Blue Origin Livestreams - But Postpones - Its First Orbital Rocket Launch (blueorigin.com) 33
"We're standing down on today's launch attempt," Blue Origin posted late last night, "to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."
But soon Blue Origin will again attempt its very first orbital flight. And they'll also attempt to land their reusable Stage 1 on a drone in the Atlantic ocean...
Several hours Sunday night their rocket was fueled on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, awaiting ignition. Its three-hour launch window had just opened. And Blue Origin was webcasting it all live on their web page...
But whatever happened, Ars Technica's senior space editor Eric Berger got to talk to an "affable and anxious" Jeff Bezos: "It's pretty exciting, isn't it?" Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, said by way of greeting... I asked what his expectations were for the launch of New Glenn, which has a three-hour window that opens at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Monday, January 13... "We would certainly like to achieve orbit, and get the Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit," Bezos said. "Landing the booster would be gravy on top of that. It's kind of insane to try and land the booster. A more sane approach would probably be to try to land it into ocean. But we're gonna go for it."
Blue Origin has built a considerable amount of infrastructure on a drone ship, Jacklyn, that will be waiting offshore for the rocket to land upon. Was Bezos not concerned about putting that hardware at risk? "I'm worried about everything," he admitted. However, the rocket has been programmed to divert from the ship if the avionics on board the vehicle sense that anything is off-nominal. And there is, of course, a pretty good chance of that happening. "We've done a lot of work, we've done a lot of testing, but there are some things that can only be tested in flight," Bezos said. "And you can't be overconfident in these things... The reality is, there are a lot of things that go wrong, and you have to accept that, if something goes wrong, we'll pick ourselves up and get busy for the second flight."
Bezos also pointed out that 7% of all the people who have ever flown into space have done so on a Blue Origin vehicle — including himself, an experience he told Ars Technica "is kind of hard to beat... That really was very meaningful for a whole bunch of reasons.
"But this is, you know, the culmination of a lot of hard work by a lot of people. And it's a really big deal. You know, you don't get very many first flights, yeah, and here we go."
The rocket's payload nose cone (or fairing) has the signatures of thousands of Blue Origin employees, according to a Blue Origin post on Instagram, calling it "a tribute to the hard work and passion for mission we all have here..." More details about the launch:
But soon Blue Origin will again attempt its very first orbital flight. And they'll also attempt to land their reusable Stage 1 on a drone in the Atlantic ocean...
Several hours Sunday night their rocket was fueled on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, awaiting ignition. Its three-hour launch window had just opened. And Blue Origin was webcasting it all live on their web page...
But whatever happened, Ars Technica's senior space editor Eric Berger got to talk to an "affable and anxious" Jeff Bezos: "It's pretty exciting, isn't it?" Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, said by way of greeting... I asked what his expectations were for the launch of New Glenn, which has a three-hour window that opens at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Monday, January 13... "We would certainly like to achieve orbit, and get the Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit," Bezos said. "Landing the booster would be gravy on top of that. It's kind of insane to try and land the booster. A more sane approach would probably be to try to land it into ocean. But we're gonna go for it."
Blue Origin has built a considerable amount of infrastructure on a drone ship, Jacklyn, that will be waiting offshore for the rocket to land upon. Was Bezos not concerned about putting that hardware at risk? "I'm worried about everything," he admitted. However, the rocket has been programmed to divert from the ship if the avionics on board the vehicle sense that anything is off-nominal. And there is, of course, a pretty good chance of that happening. "We've done a lot of work, we've done a lot of testing, but there are some things that can only be tested in flight," Bezos said. "And you can't be overconfident in these things... The reality is, there are a lot of things that go wrong, and you have to accept that, if something goes wrong, we'll pick ourselves up and get busy for the second flight."
Bezos also pointed out that 7% of all the people who have ever flown into space have done so on a Blue Origin vehicle — including himself, an experience he told Ars Technica "is kind of hard to beat... That really was very meaningful for a whole bunch of reasons.
"But this is, you know, the culmination of a lot of hard work by a lot of people. And it's a really big deal. You know, you don't get very many first flights, yeah, and here we go."
The rocket's payload nose cone (or fairing) has the signatures of thousands of Blue Origin employees, according to a Blue Origin post on Instagram, calling it "a tribute to the hard work and passion for mission we all have here..." More details about the launch:
- Space.com notes that the launch "was initially scheduled for Jan. 10 and then Jan. 12, but Blue Origin postponed it due to rough offshore weather that could affect a rocket landing on the company's recovery ship in the Atlantic." Space Force officials forecast the chance of good liftoff conditions Sunday night were 50%.
- "We want to be clear about our objectives," Blue Origin posted Sunday on X.com. "This is our first flight and we've prepared rigorously for it. But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations is a replacement for flying this rocket. Our key objective today is to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious — but we're going for it. No matter what happens, we'll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch."
- While Blue Origin's "New Shephard" capsule can hold up to six passengers, the New Glenn's capsule has 30 times that capacity.
- Space.com notes the rocket is carrying a payload: a test version of the company's new 'Blue Ring' spacecraft platform to validate its orbit-to-ground communications capabilities.
- To get the next generation excited about space travel, Blue Origin's web site is selling an 11.5-inch , 636-piece model of the New Glenn rocket (complete with a retractable launch tower).
First Link (Score:2)
Link to the live launch video is first link in the summary.
Not even sure if the livestream is on YouTube (livestream on Site doens't look like YouTube feed), but isn't it nice you don't have to go through Google to watch?
Really hope this goes well, we need more competent private space providers.
Re:First Link (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, obviously we all hope it goes well, but I'm not expecting anything remotely economically competitive out of Blue Origin - just another "we'll keep giving you money, even though it makes no sense, so that we're not 100% contingent on SpaceX" launch provider (like ULA). In large part because:
You HAVE to iterate, fast, if you want to be remotely competitive in this industry. What they're doing is like trying to develop an operating system, without ever compiling and running it.
Probably, but still hoping... (Score:1)
I mean, obviously we all hope it goes well, but I'm not expecting anything remotely economically competitive out of Blue Origin
Maybe not for a while but I am hoping that after some time they can at least catch up economically, and it can start with some good breaks in testing and design going well.
What they're doing is like trying to develop an operating system, without ever compiling and running it.
Yeah it's a leap, I just hope it actually works out for them even though the odds seem bad.
Re:Probably, but still hoping... (Score:5, Informative)
But that's my point: they stand zero chance of ever catching up economically unless they change their design philosophy. Regardless of how this particular launch goes. They're guaranteeing themselves far too low of a learning rate.
And I don't want it to sound like SpaceX is the only one iterating quickly, because they're not - they're just the furthest along. The point is just the opposite: that BlueOrigin isn't.
I don't think most people realize that BlueOrigin is older than SpaceX. And for most of its history it was the better funded of the two.
Re:Probably, but still hoping... (Score:4, Informative)
SIGH....
Launch was just scrubbed. Figures.
Re:Probably, but still hoping... (Score:4, Informative)
Updates
All Times E.T.
2:10 A.M. – Scrub has been made official due to “launch system subsystem.” No new launch date was given.
2:04 A.M. – Unofficial reports of a scrub from local reporters.
2:03 A.M. – The launch clock has been removed from the stream maybe this is the end for the night?
==
With SpaceX, this would probably mean "launching tomorrow or the day after", but with BE, who knows... 2026? ;)
Re: (Score:2)
They're guaranteeing themselves far too low of a learning rate.
AND they use hydrogen for fuel so they also have more challenges.
Re: (Score:1)
they stand zero chance of ever catching up economically unless they change their design philosophy.
True but in order to change I think they need some successes to fund migration...
But they can't even get what they have working, as you noted launch was scrubbed.. maybe that itself will be motivation for real design change as you noted.
Yeah not looking good.
Re:First Link (Score:4, Interesting)
They have flown many of the component parts, and demonstrated things like landing boosters. This is just the first time for the whole stack.
There is some interesting tech there, as much as I hate to admit it.
Scrubbed now anyway.
Re:First Link (Score:4, Interesting)
You can do a lot of impressive stuff when you just completely ignore having to stick to a mass budget.
New Glenn is entirely uninteresting. Its mass ratios are bad. Its engine stats are bad. It's only half-reusable without Jarvis, and their payload numbers fall apart if you extrapolate to Jarvis. They don't get mass production benefits on the engines. They don't get any scale production on anything since they produce in such low volumes because they fly so rarely, and are locked in a cost cycle that will keep them that way, and it would take them ages to even get close to the Falcon series on the most basic metric of "trust that the rocket isn't likely to blow up your payload on the way up".
There is literally nothing interesting about this also-ran. It exists solely to prevent monopoly status from SpaceX, not to actually be competitive.
Re: (Score:2)
You can do a lot of impressive stuff when you just completely ignore having to stick to a mass budget.
You can also do a lot of impressive things when you stick to theoretical capabilities and never actually launch. Bezos has become the master of that when it comes to space flight and launch systems. He's really good at the hop-and-look though. Him and Branson have a competition to see who can be the least effective launch provider. Right at the moment, I'm not sure which is in the lead.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, obviously we all hope it goes well, but I'm not expecting anything remotely economically competitive out of Blue Origin
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The faring design on the upper stage of New Glen is a pretty simple thing to iterate and they don't have to squeeze payloads through a small hatch in the side. Their plan is to pit the non-reusable upper stage economics against a re-useable upper stage. Star Ship will not be a good choice for launching large diameter payloads especially considering the internal structures. SpaceX 9 metres vs Blue Origin 7 metres.
I think their is great scope for both vehicles and from
Good Luck, Blue Origin (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope you nail everything on the first try.
Scrubbed... (Score:5, Informative)
The launch was scrubbed for today's launch attempt. The countdown displayed on the live feed got down to about 15 minutes or so, and then it was scrubbed.
Re: (Score:2)
Delayed quite a few times from what I saw. :(
When it does lauch (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, yes, because Elon is such a nicer guy to work for!
To space? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:To space? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is itself a useless metric.
As XKCD put it, space isn't this [xkcd.com], it's this [xkcd.com].
It's easy to go "up". The vast majority of the energy of orbital spacecraft is horizontal, not vertical. And the rocket equation is tyrannical with respect to adding more velocity.
the Von Kármán line [Re:To space?] (Score:4, Informative)
"Bezos also pointed out that 7% of all the people who have ever flown into space have done so on a Blue Origin vehicle"
That's not what many specialists will tell you, as BO never really went beyond the height that most people in the business call space.
I think you're confusing Blue Origin with Virgin Galactic.
The altitude conventionally defined as "above this you're outside the atmosphere and entering space" is above the Von Kármán line, 100 km. Virgin Galactic sells tourist rides to "space", but doesn't quite reach 100 km. Blue Origin's "New Shepherd" vehicle, however, does go over 100 km, so "most people in the business" do indeed call it space. (Most people in the business, however, also are quite aware that entering space is not the same as entering orbit).
In the X-15 program, the US Air Force decided to give astronaut wings to pilots who flew over 50 km (80.5 km), and this is the criterion Virgin Galactic uses to be able to claim that their vehicles go to space.
(for any non-technical people reading this, there is no sharp and clear boundary of the atmosphere-- it just gets exponentially thinner as you go higher and higher. Von Kármán's calculation was that, roughly, you have to be at least 100 km altitude for the atmosphere to be thin enough for an orbit to not decay in less than one revolution due to drag. This itself is a fuzzy number, since it depends on the satellite's mass and cross sectional area, but the fact that it's so close to an even hundred kilometers makes it a convenient definition.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think most successful space companies can be expected to have a sort of slave-driving jerk as CEO. See Rocket Lab [businessdesk.co.nz] as well. But basically, it's a field that tons of engineers want to be involved in, with proportionally few jobs available; the industry leader (SpaceX) pushing at a breakneck pace, causing everyone else who wants to compete to have to push even harder; and in general, your typical issues of a highly male-dominated workforce. Add in the fact that you're making what are basically bombs that n
Re: We need more options (Score:2)
Rei, without evidence, claimed Muskâ(TM)s opinions were uniquely dangerous. Yet he had no qualms about pre-2021 Musk vocally supporting Democrats for his entire adult life. He similarly had no problem with billionaires spending money and controlling media when it was George Soros doing so over many decades- and recently being awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in a naked display of cronyism.
In short- opinions are bad and billionaires are bad- if theyâ(TM)re on the wrong side.
Iâ(TM)m old
Check out the BO Schwag at the shop (Score:2)
No he is not astronaut Glenn, not by a long shot
glhf (Score:2)
A good night's sleep (Score:2)
No good (Score:1)
About time (Score:2)
confused (Score:2)
I'm confused. Is Blue Origin the same as uBlock Origin?
New launch scheduled for... (Score:2)
...early 2035
Maybe they should change their name to Blue Dream of the Future