After a Failure 4 Months Ago, the New Shepard Spacecraft Remains In Limbo (arstechnica.com) 35
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: More than four months have passed since the launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket ended in failure. No humans were onboard the vehicle because it was conducting a suborbital scientific research mission, but the failure has grounded the New Shepard fleet ever since. The rocket's single main engine failed about one minute into the flight, at an altitude of around 9 km, as it was throttling back up after passing through the period of maximum dynamic pressure. At that point a large fire erupted in the BE-3 engine, and the New Shepard capsule's solid rocket motor-powered escape system fired as intended, pulling the capsule away from the exploding rocket. The capsule experienced high G-forces during this return but appeared to make a safe landing.
Three days after this accident with the New Shepard-23 mission, the bipartisan leadership of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, calling for a thorough investigation. In an interview with Ars later that month, the chair of the subcommittee, US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), urged Blue Origin to be transparent. "I'm heavily in favor of transparency, and I'm hoping that the FAA comes through pretty quickly with this," Beyer said. "I would strongly encourage Blue Origin to be as transparent as possible, because that builds trust. It doesn't have to be overnight, but it would be nice to keep people updated on the progress they're making." The company has not heeded this advice. An application filed with the FCC last week suggests Blue Origin might target a launch for its next New Shepard flight between April 1 and June 1. However, a spokesperson downplayed that speculation, saying it is not tied to a specific launch. "As a matter of course, we submit rolling FCC license requests to ensure we have continuous coverage for launches," the spokesperson said.
It's also unclear whether this next launch will be an uncrewed or a crewed mission.
Slashdot reader schwit1 adds: "For the time being, the New Space Race is pretty much Elon vs the World."
Three days after this accident with the New Shepard-23 mission, the bipartisan leadership of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, calling for a thorough investigation. In an interview with Ars later that month, the chair of the subcommittee, US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), urged Blue Origin to be transparent. "I'm heavily in favor of transparency, and I'm hoping that the FAA comes through pretty quickly with this," Beyer said. "I would strongly encourage Blue Origin to be as transparent as possible, because that builds trust. It doesn't have to be overnight, but it would be nice to keep people updated on the progress they're making." The company has not heeded this advice. An application filed with the FCC last week suggests Blue Origin might target a launch for its next New Shepard flight between April 1 and June 1. However, a spokesperson downplayed that speculation, saying it is not tied to a specific launch. "As a matter of course, we submit rolling FCC license requests to ensure we have continuous coverage for launches," the spokesperson said.
It's also unclear whether this next launch will be an uncrewed or a crewed mission.
Slashdot reader schwit1 adds: "For the time being, the New Space Race is pretty much Elon vs the World."
What a dick... (Score:3)
Blue Origin choked (Score:4, Interesting)
Blue Origin was started two years before SpaceX with a similar vision. Heck Blue Origin even had the the idea of landing rockets on a drone ship. Reference: https://www.geekwire.com/2015/... [geekwire.com]
But Jeff Bezos failed to attract the best talent to Blue Origin. While SpaceX was actually launching stuff Blue Origin was doing .. well I don't know what they were doing. The top talent from NASA's previous rocket work on DC-X, Space Launch Initiative, etc. went to SpaceX not Blue Origin. SpaceX became the premier destination for people interested in rocketry.
The only real change of challenge to SpaceX is Relativity Space and Electron. I mean, if you are a kid graduating from college which company would you go to? I'd say Relativity Space, followed by Electron, and then SpaceX, Blue Origin fourth .. if at all.
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It's impossible to know where Blue Origin really are because of all their secrecy. It's not completely impossible that New Glenn launches in 2023, then they would be essentially caught up with Starship. Heck, in a crazy twist, if SpaceX hit a few snags, New Glenn could even beat them to orbit. On the other hand, it could be several years more before New Glenn launches. We just don't know.
Re: Blue Origin choked (Score:4, Insightful)
Blue origin are 5 years late in delivering the engines for Vulcan. The exact same engines that new Glenn is supposed to use .
SpaceX builds raptor engines by the hundreds for every single be4 built.
That says alot right there.
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These are verrrry early days of commercial space. Even if it takes them 5 more years to launch, so what? It's the 50 years after that which are important.
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Or be out of business. Or have a warp drive. Or have merged with a company founded by someone who isn't born yet. Or stopped making space ships and building Atlantis. Or who the hell knows? The point is these are early days, there's lot of things happening and being 5 years behind (allegedly) means very little.
For all anyone knows blue origin has developed the star gate and is already making trips to another galaxy to chill with some ancient Egyptian aliens. No one knows what they're doing.
Re: Blue Origin choked (Score:4, Interesting)
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Maybe. Or maybe BO is working on truly next Gen stuff to play leap ahead not catch up. Do I believe that? No, not really, but it isn't outside the realms of reasonable possibility.
There's lots of room up there for everyone. No one is likely to monopolize space.
“Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Re:Blue Origin choked (Score:4, Insightful)
Your ordering is weird to me, and it depends a lot on what someone cares about. Bother Rocket Lab (Electron) and Relativity are only targetting the small-end commercial launch market. Neither of them are going to be pushing the boundaries of large payload economics or launching humans in the next 10 years.
If you want to contribute to the future of humanity in space, or contribute to the civilization-changing event that would be improved large payload launch economics, then SpaceX would be your #1 choice.
If you want to work on cutting-edge fabrication ideas that may prove themselves out, then maybe Relativity or Rocket Labs would be a choice.... but it will be a lot longer until those ideas make an impact.
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Blue Origin hired good talent, then buried them in bureaucracy and the "step by step" mantra for decades giving them nothing fun to work on, then wondered why most of that talent moved on to other space companies. They thought they could end up with the perfect rocket someday by designing endlessly and buying warehouse space, and forgot that most people aren't motivated by paperwork and rough prototypes to play with would've done wonders for morale.
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Elon vs. the world for space? (Score:1)
Keep in mind, the people who can best comment on this, can't.
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Agreed. This also applies to most information covered by NDAs, classified programs, military capabilities, and ongoing investigations.
The recent example of military members playing simulation games and wanting to "prove" the simulated capabilities were wrong by uploading classified documents shows there is sometimes an overwhelming urge to be "right" that overrides good sense.
Sometimes the best course of action is to just shake your head and move on to the next story.
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"For the time being, the New Space Race is pretty much Elon vs the World."
Keep in mind, the people who can best comment on this, can't.
There's enough information publicly available to know it's still true. When there are tests, we all know about them.
This is what BO should focus on. (Score:2)
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There's plenty of research that can be done in sub orbital hops. NASA still uses sounding rockets for some of them. New Shepherd gets you the same thing, with a human there to attend to the experiment, and costs less.
And the BE-3 gets Blue Origin experience with liquid hydrogen systems which will be handy in the lunar environment.
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Those people's experiences will inspire and motivate others to try it, and some of them will become fanatics for spaceflight in general who before would have been only mildly enthusiastic. That is a powerful long-term benefit to the industry, and to humanity as a whole.
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I would submit the value of New Shepard is intangible: Drastically increasing the potential cross-section of humankind with direct, personal experience of being in outer space and weightlessness.
Such pompous blather. Increasing by... four humans per month for five minutes each? Even the "vomit comet" can handily beat it in cadence, duration and safety, for less than a tenth the price, minus the view that you can see in every SpaceX launch stream.
Except it's not even happening right now because the whole thing is on hold after the launcher failed for a second time. What, you didn't know that the booster crashed once before they started sending up passengers? It seems that BO is good at sweeping cra
Root cause (Score:5, Funny)
A Swagelok severe pressure regulating valve failed. Originally this was purchased from Amazon but it turns out the seller's Swaglock instead sent a cheap fake part from China. Product had 5 star reviews with such quotes as: "it was the best colour lipstick they have ever used", and "my cat really loved the taste of this food".
Fortunately not all was lost. Amazon offered us a full $9.99 refund and we didn't even pay for postage.
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Are you sure it wasn't "The best colour lipstick my cat every used"?
It's dead, (Score:2)
Jim.
House Subcommittee on Space is a grift (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't the "House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics" basically a front for sending taxpayer money to NASA contractors? Of course they're going to investigate the hell out of Blue Origin, they're threatening their cash cow. They need more funding going to the aerospace contractors in their district.
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Since NASA since their early days as NACA has always used civilian contractors. The House and Senate committees have oversight and ultimate budgetary authority. If one of the NASA subcontractors is having a problem then they should investigate. I'm not sure why B O is not at least publicizing what went wrong, if it's a design defect they need to disclose it and say how long it will take to get a fix.
I'm Suprised Bozos (Score:2)