely a multi-year setback. That's huge, given the time pressure they're under.
Several multi-year setbacks means that the project is not going to succeed. Any actual competition after a few years would be a non-starter, as at that point they'll be (in all likelihood) competing against Starship, with F9 only being used for manned launches.
If they had taken a more hardware rich approach, and can solve problems and reset an order of magnitude faster than I expect, then it'd be a minor failure.
The launch is not a great thing even if they fail completely. It shows that they're not ready now, and their next steps dictate whether the program even survives.
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u/Affectionate_Letter7 4d ago
They can switch to a hardware rich approach now. Now that they have launched and have an assembly line there is nothing stopping them. All past spending is a sunk cost. They just have to admit they made a mistake. And speed up.
It's a great thing even if they fail because they are finally getting some feedback on their approach.
I don't even get what timeline they are on or what pressure they are under. Is there anything they even need this for.
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u/strcrssd 3d ago
They could switch to a hardware rich approach, and that would be wonderful. I don't know if they have the middle management that can support that model though.
It's a great thing even if they fail because they are finally getting some feedback on their approach.
Yes and no. They're already getting feedback on their approach. Slipped deadlines and schedules, unhappy customers (ULA), etc. Losing a vehicle would be more direct, admittedly, but they're using outdated methodologies.
I don't even get what timeline they are on or what pressure they are under. Is there anything they even need this for.
Existence of the program or even the company, longer term. At some point they need to make money. This program has a very limited lifespan due to Starship (assuming SpaceX is successful). It's a competitor to Falcon 9 and, to a limited extent, Falcon Heavy. Its likely not competitive with Starship due to Starship's full reuse. That remains to be determined, but in all likelihood, Starship will be cheaper than F9 and have more capacity. So they need to try to poach launches from F9.
Amazon needs to lift Kuiper, and there are likely other companies who would prefer to get away from SpaceX due to Musk's political and corruption angles. There's a window.
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u/BassLB 7d ago
It’d be a little weird if they built this big rocket and had no future plans for it
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u/atactical_dad 7d ago
The first sentence of the OPs paragraph says it’s on the pad…it’s not.
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u/BassLB 7d ago
Do they take it down between hot fire and launch?
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u/Robert_the_Doll1 7d ago
The Blue Ring payload was not onboard during the tanking tests, WDR, and static fire. In its place was a 45,000 lb (20,500 kg) simulated payload. That needs to be removed and swapped out with Blue Ring and its fairing and adapter.
They also are going to obviously inspect the vehicle and engines, the TE, etc. during this time. Four of the BE-4s are not made to restart the way the other three are, so they need to be reset just like Vulcan's needed to be after the FRF back in 2023.
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u/ackermann 7d ago
Interesting! So engine restart will be something new for BE-4, not previously demonstrated by Vulcan. Among other things
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u/Robert_the_Doll1 6d ago
If you like. It was why Blue Origin needed to run qualification testing that was completed early last year and is why there are at least one to two BE-4s that can be added to the production count made and delivered last year to the tally.
But engine restart in flight is something they have considerable experience with on New Shepard with BE-3 PM.
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u/Robert_the_Doll1 7d ago
They recorded parts of the video well before New Glenn went horizontal and then rolled back, and it is so out of date even as they finished it that they did not even mention that Harvey Stone and LPV-1 Jacklyn were on their way out to sea to the landing point.
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u/silent_bark 7d ago edited 7d ago
It's a quote from the video they linked. At the time, it was on the pad and at the end of the video they even say it needs to come down and go back to the Integration Facility (video was outdated in less than a day).
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u/Robert_the_Doll1 7d ago
It illustrates that after all these years, Blue Origin is moving fast enough to render a video like this outdated even as it comes out, never mind a day or so after.
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u/RealisticLeek 7d ago
I don't think that means what you think it means
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u/atactical_dad 7d ago
It means what I think it means - close enough for me.
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u/RealisticLeek 7d ago
The idiom "jumping the shark" or to "jump the shark" means that a creative work or entity has evolved and reached a point in which it has exhausted its core intent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
so you think that blue origin has done so much work that they're running out of things to do?
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u/Martianspirit 8d ago
Wishing good luck from a SpaceX fan.