Posted on 09/12/2022 8:08:58 AM PDT by KnightAstronomer1
Blue Origin launched its 23rd New Shepard rocket mission this morning, featuring science payloads designed for experimentation. The mission needed early, however, after it was aborted during the first ascent stage of the rocket, prompting the abort process to take over and firing the parachutes on the capsule, which drifted back to Earth shortly after take-off.
This was not a crewed mission, so there was no one on board the capsule, though it is the same vehicle that the company uses for its private spaceflight tourist missions. This marks the first time ever that Blue Origin has encountered a problem with the New Shepard spacecraft during a flight, in nearly two dozen missions.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Whoops.
“The mission needed early, however,”
Huh? I suspect they meant ended early.
People who booked flights on this Rocket will be canceling.
Dang it, I was hoping my new nasal irrigator would be delivered by this new prime delivery system.
It did needed something early on I supposed.
Ended nearly....................😜
I don’t know, it seemed pretty survivable, abort worked. Imagine if this were Starship with 10+ onboard with no abort mode though.
Is “Shepard” a hat-tip to Alan Shepard, or just a cutesy way of spelling “shepherd”?
Like their upcoming New Glenn, they’re named after Mercury astronauts.
Just a minor software glitch in their spell checker ... It all needed well. (Er, nearly ended well.)
They've got to stop every few blocks to drop off an Amazon delivery, that's probably throwing them off.
That looked like a nasty hard landing.
Glad the capsule separated and landed successfully. Read somewhere that when spacecraft do that, anyone on board pulls way more Gs than in regular flight. Beats getting incinerated of course.
Well, yeah, the sudden boost has to exceed the main booster, but it’s brief, and as you said, beats hangin’ around to see how the main ride would wind up. :^)
Seattle not Houston!
One early spaceflight had a complete rocket engine failure after a “flight” of only a few feet up from the pad. As the main rocket stalled, then fell back and began burning, the capsule escape rockets fired (by the default failure of their own safety circuits), and blasted the capsule completely clear of the burning area. NASA signed off on the “capsule escape rocket test flight” ... that had not been scheduled yet!
A few other Mercury escape rocket tests were not so successful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0w_xyePC_0
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