New Glenn launch thread: first real rocket from Jeff Bezos

Started by Legend, Jan 05, 2025, 06:58 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Go Down Pages1

Legend

Jan 05, 2025, 06:58 PM Last Edit: Jan 14, 2025, 05:16 PM by Legend

This rocket is huge. Compare the specs to SpaceX and it looks like a toy, but compare it to anyone else and it's a monster.




Will also be the first non spacex rocket to attempt a landing. They've copied spacex to the t and will land on a barge.

Very exiting. Might blow up the launch pad, might ace everything. New rockets are always fun.



Once they upgrade and refine it, it'll be interesting to see where it fits in the market. It's similar to falcon 9 and falcon heavy so will that mean it launches a lot, or will that mean that it gets replaced quickly with the even bigger New Armstrong paper rocket?

Will land men on the Moon though so it'll have an incredible legacy either way.

Legend

#1
Jan 10, 2025, 03:44 AM

Legend

#2
Jan 11, 2025, 05:26 PM Last Edit: Jan 12, 2025, 12:16 AM by Legend
Launch in 12 hours, assuming no more delays.

edt: 24 hour delay

Legend

#3
Jan 13, 2025, 05:47 AM Last Edit: Jan 14, 2025, 05:16 PM by Legend
It's so weird that they're talking about this like a risky flight. New flights are always more likely to have issues, but up till very recently Blue Origin was treating this like 100% success was the only expected outcome.


Is this just pr? SpaceX made it cool to talk like this? It sounds so fake. Now saying "data is the payload" lol just like Musk.

edt:

Legend

#4
Jan 13, 2025, 08:13 AM
Such a bad webcast. Just kept delaying it a few minutes at a time. Gave no updates beyond repeating "we've waited so long for this moment, a few more minutes won't hurt."

Over 2 hours of delays later, finally scrubbed.

Legend

#5
Jan 13, 2025, 07:06 PM

No new launch date. Might be a fair amount of days.



And to be clear, a scrub was always super likely. The funny part is that they never communicated what was happening and instead just kept changing the launch time.

Legend

#6
Jan 16, 2025, 05:50 AM

At least they are communicating.

I give it only 25% chance of launching. 75% chance of having a perfect launch and landing if it does launch.

Legend

#7
Jan 16, 2025, 07:15 AM
They blew it!

No cam views, booster obviously blew up during reentry, but 2nd stage looks good.

Legend

#8
Jan 16, 2025, 07:28 AM Last Edit: Jan 16, 2025, 09:43 AM by Legend
Just so inauthentic with the landing failure. You can tell they thought they'd get it.

Great day for Blue Origin. I just wish they had streams that didn't feel scammy.



And shocked they had no views of anything, yet didn't have an animation. Did they plan on having more views?

edt:

Legend

#9
Jan 16, 2025, 07:10 PM Last Edit: Jan 16, 2025, 07:14 PM by Legend


Maybe Blue Origin was actually smart to not have any cameras and go awkwardly silent about the booster. Business Insider didn't even know it blew up before reaching the landing barge.


Non idiots meanwhile are trying to figure out what went wrong. Looks like the booster reentry burn happened at a lower altitude than expected. Originally New Glenn wasn't going to need a reentry burn, just like Starship, so I'm not sure if this is the cause of failure. My guess would be that there was a hard shutdown/explosion mid burn that took out a good chunk of the booster but didn't trigger flight termination. There was a random callout after this where mission control mentions data from both stages. If that is legit, then I imagine the half destroyed booster was falling in an uncontrolled or nearly uncontrolled state at that point. Not sure why they'd lose speed and altitude data but still have other data streaming in, but redundant systems are common.


Pretty surprising though that this is where the booster failed. Without a boostback burn, there really isn't anything violent happening leading up to this. I gave them 25% odds of failing the landing but I expected it to for sure reach the barge. I don't think any of the early Falcon 9 landing attempts failed to reach it.

With this failure, I'm way less confident in New Glenn being an operational reusable rocket. Maybe they're launch in just a few months and ace every landing from here on out, but I think it's more likely that retrofits will be extensive and that they'll have to iterate a fair bit until landings are reliable. Next launch will have a customer payload so will they launch as soon as its ready and just get whatever they get with landing, or will they delay to make bigger improvements?


edt:
and if you didn't bother watching the live launch, this is what it looked like 99% of the time.
Go Up Pages1