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Blue Origin lands New Glenn rocket booster on second try
- sbuttgereit 11mo agoBeautiful launch and landing. I still can't stand the public relation heavy official stream... but even with all that static the rocket itself cut through.
- computerdork 11mo agoagreed, they need to pick more engineer focused people who love building rockets rather than impersonal PR people. Sometimes, the broadcast felt like a standard business seminar.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- d_silin 11mo agoCompetition is good. SpaceX is de-facto Amazon of space logistics.
- computerdork 11mo agoagreed, new glenn will only make the space industry as a whole better
- le-mark 11mo agoWe are witnessing the birth of the age of Rocket Tycoons. Who will be the first to publish this video game?
- gs17 11mo agoThere's a game called "EarthX" which is basically that. It's more "SpaceX Tycoon" than rockets in general, but it's similar.
- bell-cot 11mo agoLanding (the booster) on their second launch is nice...but I'm more impressed by them being (probably...) 2-for-2 on their very first couple orbital launch attempts. (Yes, SpaceX's Falcon reached that milestone back in 2010.)
- computerdork 11mo agoWas thinking about that. It is interesting how they got so much working in just two launches compared to SpaceX, which works so incrementally. Still, am wondering though if SpaceX's highly iterative approach is a better way, because with Blue Origin's more standard approach of getting everything right the first time, you may need to over engineer everything, which seems like it may take longer. On the flipside, SpaceX's approach might tax the engineers, because they have to deal with launching so often, and maybe if they had done less launches, they might have actually gotten falcon and starship out quicker... ...But, then again maybe at Spacex, the "launch" engineers are really the ones that have to deal with getting the rockets ready for launch, while the core design engineers can focus on building the latest version. And all the launches are used to test out different ideas and gather real life data). Hmm, for my part, am leaning towards the spacex way of doing things. (maybe SpaceX and Blue Origin engineers could share their thoughts if they're reading this??)
- jcims 11mo agoI think the key difference, to some approximation, is that Blue Origin is designing a rocket while SpaceX is designing a rocket factory.
- computerdork 11mo agoGood point, this is probably the right way to go, to have a factory that is able to build a lot of your rockets quickly and cheaply. Yeah, during development, this would allow for quicker build and launches, to test your vehicles. And afterwards, with a usable rocket, allows for a high number of rockets available for real missions.
- the_duke 11mo ago
- throwaway132448 11mo ago[flagged]
- ortusdux 11mo agoAnyone know more about the explosive landing feet anchors at T+9:55?
- stingrae 11mo agoPotentially welding the feet to the deck detailed in this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240124165A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240124165A1/en
- ChuckMcM 11mo agoCongrats to the Blue Origin team! That's a heck of a milestone (landing it on the second attempt). It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship[1] but it certainly could handle all of the current GEO satellite designs. I'm sure that the NRO will appreciate the larger payload volume as well. Really super glad to see they have hardware that has successfully done all the things. The first step to making it as reliable as other launch platforms. And having a choice for launch services is always a good thing for people buying said launch services. Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on. [1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.
- stingrae 11mo agoDoesn't ULA use Blue Origin's rocket engines?
- JumpCrisscross 11mo agoYes, for Vulcan [1]. [1] https://spacenews.com/evolution-of-a-plan-ula-execs-spell-out-logic-behind-vulcan-design-choices/ https://spacenews.com/evolution-of-a-plan-ula-execs-spell-ou...
- irjustin 11mo agoYes, which makes it even harder for ULA to compete.
- justapassenger 11mo ago[flagged]
- Rover222 11mo agoInsane that it took a decade for another company to do it, but better late than never. Great to see. Next up: China.
- perihelions 11mo agoThe Zhuque-3 attempt should be a few weeks away, https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/chinese-company-landspace-fires-up-its-reusable-rocket-ahead-of-debut-flight-video https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... ("China's 1st reusable rocket test fires engines ahead of debut flight")
- Rover222 11mo agoI bet the next 5 companies/entities that do it are Chinese.
- dotancohen 11mo agoInteresting to see how many are using methlax now as well.
- api 11mo agoIt’s almost as good as hydrogen for iSP but way easier to handle. Also cheaper than RP1.
- CarVac 11mo agoIt's nowhere near as good as hydrogen for ISP, it's just slightly better than RP1. And it has lower density than RP1 as well. It's a good compromise, however, as well as being cheap and easy to simulate the combustion of.
- m4rtink 11mo agoI think it should also have better thrust than hydrogen, so more suitable for first stages.
- mannyv 11mo agoGo Limp Go! For all the engineers that say management doesn't matter, I give you David Limp. Management doesn't matter until it does.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agoI worked under Dave Limp for multiple years in Amazon's Consumer Devices group (like way under, I think he was my manager's skip manager?). I like him personally. But: (1) His management in the Consumer Devices group did not lead to success, I feel we (and especially the consumer robotics group) basically floundered for 7 years :( (2) He only left Devices to join Blue Origin like 2 years ago. 2 years is a decent length of time, but far too short for us to credit this success to him -- there have been many other forces building Blue Origin to what it is today. Maybe he gets 30% credit? p.s. no offense to Mr. Limp, I must emphasize that he was a kind, polite, caring person, and certainly had the capacity for great decisions. It is unfortunate that Consumer Devices and CoRo hasn't had great success, and success may yet be just around the corner.
- WJW 11mo agoWhat makes you believe it was his management specifically instead of other factors? AFAICT he has been at Blue Origin for only a few years, so the root of their success may have been laid much earlier and they succeeded either because or despite his influence. Not saying he's a bad manager, just that the fact this one launch was a success is not proof of his skills. Luck is definitely still a possibility. And as a sibling comment mentions, it's not like he has a flawless track record.
- dotnet00 11mo agoHe was brought in to fix Blue's culture and try to speed things up, since the former Honeywell guy was taking forever to do anything. I think it can be safely argued that since the fixes between attempt 1 and 2 happened entirely under him and faster than we're used to seeing from BO, he may have played a role.
- imtringued 11mo agoIt's more like Bob Smith was extraordinarily bad and David Limp is a reversion to the mean.
- throwaway132448 11mo ago[flagged]
- ricardobeat 11mo agoFull launch video and images of the landing: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/blue-origin-lands-huge-new-glenn-rocket-booster-for-1st-time-after-acing-mars-escapade-launch-for-nasa https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
- throwaway132448 11mo ago[flagged]
- whoaoweird 11mo ago[flagged]
- WJW 11mo agoEy calm down now. They were some of the most visible members of the US space program, and many people like them for providing that service. That may be the only reason they are hoping for a barge naming. Not everything is about nazism.
- whoaoweird 11mo ago> Ey calm down now I don't think anyone here is not calm? I'm suggesting the set of names to draw from is large. There's tons and tons of names that could be chosen. The of the potentially dozens or hundreds of names that are hugely influential, the first two picked were from the SS? You could name it Neil, Alan, John, Yuri, Valentina, Katherine, Konstantin, Buzz, Mae, Sally, Sergei, Maxime, Margaret, Katherine, or Mary. All of whom are well established critical figures in rocketry history. And not members of the SS. > Not everything is about nazism Of course not! But sometimes it does involve literal Nazis, in which case it's not not about nazism.
- shkkmo 11mo ago> That may be the only reason they are hoping for a barge naming. Not everything is about nazism. Even with the good faith assumption that is not why these names were suggested, I don't think it is appropriate to commemorate these people by naming stuff after them. Von Braun had a history of bending the truth to minimize his membership in the Nazi party and climb up the ranks of the SS. It is hard to take him at his word that he did so purely to advance his career. It is also worth noting that the career that led to him being promotoed 3 times by Himmler had as it's key accomplishment the development of the novel V2 rocket weapons that killed an average of 2 civilians per launch. Von Braun oversaw production in slave labor camps that killed even more people building the rockets than the rockets killed on impact. There's many heroes of the space industry to name stuff after who weren't also literal nazis who directly used slave labor to advance their career.
- niwtsol 11mo agoVideo of the launch if anyone was looking for it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iheyXgtG7EI&t=14220s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iheyXgtG7EI&t=14220s
- consumer451 11mo agoThere is a lot to talk about here. However, the bolts that fired from the landing legs into the ship's deck were really neat. [0] It was likely one of the simplest things involved, but SpaceX never did this. It seems far simpler than SpaceX's OctaGrabber. I think you can buy something similar at Home Depot? (edit: I just meant the explosive nail gun) [0] https://www.youtube.com/live/iheyXgtG7EI?si=zXnZ_lMAEoWjzpzg&t=14826 https://www.youtube.com/live/iheyXgtG7EI?si=zXnZ_lMAEoWjzpzg...
- xconverge 11mo agohttps://patents.google.com/patent/US20240124165A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20240124165A1/en
- consumer451 11mo agoCool! Thanks for that. So, it's recent, compared to the landing ship patent.
- m4rtink 11mo agoBlue also has a cute little elephant robot that shows up later in the stream. :) BTW, while the pyrotechnic welding bolts are kinda neat, I do hope they come up with something else (electromagnets ?) eventually as it could be quite a hassle tneeding to cut the booster from the deck every time you land. :)
- MadnessASAP 11mo agoIn the grand scheme of things supporting a rocket turnaround, sending somebody out with a wrench (to detach the harpoons from the leg) and a grinder (to smooth out the deck surface) probably isn't that big of a deal. However, for an alternative that would be wild to see from a rocket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beartrap_(hauldown_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beartrap_(hauldown_device)
- syncsynchalt 11mo agoOver eleven years after Blue Origin patented landing a rocket on a barge, and nearly ten years after SpaceX's first "ASDS" (barge) landing, Blue Origin has finally successfully landed a rocket on a barge. We should be impressed they did it before their patent expired.
- computerdork 11mo agoalthough, they were doing it with a more complicated vehicle than the falcon 9, so the delay is "somewhat" understandable. And only "somewhat," because new glenn seemed to take forever compared to starship. It does go to show, maybe the highly iterative approach that spacex takes really is faster (or, it could just be spacex has more highly skilled engineers, but I for one can't tell what the reasons are).
- syncsynchalt 11mo agoIt's not about the delay, they can take as long as they want to build what they want to build. I object to their attempt to use patents to block competitors for decades when they didn't even have a product yet. Fortunately it was challenged and the USPTO invalidated patent 8,678,321: https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-08-27-Termination-request-for-adverse-judgment-after-institutio....pdf https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2015-08-...
- computerdork 11mo agoah, yeah, patent trolling is pretty horrible (and Bezos is known for this - one click)... ... although, just to play a little devil's advocate, Bezos doesn't get enough credit for jump starting private spaceflight companies. Blue Origin was started 2 years before SpaceX. Am sure Blue Origin racked up a ton of patents.
- amarant 11mo agoYour devils advocate paragraph seems to contradict itself. Unless you mean to say spaceX somehow benefited from the patents blue origin filed previously. I don't see how that would be the case though.
- pipsterwo 11mo agoDid anyone else notice the pyrotechnics in the landing feet after touchdown? I'm going to assume that they harpooned the deck surface to secure the booster. Im pretty impressed at how simple that idea is compared to SpaceX's solution which is to have a robot drive underneath and grab the booster
- computerdork 11mo agoInteresting, did see a couple of small pops after landing on the drone ship, was that them?
- NetMageSCW 11mo agoWelding isn’t great for reuse. SpaceX experimented with it early on.
- 7e 11mo agoBlue Origin beats SpaceX to Mars.
- veinprim8 11mo ago[dead]
- brucehoult 11mo agoBlue Origin just launched two 550kg probes to Mars (1.5 AU from the Sun). SpaceX sent a similar mass Tesla Roadster on a Mars-crossing trajectory in 2018, Psyche to an asteroid at around 3 AU in 2023, and Europa Clipper to Jupiter/Europa (5.2 AU) in 2024.
- roman_soldier 11mo agoCongrats but it's kinda like a company, releasing in 2030, an LLM equivalent to the first version of chatGPT. SpaceX did this 10 years ago.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoOr like Apple releasing an MP3 player?
- roman_soldier 11mo agoI think this is more like the Fire phone vs the iPhone.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoMaybe! The point, though, is that first to market isn’t automatically the same as the final winner.
- roman_soldier 11mo agoThis isn't just first to market it's been 10 years and SpaceX is still innovating. I applaud Bezos for at least offering some sort of competition though it will keep SpaceX from becoming complacent.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoGates was about a decade ahead of the game on tablets, too. iPad came and cleaned up the market. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/12/ipad-bill-gates-microsoft-opinion-iphone https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/12/ipad-bill... It happens. I don't think we'll know the winner (if there even winds up being a single one) of this race for a decade or more, and I think Bezos's fortune is a lot safer.
- brucehoult 11mo agoNo wireless? Less space than a Nomad? Lame. That aged well. Six years later it turned into the iPhone.
- yubblegum 11mo agoI was just admiring the beautiful design of this rocket. This looks like something Apple/Jobs would send to space. It's quite an elegant machine.
- adastra22 11mo agoIt looks like a giant…
- jpkw 11mo agoDick, take a look out of starboard. Oh my god, it looks like a huge...
- NooneAtAll3 11mo ago- Pecker! - Oh! Where? - Wait, that's not a woodpecker. It looks like someone's...
- yubblegum 11mo agoRockets as Rorschach tests...
- Stevvo 11mo agoHeadline misses that this is a mars mission, on its way to the red planet. Awesome achievement.
- lateforwork 11mo agoSame accomplishment as SpaceX but with a lot less hullabaloo. This is Jeff Bezos's style.
- ACCount37 11mo agoIt is a decade late. By now, SpaceX's own landings are totally routine and happen once a week, and even Starship got first stage reusability. Still, good to see that someone other than SpaceX is serious about reusability and capable of pulling off a landing. The performance of "old space" has been nothing short of embarrassing. I'm no fan of Blue Origin, but the teams there pulled off one of the hardest feats in all of spaceflight.
- jryle70 11mo ago> By now, SpaceX's own landings are totally routine and happen once a week Three times a week. They may have two launches at the same times today, from West and East coast.
- svggrfgovgf 11mo agoThe two launches scheduled for today (Nov. 14th 2025) are both on the East coast and are scheduled to be within an hour (22:08 EST and 22:55 EST according to Spaceflight Now) from: Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, and SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. If those launches go on schedule, that will mean 4 launches (New Glenn, Atlas 5, and two Falcon 9s) in 31 hours from the Cape Canaveral area in Florida.
- lateforwork 11mo ago> It is a decade late. Who did it first doesn't matter. What matters is who can do it the cheapest. Blue Origin has now destroyed SpaceX's cost advantage. That's good for humanity because you don't want a megalomaniac like Elon Musk to be the only one launching satellites and the only with a satellite internet service.
- 11mo ago
- BoxedEmpathy 11mo agoFantastic news! I hope to live long enough to see LEO become more accessible to everybody.
- varenc 11mo agoI struggled to find a good video of the landing. This is a clip from their live stream: https://youtu.be/xHlPwTE-FOo https://youtu.be/xHlPwTE-FOo It seems like multiple video feeds glitch out right as it's about to land. There's even a black screen saying "buffering..." encoded into the video. Still early days though, and I'm sure they're working to improve, but they're missing a huge opportunity here by not having high-quality footage like SpaceX. For comparison, here's a great clip of SpaceX's Starship landing: https://youtu.be/Hkq3F5SaunM https://youtu.be/Hkq3F5SaunM
- RattlesnakeJake 11mo agoSpaceX's landing footage has only been decent for the past few years. If I recall, they were able to fix it once Starlink reached a reasonable level of performance. Before that, their sea landings looked about the same as this BO one. The cause seems to be the heat from the landing burn messing with normal wireless signals.
- cubefox 11mo agoThe "buffering" message looks like they are using the wrong streaming technology though. They should use a fault tolerant real-time video codec, transmitted via UDP, which produces glitches during brief interruptions but not complete aborts with a "buffering" message.
- daemonologist 11mo agoYeah I haven't seen a really good/stable video of the landing; there's slightly better footage a bit later when they replay it though: https://www.youtube.com/live/ecfxcTEl-1I?si=V2kfTlvUA2PuZP39&t=6938 https://www.youtube.com/live/ecfxcTEl-1I?si=V2kfTlvUA2PuZP39... Back in the day SpaceX used to struggle with this during drone ship landings as well. All the vibration and heat and whatnot is rough on the transmission. Usually they'd upload better (stored) footage a couple days after the fact, and I'd expect something similar from Blue Origin. Today's airborne tracking shot (from downrange) all the way from space to the clouds was amazing though. Never seen anything like that before.
- eichin 11mo ago"on second try" sounds like the rocket did a go-around :-) (the current techcrunch title is "Blue Origin sticks first New Glenn rocket landing and launches NASA spacecraft" and doesn't mention the previous failure until the first paragraph.)
- sidcool 11mo agoHow big/small is it compared to Falcon 9?
- ACCount37 11mo agoMuch larger than Falcon 9. Comparable to Falcon Heavy, much smaller than Starship.