Blue Origin Rocket Exploded Thursday Night During Hot-Fire Test (cbsnews.com) 73
Spaceflight Now shared their video of the explosion, which the Orlando Sentinel describes as showing Blue Origin's rocket "become engulfed in flames. The fireball expands out and covers the entire launch pad as the fuselage of the rocket can be seen crumbling into the flames."
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")
It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit...
The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]
Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."
"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")
It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit...
The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]
Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."
"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.
Space is still hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This IS rocket science after all.
Re: (Score:3)
True.
SpaceX's recent successes tend to make people forget that the company started out with three failures in their first three attempts to launch their first rocket, the Falcon-1. (And, for that matter, SpaceX also had it's share of explosions on the pad [spacenews.com] during a static fire.)
Yeah: space is hard.
Re: SpaceX is a monumental scam I have said it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pffft, it's not brain surgery.
Re: (Score:2)
Whilst that is perfectly true, it is questionable as to whether it is useful or necessary. If a rocket is being tested, then logically it should be heavily instrumented. If it's heavily instrumented, and the instruments are themselves competently designed, there is no obvious reason why the engine can't be auto-cut when problems start to arise. And they will have arisen long long before the explosion.
The values may have independently been "within permitted range", but if the pattern of those values doesn't
Re: (Score:3)
>And they will have arisen long long before the explosion.
I am no expert but... At a propellant feed rate of 2,300kg per second and a turbine speed of 19000 rpm that's a lot of mass in motion to come to a sudden stop. At 350 bar of turbopump pressure I can see there being a lot of bang at the first sign of trouble. The engineering limits on these devices may not be fully characterized until mass production has rolled for a while.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you're familiar with the countdown protocol, all the pre-flight checks, etc. These power up a range of subsystems, motors, etc, so that everything can be verified prior to ignition itself. The complete sequence takes a very long time. Under normal flight conditions, you can't check for absolutely everything (instrumentation is mass, and mass is the enemy) but there's still a lot. However, during an engine test, you can pack a lot more sensors in.
This is where you'd want to be spotting loose connect
Re: (Score:2)
It's a setback for Artemis though. It will probably take a year to rebuild that launch facility, maybe more.
Re: (Score:2)
Failures in early examples of every rocket are not especially unusual, and corrective actions will be taken (to avoid that specific failure mode next time). The investigation report should be interesting.
It does, however, cast a tiny bit of a shadow on Bezos' prattling on and on about how slow and careful he is because he doesn't want to explodey things for fun like Musk does. It may take a while to ferment, but I expect some first-rate billionaire smack-talk to come from this one at some point.
"To the MOON (Alice)"! (Score:3)
Kapow!
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously impressive explosion.
Re:"To the MOON (Alice)"! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, the twelve-year-old in me enjoyed the video very much! What a fireball!
Re: (Score:2)
People who quote Family Guy often tend to be fun. It's a show with very hit and miss comedy, but this was a particularly funny moment.
Re: (Score:3)
Wooooshhh!!! (at 2 levels)
Re:"To the MOON (Alice)"! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You lost me in the middle part, the main actor is called Bob, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Everyone spoiling my jokes today ... I am sad now.
Re: "To the MOON (Alice)"! (Score:2)
It's ok, you're only German, and you guys can't make jokes. Except your software development skills, but that doesn't count. You're forgiven.
the stock is set to EXPLODE! (Score:2)
"One's over in the swamp over there and one's over that-a-way on the beach."
Didn't they blow up a second stage during testing a few weeks ago? Two KABOOMS in such close succession?!!
Pad destroyed (Score:5, Informative)
Pic: https://x.com/asherbphotos/sta... [x.com]
Word is a second booster at the site in the horizontal integration facility was also destroyed.
Impacts go beyond the rocket and pad. This was development for lunar landers to be launched this year, Leo internet satellites to be launched in the coming days, Blue Moon lunar landers for the Artemis lunar program, and on and on. An engine may have been the cause of the mishap and that casts shade on the Vulcan Centaur that also uses the same engine.
Re: (Score:2)
Word is a second booster at the site in the horizontal integration facility was also destroyed.
After inspecting the HIF and booster, BlueOrigin reported that both are okay.
Big bada boom (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Big bada boom (Score:5, Funny)
This is how I envision the AI burst when it happens.
Re: (Score:1)
Careful what you wish for, the plutocrats always find a way to make us plebeians bail them out.
Second biggest (Score:2)
What was the biggest? Halifax?
Re:Second biggest (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Widely accepted estimate for the 1917 Halifax Explosion is ~2.9 kilotons of TNT.
Minor Scale (1985, New Mexico) — the largest non-nuclear manmade explosion ever.
It used 4,744 tons of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, equivalent to ~3.2 kilotons of TNT. It was a deliberate U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency test to simulate nuclear blast effects.
Re: (Score:2)
Estimates saying 5.5 GWh (roughly kilotons TNT)
I've been searching for that estimate but haven't found it. Do you have the source?
Re: Big bada boom (Score:2)
That doesn't seem right. It is an unmixed fuel and oxidiser. More a burn than a bomb.
I mean, there was that Denmark island is ww2...
Re: Big bada boom (Score:2)
Did not detonate. But it was an explosion.
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm. Could have sworn I saw a shock wave in the evening news video.
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm. Could have sworn I saw a shock wave in the evening news video.
There was definitely an expanding bubble that looked exactly like a shock wave. I have no idea if there might be something else that it could be, but it looked like a shock wave to me.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a shockwave visible before the fireball, but kind of small compared to the conflagration.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a shockwave visible before the fireball, but kind of small compared to the conflagration.
True. So a smallish (though big enough to produce a visible shockwave that expanded for at least hundreds of meters) detonation followed by a much larger deflagration, perhaps.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Big bada boom (Score:5, Informative)
how fast does a fire have to be to become an explosion?
The speed of sound. It creates a supersonic shockwave.
This type of explosion is known as a deflagration (as opposed to a detonation).
Re: (Score:2)
how fast does a fire have to be to become an explosion?
When the coroner can't tell the difference, your question is only one lawyers care about.
(Ironically enough, if it's proven the victims burned slower instead of exploding faster, then the pain and suffering costs skyrocket higher than the rocket ever did.)
Re: (Score:2)
Greater than zero, but not by much.
https://knowledge.gexcon.com/d... [gexcon.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, a baseball bat *is* a deadly weapon, if used as a weapon.
OTOH, when arguing about whether it's a bomb the definitions of the terms are less clear. And when arguing about whether it's an explosion, high energy chemists/engineers will have a different definition than folks who don't deal with the details.
To me, it's an explosion. If some professional wants to say "No, it's a deflagration." I'm not going to say he's wrong, but I'm not wrong either. We're just speaking different dialects of English.
Re: Big bada boom (Score:2)
I never said it didn't explode. I was pointing out that that kind of unmixed burn wouldn't get close to 6000 tons of bombs that they tried to blow up Heligoland with.
AI says 1/16th as powerful
Re: (Score:2)
If a baseball bat can be considered a deadly weapon, then I'm not sure why we hesitate labeling 500,000 gallons of fuel going out instead of up, a bomb.
As always, "overthinking" happens when an idiot approaches a problem and doesn't think about it enough to support their conclusion.
A baseball bat is a better analogy than you realized. As with the baseball bat, if you intentionally accelerate it at somebody's head then it's a weapon. If you use it for it's intended purpose, it isn't. Duh.
tldr; if you're trying to drop it on somebody that is when it gets the label "bomb."
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. It's not really comparable to high explosive detonations. It's kind of like that data centre that made the news for releasing a Hiroshima of energy every day!!
Re: (Score:2)
Second biggest non nuke manmade explosion ever.
(Site Investigator) "Wait, did you pack this thing with..tannerite?
(Bezos) * giggle-snort *
(Musk) "Duuude. I was joking."
video is powerful (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The announcement kept saying "everyone is accounted for" which left it ominously open.
Re: (Score:2)
The announcement kept saying "everyone is accounted for" which left it ominously open.
In the land of gross unaccountability, all present and accounted for has somehow legally translated into technically we found every piece..
Wow! (Score:4, Funny)
Kudos to the Blue Origin folks. That was solid gold Hollywood level pyrotechnics!
Two thumbs way up!
The mushroom cloud was a nice touch too - nothing says high drama like a nice mushroom cloud.
My grandkids would both be yelling - "Ooh! Do it again!"
[what is everybody looking at me like that for? too soon?]
Re: (Score:2)
The v3 super-heavy booster impacting in the ocean (or should that be on the ocean surface) at the speed of a bullet would have been something to see from a distance as well. The footage I saw was only from the side of the booster itself. Needless to say the feed cut out at impact.
Alternate headline (Score:5, Funny)
Bezos suffers Projectile Dysfunction.
Congratulations! (Score:2)
Apparently the "hot fire" test was a great success!
Re: (Score:2)
Re-engineer it (Score:2)
I guess (Score:2)
...we can expect Prime to get more expensive then.
Newer Glenn (Score:2)
As a static fire test... (Score:2)
As a static fire test, massive failure.
As a giant expanding fireball, massive success!
Difficult not to feel schadenfreude (Score:2)