New Glenn Update
blueorigin.com73 points by rbanffy 3 hours ago
73 points by rbanffy 3 hours ago
The incremental improvements to the engine thrust is par for the course. The exciting thing in this announcement is the new 9x4 configuration (9 and 4 engines in the first and second stages vs the current 7x2). They don't mention whether the tanks will get stretched to allow for more fuel, or if this just burns the fuel faster. Starship generations keep getting both more engines and longer.
Yup, the thrust improvements were expected. The BE-4 engines have quite a low chamber pressure for their engine class, so they can gain significant performance just by increasing chamber pressure.
Additionally, the New Glenn fairings are very large for their weight capacity. New Glenn has 3x the fairing volume compared to the Falcon Heavy, but can throw less mass. So many expected that BO designed it this way because they expected to increase performance of their engines in the future, making the weight/volume ratio of their fairing more balanced.
New Glenn has 45t of capacity now. Increasing thrust by 15% should increase that to 51t, thus making New Glenn 7x2 also just barely a Super Heavy booster. Perhaps they didn't call that out because that would overshadow the 9x4 announcement.
> New Glenn has 3x the fairing volume compared to the Falcon Heavy, but can throw less mass.
To be fair, the Falcon Heavy has way too little fairing volume for it's lift capacity (and apparently it is in the process of getting an extra 50% or so?)
Because the falcon boosters have to be road transportable.
The fairings aren't constrained to the diameter of the booster, they already have a larger diameter than the booster.
The small size of the Falcon Heavy fairing is probably due to the fact that they are the same size as the Falcon fairing, and it was designed when Falcon could throw < 1/2 the mass it can currently throw, let alone the Falcon Heavy.
Based on the photo posted by the Blue Origin CEO the tanks are definitely getting stretched (also looks like a slightly different fin, landing leg, and fairing config)
Yep, 70 tons to LEO is more than the Falcon Heavy.
Thing that doesn’t exist yet will have better specs than thing that’s been in use for over 7 years!
News at 10
For those who aren’t aware, the next flight is to lunar orbit, with a planned landing on the moon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1
That seems like a big jump between flights. I'm used to the spend and explode fast incremental iterations of SpaceX.
I think SpaceX is taking the re-usability part of Starship as foundation. Meaning they won't move forward until it's solved. With Falcon they added it as a bit of a secondary priority. They've spent so much resources trying to get the second stage back to earth. I think they should have just focused on getting the whole system flying to orbit, throwing away second stage for now, and using that platform to replace falcon. Eventually, they could refactor second stage to get it back to earth. But perhaps it's all too coupled that it has to be solved at one time (not later).
Starship can fly to orbit, it's just not cheaper than a reusable falcon 9 that way
Starship has only flown 11 times. I suspect it's more cost effective than the Falcon 9 was when it had 11 launches, long before any reuse.
Seems BO is taking the NASA approach of not being so cavalier with testing. You can tell people you expect the thing to fail, but repeatedly seeing them fail is still seen as a negative.
NASA still had much smaller jumps in capability between flights. Check out the Smarter Every Day NASA talk.
Sure, we went through Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo 1-7 before humans orbited the moon. However, we started from blank sheet of paper back then. BO has the knowledge learned from Gemini, Mercury, and all of Apollo to start.
I don't need a YT influencer to know my NASA history. I'm old enough it was taught in school while young enough to not have lived through any of it.
I am so old I lived through it! - 13 years old staying up all night to watch Neil take his little stroll. Genuine question, how DO they teach it in school? Do they get into the physics of any of it (orbital mechanics, rocketry etc)? Do they get into the cold war geopolitics of it? Do they teach the amazing accomplishments of the Soviet Union as well as NASA?
It's not like it was a class on rocket science, but more of just history of each program being a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of landing on the moon
The first flight of the Saturn V was 'all up'. Every stage was the real live thing. No dummy stages, real payload.
The third flight of the Saturn V took 3 astronauts in their spacecraft to lunar orbit and back.
I was thinking the same thing - big leap. But maybe there’s no real difference between ending up in Earth orbit versus lunar orbit, in that the basic aspects (thrust, staging, navigation, etc) are all there already? But everything relating to the lander (releasing it, landing it) would be new.
I recognize a fellow Kerbal space program enthusiast by what they consider to be challenges and what is just "more of the same". :)
Presumably this was written by somebody from aerospace, who's unaware of the nuances of what "An update on New Glenn" usually means in Silicon Valley.
> the nuances of what "An update on New Glenn" usually means in Silicon Valley
What does it mean?
Usually it’s how a closing down business announcement is titled in the startup world. It’s not typically used to give a real update on a project.
Interesting that "...additional vehicle upgrades include a reusable fairing..."
I wonder how they'll be implementing that since SpaceX gave up on recapturing fairings (seemingly too soon, but only from the POV of someone with no internal info).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_fairing_recovery_progra...
> SpaceX performs some amount of cleaning and refurbishing before using the previously flown fairings on a subsequent flight. SpaceX has reflown fairing halves more than 300 times, with one being reflown for 34 times.
They gave up on catching them in nets, because it turns out they're fine splashing directly into the water.
They still recover the fairings. They gave up on trying to catch them out of the air and now just let them land in the water and pick them up.