6 ms·
Blue Origin New Glenn Mission NG-1 (video)
- gnabgib 2y agoRelated discussion on this mission (148 points, 3 days ago, 97 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42680510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42680510 Edit: Which as you point out was delayed, as it continues to be.
- idlewords 2y agoThe second stage of New Glenn just reached orbit, fate of the first stage (which attempted a re-entry burn and soft landing) is unknown. I'm curious about the thrust/weight ratio of this rocket. It seemed to really take its time clearing the tower and getting to 10,000 feet. Is it possible they're running the engines at reduced thrust for this first launch?
- DrBenCarson 2y agoMight be, but those shock diamonds are not a great sign for their nozzles despite being beautiful
- skgough 2y agoCould you elaborate on that? Why would the exhaust reflecting off the shock wave cause damage to the nozzle?
- echoangle 2y agoI don't think it implies damage, but it implies that the exhaust pressure is lower than the outside air pressure (which you would not want for perfect efficiency). That's normal though because the first stage operates in a wide range of pressure, and you can only adjust it for one exhaust pressure. So mach diamonds on liftoff should be normal.
- adastra22 2y agoMach diamonds are absolutely normal and expected. Not sure what GP is talking about.
- cubefox 2y agoMaybe he means the New Glenn should have had aerospike engines.
- irjustin 2y ago> Might be, but those shock diamonds are not a great sign for their nozzles despite being beautiful Shock diamonds do not determine nozzle health/stability. The diamonds themselves are 100% part of nominal operation. What you're looking for is flow separation from the nozzle because it's under expanded leading possible instability. Scott Manly did a great bit on it[0]. [0] https://youtu.be/l5l3CHWoHSI?t=261 https://youtu.be/l5l3CHWoHSI?t=261
- Culonavirus 2y agoShock diamonds are normal for first stages. Unless you're smarter than BO/SpaceX/ULA engineers and want to tell us more, I call BS on your post.
- TheBicPen 2y agoLooks like they lost the booster
- idlewords 2y agoIt will turn up.
- roskelld 2y agoThe speed of that take off, or lack of, was wild. I don't think I've ever seen a rocket build up its speed so slowly. The methane blue looked spectacular.
- mkl 2y agoYes, those seven blue spikes were pretty amazing.
- roskelld 2y agoDoesn't show the diamonds, but sure shows that blue glow. https://xcancel.com/JerryPikePhoto/status/1879793792536158606#m https://xcancel.com/JerryPikePhoto/status/187979379253615860...
- mkl 2y agoHere's a good view: https://youtu.be/KXysNxbGdCg?t=6935 https://youtu.be/KXysNxbGdCg?t=6935
- nyokodo 2y ago> I don't think I've ever seen a rocket build up its speed so slowly. New-Glenn has a low thrust to weight ratio vs other rockets and lower engine chamber pressure than some other engines to put less stress on the rocket and engines for greater reusability.
- tankenmate 2y agoBut the obvious cost here is less mass to orbit. But I suspect it's a given that they'll tweak up the margins once they have more flights under their belt.
- marze 2y agoThat is a trajectory optimized for payload mass, with a set amount of first stage thrust. It is quite typical, historically. It just looks extra slow since the New Glenn rocket is quite enormous relative to historic rockets. An impressive first flight by any measure!
- nomilk 2y agoVideo player not working for me.
- mkl 2y agoThe broadcast is over. perihelions linked a YouTube version that lets you replay: https://youtu.be/KXysNxbGdCg?t=6859 https://youtu.be/KXysNxbGdCg?t=6859
- perihelions 2y agoHere's a mirror of the video (the thing in OP appears to have been livestream-only?) https://youtu.be/KXysNxbGdCg?t=6859 https://youtu.be/KXysNxbGdCg?t=6859 ("New Glenn Mission NG-1 Webcast") (linked at t-20s)
- BenButkiss 2y agoCan someone remix the audio to Swedish black metal or something better?
- olex 2y agoWe're really spoiled by SpaceX, RocketLab and other live streams. In comparison this was pretty unspectacular - they did have camera(s?) on the booster and on the second stage, but only showed them for a few seconds during the stream, and the picture was breaking up constantly. The stream itself, video and timeline animation, was multiple seconds delayed behind the audio callouts in the background. The animated position of the first stage was clearly wrong, it was already showing almost on the ground when the re-entry burn was called out. Lots of things to work on for future launches, if they want these streams to be as watchable as people are used to. Although that's all details, not to detract from the feat of reaching orbit on their first attempt. That's not something that happened very often and worth significant praise.
- mkl 2y agoDefinitely spoiled by SpaceX's polish. I'm not sure how much of the displayed telemetry was right, as the altitude of Stage 2 was shown as decreasing down and down until suddenly they said it was in orbit. The imperial units don't help understanding either.
- idlewords 2y agoIt's normal for altitude to decrease while the second stage builds up to orbital velocity; the Shuttle did the same thing. Like all rockets, the second stage has a thrust/weight ratio substantially lower than 1 on ignition, and the motor points far away from the gravity vector, so there's a bit of a race between the vehicle trying to fall down, and the rocket motor trying to accelerate it to orbital velocity. The fact that the final orbit was 100 miles exactly suggests this all went according to plan.
- rjeli 2y agoIIRC when I played KSP it was necessary to point slightly down if you wanted to reach orbit in a continuous burn, rather than waiting to burn more at perigee. Is that true in general? (was playing with a mod that models ullage, so relighting was quite finicky)
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThe live stream needed a lot of work. The first stage may have exploded but it was unclear because the video if it stopped before it even got close. The second stage apparently reached orbit, but it was a very low orbit (100 miles). Not bad for a first attempt, but still a ways to go.
- danpalmer 2y agoIt took SpaceX about 1-2 years to nail landings on the drone ships, and about 3-4 to nail video feeds of that happening. There’s something kinda funny about that.
- philwelch 2y agoAnd now they use Starlink for their video feeds.
- adastra22 2y agoNothing funny about it. How would you get the signal out? Plasma from re-entry is a near-perfect radio shield. We only get nice crisp images from starship now because of Starlink. Remember all the old Apollo and even Shuttle missions where the Mission Control would be calling out "____, do you read me" during a landing attempt? This is why.
- danpalmer 2y agoI know why, but it's funny because connectivity is essentially a solved issue in the modern world (most people don't sit under landing rockets), whereas rocket science is... well, ... rocket science.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 2y agoBlue Origin is a rocket company, not a live streaming company. The low orbit is the target orbit, and they will attempt to boost it to medium earth orbit later in the flight. By any standard getting to orbit on the maiden launch of a new vehicle is an incredible achievement. You have to give them a pass on the live stream.
- nomilk 2y agoSeems to be some debris falling from the ship at 1h 58m 16s of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXysNxbGdCg&t=1h58m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXysNxbGdCg&t=1h58m16s Hopefully nothing critical. EDIT: it was right before separation, so perhaps related to that.
- NitpickLawyer 2y agoThat's probably ice. It's always ice.
- rhubarbtree 2y agoSomeone on HN care to explain where BO are on their journey, relative standing to SpaceX. If SpaceX ceases to exist, how well served will we be by BO as an alternative?
- mkl 2y agoSpaceX is way ahead of everyone. Falcon 9 has launched 425 times (127 in 2024 alone), and landed the first stage successfully in 398 of 410 attempts (most of their flights are with reused boosters). New Glenn has higher lift capacity than Falcon 9, but much lower than SpaceX's Starship, which has reached orbital velocity (didn't yet try for actual orbit) and whose Super Heavy booster has had a partially successful landing. If SpaceX suddenly vanished, along with all its people and knowledge, Blue Origin could catch up to SpaceX's current capabilities, but it would take many years. If SpaceX shut down but Blue Origin and RocketLab hired all their people, things would progress much faster.
- nomilk 2y ago> partially successful landing Outsiders like myself were too blown away by the 'chopsticks' catch to notice imperfections. What were they? (I noticed there was fire at the bottom of the booster for some time after the catch)
- mkl 2y agoThe booster was too damaged to fly again. The chopstick catch was amazing though.
- danpalmer 2y agoPeople can attempt to explain it, but it’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. SpaceX have a much more agile approach, and Blue Origin are following a more traditional waterfall style approach, to put it in software engineering project terms. While it may seem obvious that one is better than the other, I think it’s hard to say conclusively. The different approaches mean that while SpaceX might have more milestones under their belt, Blue Origin could leapfrog them on some aspects. The fact this first launch went as well as it did is an amazing feat, SpaceX have never had that much success from a first launch. What we can say however is that the endgame of Starship will be far more capable than the endgame of New Glenn. If or when either reaches that point remains to be seen.
- matsemann 2y agoI'm always so jealous of the celebrations in these streams. Pressing deploy to update a service in production seems so much more mundane in comparison, heh. Maybe we should be better at celebrating wins in tech?
- manquer 2y agoWe did celebrate like this when software releases were something that happened every couple of years and with loads of press coverage, hype leading up to the release, and usually in a physical media with packaging and fancy art accompanying it
- matsemann 2y agoAh, before my time. But I can certainly imagine the excitedness, not to say the nervousness, when sending the final master of some software to be burned into thousands of CD-roms. No easy way to recover if there's a bug there! I've always been impressed with how I never came across any bugs when playing nintendo/cartridge games, couldn't just ship something buggy and rely on some online update back then.
- bamboozled 2y agoI think there needs to be some type of open source space exploration foundation. It's nice billionaires have all these toy space rocket companies, but I think it would feel even more fun if a not for profit, where millions of people can participate somehow were involved. Space shouldn't be owned by 2 people.
- rich_sasha 2y agoThere is a Danish amateur space program, working towards sending a human on a suborbital flight beyond the Karman line: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Suborbitals https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Suborbitals Baby steps I know, but still
- bamboozled 2y ago
- pmayrgundter 2y agoGreat launch guys! Primary objective: Orbit [y] Sub-objectives: 1. [y] Liftoff 2. [y] Max-Q 3. [y] Main engine cut-off 4. [y] Stage separation 5. [y] Stage 2 ignition 6. [y] Space (100km) 7. [y] Fairing separation 8. [y] Booster re-entry burn 9. [X] Booster landing at sea 10. [y] Secondary engine cut-off 11. [X] HN unicode support for check mark
- thrdbndndn 2y agoProbably can use x vs empty to make the checkboxes less confusing.
- pmayrgundter 2y agonext time! :)
- echoangle 2y agoI would either use [y]/[n] or [x]/[ ], the current [y]/[X] is a bit confusing.