Blue Origin took another step closer to the first flight of their New Glenn vehicle by finishing assembly of the first stage that will fly and rolling it to their launch pad on Tuesday evening October 29. The long-awaited first flight is being talked about as "before the end of the year," contingent on passing some major test milestones between now and the first launch.
Moving the rocket to the launch site is a key sign that the first stage is almost ready for its much-anticipated debut. Development of the New Glenn rocket would bring a third commercial heavy-lift rocket into the US market, after SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and Starship vehicles. It would send another clear signal that the future of rocketry in the United States is commercially driven rather than government-led. Critically, New Glenn is also designed to have a fully reusable first stage, which will attempt a droneship landing on its first flight.
The rocket will undergo two significant tests; first a WDR or Wet Dress Rehearsal in which it gets fully fueled and every aspect gets tested as if it was going to launch, stopping just short of starting the engines, and the second being like that but the engines will ignite and run a static fire test of some (currently unstated) duration.
You may recall that Blue went through this sequence with the second stage in the last week of September (last story in a Small News Roundup). That was preparation for this in some sense; I mean, it had to be done before the entire vehicle can be stacked for launch and it probably was a good use of their launch pad facilities.
These are the pivotal final steps before launch, but this is also a period when problems can be found. For example, this will be the first time the flight versions of the first and second stage will be mated and integrated, and then connected to the ground systems at Cape Canaveral. As the size of the transporter suggests, these are large and complex machines. Inevitably, there will be challenges in the coming weeks.
Blue's founder, Jeff Bezos, has been pushing to get New Glenn launched before
the end of the year and time is getting tight. You'll remember that the
first launch for a New Glenn was originally supposed to be
the ESCAPADE mission to Mars, which required launching during a narrow window between October 13 and 21;
the end of the window wasn't even two weeks ago.
NASA scrubbed that mission on September 6th, expecting that Blue couldn't get the vehicle ready to launch that soon. I
think that was a good call.
According to the Date Calculator, this is day 305 of the year, meaning we have 61 days left (because being a leap year, the year is 366 days long). Is that enough time? At best, it will be close. Eric Berger at Ars Technica (source article) uses a couple of paragraphs in a comparison with the first flight of the Falcon Heavy. That first launch had the vehicle delivered to the launch pad on December 28, 2017, static-fired on January 24, 2018 and the liftoff of the first flight was on February 6. All of this work comprised 40 days.
In my book, it's not a comparison that means anything. SpaceX had far more operational experience than Blue does; they had launched 50 Falcon 9s by then while Blue Origin has launched nothing. SpaceX has demonstrated a "hardware rich" design philosophy, which tolerates more problems with smaller assemblies to learn more by testing more. Blue is the opposite. Finally, SpaceX demonstrates remarkable speed in getting things done all the time. I don't believe that has ever been said about Blue Origin.
That said, I wish them luck.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket rolls out of its hangar on Tuesday night. Credit: Blue Origin
For the future of space exploration, I hope it works out for them.
ReplyDeleteBut, well, BO, who's seemingly spent as much on lawfare against SpaceX and is still lawfaring, I have nothing nice to say about BO. Bag of odious jerks.
And for them to complain about how Starship is delayed and screwing up Artemis when they're the ones that did most to delay Starship, well, and then to bitch about the potential future launch tempo of Starship and how 10 flights a day will hamper their ability to make 24 launches or so a year, well, bag of odious jerks.
It seems to me that somehow over the years our society has changed from "rule of law" to "rule of lawyers." Maybe it has been there all along, but it seems to have really come on in the last 50 years I remember best. Maybe it started with allowing the ambulance chambers to advertise on TV or maybe it comes from the companies having a floor in their headquarters filled with nothing but lawyers.
DeleteI suppose it's probably one of those things that's inevitable as the judicial branch keeps grabbing more and more power (how many important things seem to come down to some court somewhere ruling on some suit?) or being a lawyer becomes more fashionable due to some TV shows or something.
https://youtu.be/taIDeZKdMks?si=8fzbCKOxxstpUmo9
DeleteTom Paxton called it decades ago. Heard him perform it live at Philly folk fest in the 80s.
The 'Rule of Lawyers' was also addressed in Hulk Hogan's cinematic masterpiece called "Mr. Nanny" in 1993. Bunch of losers keep blocking his driveway and he moves the vehicle and they threaten the Hulk with... a lawsuit.
DeleteIt's become too much of how we live anymore. Seriously, do I need to know not to place a baby face-first into a full paint bucket?
I look at that big, beautiful rocket, and all I can think of is them throwing it away. I have my serious doubts that they can crank out booster after booster the way SpaceX does, and I'm pretty sure the first flight will have its share of bugs and failures. Hey, look at ULA...
ReplyDeleteNo, thank you, I shall avert my eyes from ULA.
DeleteThe shell of New Glen, like ULA's Vulcan, is made of thick aluminum sheets that are then milled down and then rolled. Lots of machining time, lots of waste. It makes sense if you are actually reusing the booster, so once they actually reach reusability the cost and time-heavy process will pay off.
DeleteOf course, ULA has been saying they'll just toss the very expensive booster shell and keep the engine sections. Some time down the road, so ULA's going to not succeed in saving money much at all.
The shell of New Glen, like ULA's Vulcan, is made of thick aluminum sheets that are then milled down and then rolled. Lots of machining time, lots of waste. It makes sense if you are actually reusing the booster, so once they actually reach reusability the cost and time-heavy process will pay off.
DeleteI don't understand. If you're buying hundreds of square yards, and both of those rockets have got to be that big, then surely some manufacturer would create a custom thickness for you. Maybe they want different thicknesses in different areas?
Some time down the road, so ULA's going to not succeed in saving money much at all.
Well maybe when they're "under new management" there might be more sanity. IF they're under new management...
What both ULA and BO have done is machine 'pockets' into the metal therefore leaving thick sections and thin sections in order to lighten the aluminum shell.
DeleteSo both companies take these huge sheets of aluminum and put them in huge CNC machines that then cut waffle-like pockets into said machine and then take the huge waffled-on-one-side sheets and put them in huge rolling machines.
I think SpaceX had the right idea by building an overly over-powered system and using stainless steel.
Way I look at it, maybe I got it wrong, but BO is being too fussy aesthetic wise, and they look like their manufacturing is still old school spec aerospace, thats gonna be a killer for them I suspect in the longer run, to remain competitive in comparison to SpaceX and a couple of the small payload rocket companies. Nothing wrong being proud as a peach of your rocket, no sir, that said the BO booster looks like a overgrown Tiffany's jewelry with all its glitz and glamour. That costs a lot of money and some of it adds mass, like paint, you got to use fuel for every launch, just don't make common sense to me, but I don't have a couple billion to blow in a rocket, never mind Super Hvy is a Chevrolet strip down pick-up and BO's booster is a pimped out Lincoln. Which makes you the money to expand in business? Or does Bezo have penis envy, and Elon loves his oversized flying stainless steel truck, and thats that?
ReplyDeleteLove the analogy to a stripped down Chevy pickup to a pimped out Lincoln.
DeleteI think Elon is driven by "how many tons can I get to Mars?" A ton of payload is much better than a ton of paint, and besides, stainless makes a fine looking rocket anyway.