Posted on 01/16/2025 6:38:22 AM PST by Red Badger
New Glenn at liftoff during the NG-1 mission.
Image credit: Blue Origin
At 2:03 am EST on January 16, Blue Origin’s New Glenn lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket is 98 meters (322 feet) tall, among the tallest around, and this first launch was a demonstration as part of the US Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program. It tested the Blue Ring spacecraft platform as well as the flight and ground system.
This first launch was also a test for the reusable first stage, which was supposed to land on a barge, the Landing Platform Vessel, floating in the Atlantic. Landing offshore on its first try was a tall order, and in fact, the booster was given a funny name: So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.
“I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, said in a statement. “We knew landing our booster, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”
Blue Origin already has several customers lined up, including one of Jeff Bezos’ other enterprises, Amazon's Project Kuiper – a megaconstellation of satellites with over 3,000 of them. Megaconstellations have been criticized significantly for the increasing light pollution and radio interference they bring to Earth, as well as the increasing chance of a collision in orbit between so many new satellites.
New Glenn will also be used to launch Blue Moon, the lunar lander that is supposed to alternate with SpaceX’s Starship during the Artemis mission that will bring back people on the Moon.
"Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space," said Jarrett Jones, Senior Vice President, New Glenn. "We're focused on ramping our launch cadence and manufacturing rates. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous amount of work in making today's success possible, and to our customers and the space community for their continuous support. We felt that immensely today."
Starship flight 7 will see a completely redesigned ship inside and out. The main goals are the launch of dummy V.3 StarLinks, the ignition of a single raptor engine in orbit, and the survivability of the experimental tile area around where the ship would be caught by the arms on landing.
I am 100 miles due east of the launch pad. I had my surv cam locked on that area of the horizon. At 2:03:30 I saw about 30 seconds of the orange ball going up and then hidden by clouds for the rest of the trip. My view is an arc at about 20 degrees south of straight up.
Saw the launch 25 hours earlier too.
I’ve seen hundreds of launches but I never paid to see one. Who did you pay? NASA?
“I never paid to see one. Who did you pay? NASA?”
It would be a great gig for scammers to put on NASA arm-patches and collect some cash.
I saw something like that in one of our state parks in a very wealthy suburb.
It had been free entry for decades and then one day I drive up there to stop and make some cell phone calls and there is a person manning the booth saying it now cost ten bucks to enter.
I turned around and left.
I probably should have called the cops. I think they were scammers.
I know rocket surgery is hard. I worked on the design of one that had plenty of problems in testing and after deployment. A few blowed up real good.
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Saturn 5 was the first one we built that did not blow up (IIRC).
Rockets are engineering, science, and luck.
Yes. Just knowing that landing a booster vertically is indeed possible is a great advantage. For most of my lifetime, everyone said this was not possible to achieve. Couldn't be done. Musk did it. The rest follow.
In the lumber yard
The best quote of the whole webcast was after the launch they were talking to some woman who was on the ground with the people and she said “The highs were fived and the bumps were fisted!”.
I understand this is hard. But the video was TERRIBLE from the ship(s). And the “data panel” at the bottom definitely borrowed some aspects from SpaceX, but was also not very good.
The booster video stopped right as the reentry burn started. Leading me to believe that either the engine startup went badly and caused the whole thing to suffer a RUD, or it didn’t get enough thrust to slow it down enough and it slammed into the upper atmosphere and smashed itself flat. Or some combination of these.
To be closest allowed for public to view the launch. It was a rip off for sure but they did provide viewing platforms and lunch.
Their planning 12 launches this year and 24 next year as well as supplying BE-4 engines to ULA so I don’t think engine availability is a problem.
The BE-4 is the best thing that Blue Origin has going for it, but is is 2nd place to SpaceX raptor engine.
Every article I read has some intimation that this is the competition to SpaceX's Starship. The fact is that this could be a competitor to Falcon Heavy if they can stick the reuse landing.
Payload:
New Glenn 99,000#
Falcon Heavy 66,000#
Starship 300,000# (500,000# for expendable)
Reusable:
New Glenn booster only (not yet)
Falcon Heavy booster + core
Starship fully (second stage not yet)
Cost per Launch (@ full production):
New Glenn $70 million (estimated)
Falcon heavy $97 million (current)
Starship $2-10million (estimated)
Launch frequency:
New Glenn 1 per month
Falcon Heavy 1 per 3 days
Starship 1 per 2 weeks (3 per day needed for Mars plan)
Excellent post.
Nothing irritates me more than when Freepers claim “X is impossible”.
My life experience tells me that everything is impossible when unmotivated and/or unskilled and/or unintelligent people are working the problem.
Once you meet folks who know how to get things done the word “impossible” is no longer in the vocabulary.
I don’t think they were half-wits, as both of them were apparently engineers in their own departments at Blue Origin. I think they were chosen more for their looks...
.both blondes.
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
Best description I’ve yet seen.
Yeah, the next few years are going to be amazing with the launch vehicle selections coming available.
Crashed and burned. SpaceX crashed and burned several Falcon-9s before getting it right. Rocketry is neither easy nor for the faint of heart.
They are both African-Americans, NASA's decision must have been shaded by something else.
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