The Space Thread - Launches, Events, Live Streams, Governments, Corporations, drama in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

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Looks like the New Glenn 2nd stage failed to get to proper orbit so mission fail anyway.



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mlanguishi said:
Looks like the New Glenn 2nd stage failed to get to proper orbit so mission fail anyway.



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The first stage worked A OK and didn't explode
Post Reply said:
Looks like SpaceX's reusability monopoly is back on the menu, boys!
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Kinda.... The reusable part worked FINE.

The second stage didn't work perfectly although it didn't explode either
 
Reusability matters to the beancounters.

Getting to orbit matters to customers and insurers. They're what matters. (Though I'm sure Leo is self-insured because fuckoff Bezos money, not a slam I'm sure Starlink's the same.)

Having said that nosplody is probably a minor problem.
 
Local copy of phone-taken video of Earth set.

 
ConsentAccidentVictimNo98 said:
I will have you know that the recent New Glenn was a total success, if it exploded it will have been a total success because Blue Origin has collected a lot of data, and as we all know: Data is what matters! It even got to orbit, wow what a success!
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Blue Origin may not be moving fast, but at least they're breaking things.
 
ConsentAccidentVictimNo98 said:
I will have you know that the recent New Glenn was a total success, if it exploded it will have been a total success because Blue Origin has collected a lot of data, and as we all know: Data is what matters! It even got to orbit, wow what a success!
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It is pretty interesting watching the Artemis II mission go flawlessly (except the toilet) only to see a Blue Origin rocket remind us of how difficult it actually is to get off the planet, let alone off the planet and into a useful orbit. As mentioned in this thread, reusable boosters definitely reduce the total launch cost, but if most of the launch costs are the payload+insurance it would make more sense to ensure the payload second stage actually gets where you are trying to send it.
 
MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti said:
It is pretty interesting watching the Artemis II mission go flawlessly (except the toilet) only to see a Blue Origin rocket remind us of how difficult it actually is to get off the planet, let alone off the planet and into a useful orbit. As mentioned in this thread, reusable boosters definitely reduce the total launch cost, but if most of the launch costs are the payload+insurance it would make more sense to ensure the payload second stage actually gets where you are trying to send it.
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It's generally speaking the case that the launch vehicles are the expensive part. This is the funny part about all the reuse discourse online because people like to act as if reusable rockets are going to make spaceflight so much easier to access. No, it's very costly to make satellites, they're generally the main cost associated with any space effort. I mean fine, there are historically very expensive rockets like the Delta 4, Shuttle and SLS but those are outliers for the most part, with the Delta 4 existing to ensure the US had 2 launch vehicles into orbit.

Post Reply said:
Blue Origin may not be moving fast, but at least they're breaking things.
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Sir, sir, breakings things most important part about going to space. We know because SpaceX human excellence with Starship and how every flight is a bigger success than Artemis because of the DATA
 
ConsentAccidentVictimNo98 said:
Sir, sir, breakings things most important part about going to space. We know because SpaceX human excellence with Starship and how every flight is a bigger success than Artemis because of the DATA
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The last Starship launch did work to be fair. The next one is the prototype launch. Maybe hold the pistachio flicking for flight 12.
 
ConsentAccidentVictimNo98 said:
It's generally speaking the case that the launch vehicles are the expensive part. This is the funny part about all the reuse discourse online because people like to act as if reusable rockets are going to make spaceflight so much easier to access. No, it's very costly to make satellites, they're generally the main cost associated with any space effort. I mean fine, there are historically very expensive rockets like the Delta 4, Shuttle and SLS but those are outliers for the most part, with the Delta 4 existing to ensure the US had 2 launch vehicles into orbit.
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Zubrin talks about this and argues that payloads are expensive because launchers are expensive and nobody wanted to be the putz whose payload failed when the launch succeeded so payloads are built like brick shithouses.
 
JJLiautaud said:
Zubrin talks about this and argues that payloads are expensive because launchers are expensive and nobody wanted to be the putz whose payload failed when the launch succeeded so payloads are built like brick shithouses.
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>Robert Zubrin
>President of the Mars Society.

No, payloads are expensive because they are complex, and you generally specialize them for certain roles. Say I want a telescope, well that's going to cost a lot because of all the instrumentation, and all the testing for it. If launches were expensive, and there was so much risk then the rational move would be to make them as cheap as possible to minimize monetary loss, especially with timed development.

If you want to get cheap satellites, mass production is really the only way. This being the point of Megaconstellations, but they require near constant relaunches (especially with something like Starlink as they need to be at lower altitudes for pretty obvious reasons with the distance that light travels). Granted, something like Starlink is useful for military operations as seen with how both Ukraine and Russia used the constellation, and how Ukrainian offensives had greater success when Russia did not have access to Starlink for communications and operations. But that is less of a case of building one specialised satellite, and instead needing to launch thousands of satellites to ensure you have sufficient coverage and bandwidth.

This doesn't really minimize the change in commercial launch cost, which has been falling quite a lot. Still, that is not the main constraint will always be satellites, especially when they get really expensive. They may appear cheaper when you mass produce satellites because (development cost + unit cost)/number of units, but there is little reason as to why you'd want to mass produce a specific satellite unless you needed coverage or a spare (like how Nauka was a spare for Zarya and then was turned into its own research module on the ISS), you'd instead just build a shared chassis like with what happened with Hubble being derived from a NRO KH-11 Kennen spy satellite.
 
MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti said:
It is pretty interesting watching the Artemis II mission go flawlessly (except the toilet) only to see a Blue Origin rocket remind us of how difficult it actually is to get off the planet, let alone off the planet and into a useful orbit. As mentioned in this thread, reusable boosters definitely reduce the total launch cost, but if most of the launch costs are the payload+insurance it would make more sense to ensure the payload second stage actually gets where you are trying to send it.
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One thing worth noting, and this is not me praising this aspect, is that the SSL drew heavily from the STS (space shuttle) systems which did provide tons of useful info. Thats why the rocket looks so much like a taller shuttle stack-thats what it is sans the orbiter.

The engines on the booster are a pair of solid rocket boosters that are brought over from the shuttle as well as 4 of the shuttles main engines (which is kind of stupid since they cost hundreds of millions each whereas a newer engine could've cost considerably less but this is actually a congressional mandate. Shame that reusable engines are getting dumped into the ocean but it is what it is.)

I agree its kind of fun watching the egomanic billionaires launch their rockets and experience failures while the old dog NASA scores a hole-in-one but NASA has its fair share of failures. They've killed like 17 astronauts... so far.

Can't wait to see Blue Origin finish that lunar lander so Artemis 3 can launch. Bezos has been awfully quiet about fulfilling that particular Amazon order.
 
mindlessobserver said:
The last Starship launch did work to be fair. The next one is the prototype launch. Maybe hold the pistachio flicking for flight 12.
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ULA's also having a pretty major boondoggle with Vulcan. Those damn SRBs keep failing. It's incredible how good the core of it is to have made it both times to proper orbit. But there's still a lot of hesitation now to put anything important on Vulcan until they get a few up that don't come so close to blowing up.

Lately it sure does seem the things that used to be super hard like reusability and landing probes on other planets have gone very well while old 'proven' things like getting to orbit or not having exploding SRBs are a major issue. Except Starliner of course which can't seem to do anything right all.
 

Scott Manley speculating about the Blue Origin mishap and going over a few different scenarios. He settles on the idea that blue origin shut down the second stage early after detecting a problem with one of the engines, and thinks it was so that they could safely de-orbit the rocket rather than risk having it come down unpredictably. Also, he points out the conservative launch profile, which required a long plane-change burn, meant they were running the second stage for a lot longer than would have been normal for a LEO launch, which is possibly what allowed them to detect the issue to begin with.
 
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