Blue Origin hopes third time's the charm for New Glenn after two scrubbed launches A blast from the Sun kept Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on the pad as the Northern Lights forced NASA to halt the launch. It has not been a good week for Jeff Bezos' rocket. A planned launch on November 9 was scrubbed due to weather, and the Blue Origin team had hoped to get the New Glenn off the pad on November 12, but it …
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Yes, two. Falcon 9 (and occasionally Falcon Heavy) and now New Glenn.
Two of SpaceX's Super Heavy boosters (B14 & B15) were each caught & subsequently reused once before being disposed of, but not yet to truly send Starship (or a payload) orbital - which was never in the flight plan yet anyway. It's only a matter of time before they do.
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Falcon 9 V1.0: 10,400kg to LEO (expended)
Falcon 9 Current: 17,500kg to LEO (return to drone ship)
New Glenn: 45,000kg to LEO (target, current performance not published. 25,000kg?)
Falcon Heavy: 57,000kg to LEO (Central core expended, side boosters recovered)
Burn required for Starship IFT 11 to circularise in LEO: 4.6 seconds (payload: butter all+11,000kg heat shield+flaps+...)
New Glenn and Starship have very different design strategies. New Glenn is a very conservative design intended to work first time, no matter the cost in time (development started before 2012) or performance. Recent progress with New Glenn depended on switching strategy to one that included some risk of failure. The boosters are expensive and time consuming to manufacture. This was not considered a problem because the target launch rate is 24/year and each booster is expected to launch 25 times.
Starship is far more ambitious and pushes to the limits of technology. The idea was first mentioned in 2005 but the switch to stainless steel was in late 2018. The goal is hundreds of launches per year. The vehicle is optimised for speed of manufacture and operation along with low manufacturing and operation costs. The really difficult part is the factory. Manufacturing pathfinders than explode are not considered an issue because the factory can easily build more.
Applying the criteria for success of one project to the other makes the other project look awful, whichever way round you do it. I am happy each is achieving success by their own standards.
Some of the coverage in the live stream was excellent. I see nobody's yet figured out how to reliably stream the landing at sea. Some of the on-boards were aa bit choppy too, I guess we're getting used to seeing footage sent back via starlink The tracking shot of the landing approach was really good, until the clouds got in the way. My biggest gripe was the crowd though. They were too noisy, making the technical callouts hard to hear.
The freezes reminded me of early SpaceX barge landings. Perhaps we will get a clean view of the landing transmitted after the event. If not, wait a couple of years for Kuiper.
Stoke are currently aiming for early next year and RocketLab recently rescheduled for mid 2026. Firefly hope to launch their first MLV in mid 2026 but do not expect to have a soft landing in the first five attempts. China is making clear progress. Europe not so much but that is an improvement over just a couple of years ago.
I assume BO footage will improve once they can start using Kuiper. SpaceX footage of sea landing is pretty decent. Starship ship re-entry are incredible.
I know what you mean about the crowd noise, seemed a bit staged. Ended up switching to NSF stream where they didn't broadcast the audio.
They had the audio of the mission control calling out technical steps, then a manic woman's voice parroting each time almost verbatim. Was ridiculous.
I thought them mission voice was clear enough. The screaming crowd (staffers) we've got used to now. But Houston was never like that.
Gwen DeMarco: Look! I have one job on this lousy ship, it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it! Okay?
Humanities excrement will go boldly to places it has never been before!
And when it gets cheap and commoditized and ryan air starts up a service ... it will be dumped unceremoniously towards the sun ... because it cheaper
Probably boomerang back to the earth because ryans air miscalculated on their unmaintained cheapo hallucinating otbital excrement firing trajectory AI calculator :)
years from now you'll be able to look up into the night sky and see beautiful shooting stars of returning burning turds excreted by your ancestors :)
How apt and poetic haha
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