back to article Blue Origin postpones New Glenn's maiden flight to January 12

Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin has postponed the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket to January 12, the day before SpaceX hopes to launch another Starship test flight. According to Blue Origin's team, the shift to a three-hour window opening at 0600 UTC on January 12 is due to unfavorable conditions in the Atlantic, where …

  1. beast666 Bronze badge

    I would why this article https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/covid19_vaccine_fraud_charges/ has comments disabled?

    Could it be that they are afraid of people mentioning that the covid19_vaccine_is_a_fraud ??

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. beast666 Bronze badge

        "Receiving a vaccine is a matter of individual choice. However, abusing our healthcare system to facilitate unvaccinated individuals to bypass restrictions that are in place to protect the British public is illegal,"

        The restrictions in place were not there to protect the British public though as we now know. Just as UK media law is not there to protect the British public.

        What a totalitarian place this now is under the Starmer Labour regime. Musk is right.

        1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

          I can see there is no point in giving you the reason why the comments are disabled.

          Please continue to live in your little Troll land, and leave the rest of us alone.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          re: Musk is right.

          Please go and live in Trumpistan where Musk is POTUS (or will be after the 20th) in all but name. You might be more at home there.

          While I disagree with the useless twat that is Starmer but he was elected unlike Musk.

          Then there is this

          "What a totalitarian place this now"

          Wait for six months and then look at what Trump is doing to the USA (and the world). He'll have concentration camps setup and running. Those who protest will start falling out of windows or get poisioned. Trump will IMHO never leave the White House unless it is in a gold casket. He has given all the signs of running a proper totalitarian state. He has surrounded himself with people who owe him big time. He had the SCOTUS in his pocket.

          The next two years will be awful. The jury is out about the mid-term elections happening. After all, he said that he wanted to suspend the constitution.

          Please go and enjoy the USA and leave us alone.

    2. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      No, it's standard legal reasons

      For legal reasons we're not going to have an open comment thread on a criminal case that's going to trial in England. There are contempt and libel laws in play.

      If the accused are convicted, comments will be open. If people discuss the trial here, we'll have to moderate that away, too. And I don't like heavy handed moderation.

      C.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: No, it's standard legal reasons

        I agree. If the judge has not lifted reporting restrictions then this site should only report the facts as in the indictment/charge sheet.

    3. DoctorPaul Bronze badge

      I lost my partner and her son to COVID, so I would like to take your opinion and shove it up your arse a VERY long way.

  2. RobThBay

    Gulf of ??

    I guess it's still called the Gulf of Mexico for now. Until the Orange One gets into office and renames it to the Gulf of 'Merica.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Gulf of ??

      Won't happen unless he can buy the United Nations.

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: Gulf of ??

        Don't give him ideas!

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Gulf of ??

        "Won't happen unless he can buy the United Nations."

        Actually, he can call it whatever he likes. He can even force through a legal name change if wants too. But that only applies in the USA. Everyone else can call it what they want.

        There are many places and features around the world that have multiple names in multiple languages and jurisdictions, some of which already had names given by the locals before others came in, took over and "discovered" and named them.

        Locally, we have The English Chanel. Or La Manche as the French call it. The yanks call those of German descent who eschew technology "Dutch", while they call everyone not in their clique "english" :-)

        Of course the "Gulf of America" might not play so well in the headlines the next time there;s a big oil spill there!

    2. Excused Boots Silver badge

      Re: Gulf of ??

      " guess it's still called the Gulf of Mexico for now. Until the Orange One gets into office and renames it to the Gulf of ‘Merica.”

      Gulf of Trump, The Trumpian Sea, Sea of Trump.

      Presumably the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will be next!

      1. beast666 Bronze badge

        Re: Gulf of ??

        The Panamaga Canal would be awesome cool. Lol.

        1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

          'Panamaga Canal'

          I lol'd.

    3. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Re: Gulf of ??

      The Gulf of 'Merica may just be a good name for the gap between belief and reality, for - certain groups.

  3. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Landing issues

    Needing to land a booster on a barge means that not only do conditions need to be right at the launch site during the launch window, so do sea conditions. That can put a real crimp on launch opportunities since the Atlantic can be very active at times.

    It's interesting that they plan to get the 1st stage back, but more delays means more push back on further flights and Blue needs to get New Glenn certified so they can be awarded US government contracts. It can take a couple of years from planning to launch since payloads may need to be fitted to work with a particular rocket, go through checks, scheduling and so forth. The sooner they are certified, the sooner than can get down payments. It might be worth just dropping the booster in the sea after running it for all it's worth.

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: Landing issues

      Not really. Only about 8% of the F9 launches have been pushed due to recovery area weather.

      The landing zone is about 250 miles out, so it's not that far out to sea, and the weather at the landing barge is not that much different from the weather at the pad. A high sea state will also probably mean it's too windy to launch.

    2. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

      Re: Landing issues

      You are talking about a few days delay on a project that has been ongoing for over a decade. In the grand scheme of things its worth the wait in order to gather data.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Landing issues

        "You are talking about a few days delay on a project that has been ongoing for over a decade. "

        Yes, but. When will there be a decision about upcoming US defense contracts? If this flight doesn't tick all the boxes (goes boom), they'll need to find and correct the problems and go again. If the jobs that are coming up are massive NRO payloads where the rocket will need every erg so won't be landed/reused, to keep pushing dates to prove that part of the system isn't a great tactic. I don't know if any of that is the case, but I do know that reusability isn't the number one concern of customers looking to get their payload launched. Saving a few bucks on the launch is not a bad thing, but losing time in service can be far more expensive once a satellite is ready to launch.

        1. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

          Re: Landing issues

          There are two requirement here,

          - can it get the payload to orbit

          - can it recover the first stage

          You can do one without the other and NRO will be more concerned about the first requirement. As you say with NRO mission, doing a recovery isn't going to make much difference to launch costs which typically are $200m to $300m vs under $100m for a regular customer.

    3. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Landing issues

      Yes, it's back another 24 hours to the 13th ow because of sea conditions in the Atlantic.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Landing issues

        And postponed again on the Monday due to things not looking right in the launcher. No new launch date yet.

  4. gecho

    Despite SpaceX's huge lead, New Glenn appears to be about to beat Starship to putting something in orbit. Who's got the suborbital rocket now Elon?

    1. Zolko Silver badge

      suborbital

      And there go the downvotes: why ?

    2. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

      SpaceX has over 400 orbital launches and have a proven launcher with greater payload capability. I don't think they are too worried about BO.

      1. FeepingCreature

        SpaceX's payload fairing is its primary limiting factor, at 6k cubic feet vs 16k for New Glenn. So if the launch goes well, Bezos will have the orbital rocket with the "largest demonstrated-operational payload-to-orbit capacity" (note exact phrasing)... for one day, as Starship (35k cubic feet) will also deploy some satellite simulators on the next launch.

        You're right with regard to mass, as Falcon Heavy has New Glenn beat with 64 tons vs 45 tons to LEO. But it's not easy to actually stuff that mass in the F9 fairing.

        1. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

          I see the FH extended fairing has finally seen the light of day. Its a similar length to NG fairing though 5m vs 7m for NG.

    3. MachDiamond Silver badge

      "Despite SpaceX's huge lead"

      If you define "huge lead" as being first to blow things up, ok. There isn't a way to measure "lead", only who crosses the finish line first. Both companies have taken different development paths with different primary uses. Starship is being built as a Starlink dispenser. New Glenn has been designed to launch classically designed payloads. If SpaceX wants to offer payload services with Starship, they'll need to build a second stage with an ejectable fairing which is yet another project.

      1. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

        Starship secondary mission is starlink dispenser. Its primary mission is to get to Mars and whatever that entails. Which means

        - A fuel depot.

        - A fuel tanker.

        - HLS.

        - Starlink dispenser.

        - General cargo.

        - A human rated version maybe to LEO.

        - Military are interested in a earth point to point transport version.

        - Possibly a space station version.

  5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    While I wish BO the best of luck...

    ...I do wonder why they went for a sea/barge landing for their first attempt. You'd think they'd have gone for the easier option of trying to lang such a huge booster on land first. SpaceX took a while to make shore based landings run-of-the-mill and same for barge landings at sea. They "lost" a number of Falcon boosters in that search for repeatable success. New Glenn a shit load bigger and almost certainly harder to land with no previous experience to draw on. Knowing it *can* be done helps a lot of course, but actually doing it the hard way on a first ever launch of the rocket takes balls :-)

    Assuming BO fails to land successfully, where are they in building the next one? Do they have a production line? Or might it be another year or more before they can launch again?

    1. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

      Re: While I wish BO the best of luck...

      SpaceX landed on the barge the next flight after the RTLS landing. BO have both experience of landing first stages and also have ex-SpaceX employees with their knowledge. They have been recruiting heavily from space industry.

      In Tim Dodd's video they had first 4 boosters in various stages of construction and I believe the second stage 2 was tested recently.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: While I wish BO the best of luck...

        Thanks for that :-)

    2. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: While I wish BO the best of luck...

      "...I do wonder why they went for a sea/barge landing for their first attempt. "

      The flight path for their first payload is too far out to set down on land. SpaceX does many launches of the Starlink satellites to polar orbits which can mean it's easier to return to a land based site, but they still do barge landings frequently and a fully expended launch when they need all of the capability of the booster. Initially, SpaceX was launching 60 Starlink sats at a go, but they got bigger and the finances might work out better to leave margin to bring the booster back than to expend the boosters by maxing out on Starlink sats.

      Blue Origin has their base in Washington state as well as a facility in Florida. Most of the New Glenn work is done in Florida. They have a sub-orbital test site in BF, Texas for New Sheppard flights. Check out the factory tour done by Smarter Everyday. Destin gets really awesome access to things.

    3. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Why barge first attempt

      Returning to the landing site costs payload mass. This first payload is tiny so should be an ideal candidate for RTLS. As far as I know, Blue never bothered to build a landing site for New Glenn because they expected to only recover at sea. I checked some satellite photography and there are two landing sites just north of Blue's LC36. They are LZ-1 and LZ-2 used by SpaceX for Falcons.

      Before SpaceX went all in on booster recovery their original focus was on reducing manufacturing cost. Time is money so the first iterations of Falcon hardware could be manufactured quickly and cheaply. The first and second stages use the same tooling. This has turned out to be a valuable foundation. SpaceX do not need to manufacture many boosters but they can churn out well over a hundred upper stages per year.

      Blue skipped over optimising for cost and only thought about optimising for time after committing to major design decisions. They planned for booster recovery from the start so were not worried about cost. Back when they had no hardware they were boasting that they would land first time because they were professional rocket scientists and nothing like the cowboys next door. Limp has replaced the "wait until it is perfect" strategy with "accept some risk to make actual progress".

      I am surprised they did not build a landing site or rent one from SpaceX. I really hope they do get their booster back in one piece but if things do go wrong it would be much easier to gather the pieces for investigation from LZ-1.

      1. Excused Boots Silver badge

        Re: Why barge first attempt

        Indeed, physics and sometimes orbital mechanics can be a bit of a bitch.

        It’s often thought that to ‘get in to space’, you just need to go high; not really. To get into obit, yes you do need to get high* but not too high actually a couple of hundred kilometres/miles is fine. The trick is going sideways, fast, really fast. Watch a rocket launch, it starts going straight up, but then quickly you hear ‘pitching downrange’, it’s no longer just going up but swinging eastwards, and up.

        So, at first stage separation, the whole assembly is moving eastwards over the ocean** and upwards, so to bring your first stage back to land you need to kill all of that velocity, you need to have enough fuel left to do it - well the first stage itself is lighter, you don’t have the second stage and payload, so it needs a lot less fuel, but still, that is fuel and mass you could have used to lift a larger payload. So maybe, don’t bother to try to get back to where you started, but instead allow the atmosphere to slow you down, and come down in the ocean. But you are clever and understand the maths, you know where the booster is (likely) to hit the ocean, so you position a mobile landing pad there, yes you will still have to make some course corrections and have enough fuel left to kill the descent velocity - but it’s a lot less than trying too get back to land.

        It is vastly harder, and more expensive to land a booster on a barge at sea, than doing it on land, but if you can master the technology, then there are enormous advantages in terms of the payload you can loft. It’s a trade off, the risk of loosing your booster compared to the extra price you can charge for lofting a bigger payload.

        Now SpaceX has proven that this is possible and doable, so from BO’s perspective, why not just go for it and see? Other than a complete launch failure, at worst, they lose the booster. But ever then, they will have a shed-load of telemetry to work out what went wrong.

        * No sniggering at the back

        ** Because if something goes sideways, it's probably better to have the rocket and many tons of fuel (and some rocket fuels are highly toxic) fall into the sea rather than onto your own territory and endanger your own people. Unless you are China, who, apparently, don’t regard this as too important. And I’m sure that most Reg communards will understand the incident I am alluding to without my having to spell it out!

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Why barge first attempt

          "Now SpaceX has proven that this is possible and doable"

          SpaceX isn't even the first to do it. I was at a company doing it way before Elon "invented" Grasshopper. The impediment has been financial and since SpaceX is private, how well it works out is a big guess. Since they are launching mostly their own satellites, that changes the metrics a lot since there's a hope that Starlink will become revenue positive some time in the future. At first, Starlink sats were being launched 60 at a time. The satellites got bigger and it may have turned out to be cheaper to launch fewer and reuse boosters rather than stuffing as many in as possible and expending the boosters. With another launch provider, they have to launch what customers bring to them so there isn't a choice of launching fewer satellites at a time (other than rideshare launches).

          Vulcan is highly flexible due to being able to be launched with only the core booster or adding various quantities of less expensive solid boosters for the initial kick. Spending the solids to recover the booster core might be a good trade if the core can be landed after having the solids strapped on (where do the landing legs go?) Getting the casings back from the SRB's is a bonus.

          1. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

            Re: Why barge first attempt

            Just a quick recap,

            First landing attempt was Jan 2015. First success was Dec 2015.

            Tintin was Feb 2018.

            First operational Starlink launch was May 2019, over 4 years after landing attempt. At the time it was around 60 satellites coming in at 13.5 Tons and didn't completely fill the fairing even though they had moved to Block 5 as they had secondary payloads on some of the launches.

            They didn't switch to V2 mini which had 4x the bandwidth until Feb 2023 by which time payload was 21 satellites coming 15 tons and I believe the record now stands 23 satellites weighing 18.4 tons.

            I won't say Vulcan is dead in the water but without NRO launches and Kuiper launches until BO gets New Glenn cadence up to speed they won't have much of a market and there has been plenty of rumours that Boeing (one half of ULA) is trying to off load their space division. There is no plan to land the core, they have muted some unfeasible plan to eject and recover the engines which might make sense at they are supplied by BO.

            New Glenn is supposed to be comparable with F9 for launch costs but with bigger fairing and higher payload capacity. I assume that it when it gets to high cadence rates and full reuse.

      2. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

        Re: Why barge first attempt

        Don't know when but SpaceX will be giving up their lease on LZ-1 and LZ-2, they are going to be used to by Vaya Space and Phantom Space and no, I haven't heard of them either. SpaceX are building new landing pads next to their launch pads.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Landing Issues

    There is a tropical cyclone in the Indian Ocean south of Cocos Islands - this is where SpaceX parks its starships

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. xyz123 Silver badge

    Inaugural launch of New Glen better go right and not explode during launch.

    Otherwise people will mock them saying they put on a fireworks display to cheer on Starship.

  9. FeepingCreature

    As a SpaceX fan

    As a SpaceX fan, good luck to the Blue Origin team tomorrow! I'll be cheering you on. Healthy competition can only be good for access to space.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: As a SpaceX fan

      A "fan" ?

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: As a SpaceX fan

        "A "fan" ?"

        It helps to clear the smoke after the explosion.

      2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: As a SpaceX fan

        A "fan" ?

        werdsmith,

        I think I'd also probably call myself a SpaceX fan. I don't think it's healthy or sensible to be a fan of a business you deal with - or even of a business in an industry you interact with. But I've been a science fiction fan since the mid 80s and that's left me with a fascination with spaceflight and space science. As an adult I'd retrained myself to accept that progress would be slow and that there wasn't much chance of more than small (very expensive) government manned programmes in my lifetime - and so I learnt to love all the unmanned science missions.

        But of course really I want to fly on a spaceship! OK I'm in my fifties now, so maybe I'm a bit late for that - affordable, commercial spaceflight is still a pipe dream - there are so many problems to solve. But SpaceX have given manned spaceflight an enormous kick up the arse in the last few years - and there's a growing commercial space sector that's looking a lot closer to the predictions of some sci-fi I was reading back in the day. So there's hope - and I'm still fascinated by space so happy days.

        Musk is increasingly controversial, but I can still call myself a fan of NASA, SpaceX the ESA, JAXA the Indian Space Research Organisation - and maybe also Blue Origin. Maybe I've got slightly more mixed feelings about the Chinese and Russian space programs, but space stuff is still cool - even if I am now older and supposedly wiser.

    2. frankvw

      Re: As a SpaceX fan

      I find myself sitting on an uncomfortable fence here. I'm all for commercial space flights, and SpaceX is definitely the driving force there, being way ahead of the pack. Yet I also want Blue Origin to succeed, even though they're still desperately trying to catch up with SpaceX, partially by copying them.

      And on top of that I'm trying to decide who I dislike more: Musk or Bezos...

  10. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

    Another 24 hour delay due to down range (the landing area) weather. Now aiming for Monday morning GMT.

    1. MJB7

      Upvoting the accurate information - not the delay :-(

    2. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Mushroom

      (on that Monday morning...) "We're standing down on today's launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window"

      1. Oneman2Many Bronze badge

        From twitter - "We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."

        On NSF stream they mentioned a report of a stuck valve, no further information.

  11. MachDiamond Silver badge

    And I stayed up late

    If they would have pushed the clock one more time, I was going to bed and being happy with watching the launch as a re-run. I'm really hoping they get the issue sorted and announce a new attempt quickly.

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