Blue Origin thread.

[magnemoe]

14 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Like all the rest of your arguments, this hinges on the bogus presumption that your observational assumptions are universal truths.

Who's to say this was "too slow"? Until we know what acceleration they were aiming for, your entire argument has no substance whatsoever. Not for the first time, I might add. You might want to revise your approach to statements like that.

I guess they did not launch with full trust, less chance for engine problems with the downside that you stay over the pad for longer but think its safer if you don't need the performance. 
And its obviously the first launch, yes its static fires but last Starship had them too. 

[AckSed]

It hinges on whether they were babying the rocket in order to launch with a small payload and then land close-by, or it is actually underpowered and needs upgrades. Or a penalty-weight diet.

I think I stand in the former camp.

[darthgently]

22 minutes ago, AckSed said:

It hinges on whether they were babying the rocket in order to launch with a small payload and then land close-by, or it is actually underpowered and needs upgrades. Or a penalty-weight diet.

I think I stand in the former camp.

They say “All seven engines at full throttle” shortly after it starts rising in the stream, so other than the designed in lower chamber pressure I don’t think they were babying the engines.

I’m going with 80% odds they will be bumping up the chamber pressure in the next version.

Edited January 17 by darthgently

[AckSed]

3 minutes ago, darthgently said:

They say “All seven engines at full throttle” shortly after it starts rising in the stream, so other than the designed in lower chamber pressure I don’t think they were babying the engines.

Might be right there. Perhaps the lower combustion chamber pressure (lower than Raptor, but 138 bar is still pretty high compared to other cryogenic engines like the RS68A [102.6 bar] or Landspace's TQ-12 [101 bar]) and lower-density propellant and landing hardware combine to make Delta IV Heavy levels of performance:

 

[darthgently]

6 minutes ago, AckSed said:

Might be right there. Perhaps the lower combustion chamber pressure (lower than Raptor, but 138 bar is still pretty high compared to other cryogenic engines like the RS68A [102.6 bar] or Landspace's TQ-12 [101 bar]) and lower-density propellant and landing hardware combine to make Delta IV Heavy levels of performance:

 

If they used super chilled denser fuel wouldn’t the TWR off the pad be worse as there would be more fuel mass?  Honest question because maybe there is something about super chilled fuel that makes it release more energy or something that I don’t know about.

I guess the pumps flow rates as measured in mass would increase now that I think about it

[AckSed]

53 minutes ago, darthgently said:

If they used super chilled denser fuel wouldn’t the TWR off the pad be worse as there would be more fuel mass?  Honest question because maybe there is something about super chilled fuel that makes it release more energy or something that I don’t know about.

I guess the pumps flow rates as measured in mass would increase now that I think about it.

Well, yes, a rocket holding a denser fuel with the same structural mass, tank mass, the same amount of thrust and the same volume of fuel would have a worse TWR because it'd have a higher wet mass, but denser fuel = approx. more energy per kg, which leads to smaller tanks and lighter weight. I also remember the optimisation of burning denser fuel and oxidiser faster, leading to speedier lightening of the 1st stage and greater acceleration, leading to about a 7-8% decrease in delta-V to orbit (for a SSTO anyway).

Further, for lower ISP it apparently optimises at a lower TWR (second post down). (Reference: "Evaluation of innovative rocket engines for single-stage earth-to-orbit vehicles" by Detlef Manski and James A. Martin, Journal of Propulsion and Power, Nov-Dec 1991. I can't access it, though. :-/)

My copy of Bruce Dunn's post on SSTO propellants states, though:

Quote

while engine thrust must scale up in proportion to propellant load to allow takeoff, the engine turbopumps do not grow more powerful or heavier, as they must pump the same volume of propellant in the same time as for a hydrogen/oxygen vehicle.

Now I realise all these references are for SSTO vehicles. However, reusable rocket boosters have to worry about many of the features inherent to reusable SSTOs, if to a much lesser degree: overcoming gravity loss, breaking atmosphere and approaching orbital velocities (far, far less, can be handed off to second stage), landing hardware and its mass (roughly the same), heat-shielding for reentry (much less but still needed), and reserving propellant for boostback, reentry and landing (the hypersonic reentry burn is new and compensates for shielding).

Where does this leave NG 1st stage? I don't know. Maybe we'll just have a majestic Saturn V or Delta IV Heavy again, in semi-reusable form. And I'll look forward to it.

[tater]

 

[Exoscientist]

21 hours ago, darthgently said:

They say “All seven engines at full throttle” shortly after it starts rising in the stream, so other than the designed in lower chamber pressure I don’t think they were babying the engines.

I’m going with 80% odds they will be bumping up the chamber pressure in the next version.

 It’s pretty clear they need to bump up the thrust. The easiest way to do that is add engines. SpaceX adds and subtracts number of engines to either stage of SuperHeavy/Starship like it’s a walk in the park. Increasing thrust to an engine in contrast involves significant engineering work. 

 I wonder if Blue Origin didn’t go with 9 engines from the start just because they didn’t want to be seen as copying SpaceX. 

 In any case, the low 25 ton payload they have now is probably because of that low TWR. If they want their planned  45 tons reusable, they’ll need that thrust upgrade. 
 

   Bob Clark

Edited January 18 by Exoscientist
Clarity

[darthgently]

I think if BO opts to bump the engines to 9 on the NS booster then that pretty landing gear design will change quite a bit.

 There will be less room between outer engines to inset them and they’d need to go from 6 to 8 gear.

They have an opportunity here to go with even longer, narrower carbon fiber legs than SpaceX and use them deployed at 20% to 30% to double as air brakes to reduce braking and landing fuel requirements!

This worked for me in KSP so it has been full durableness tested™️

[GuessingEveryDay]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

There will be less room between outer engines to inset them and they’d need to go from 6 to 8 gear.

Pitch and Yaw's going to be a little janky, but roll should be fine. The booster also lands with one engine, right?

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

Pitch and Yaw's going to be a little janky, but roll should be fine. The booster also lands with one engine, right?

It burns 3 while landing.  They throttle very deep.

The gimbaling engines are 3 in a row across the center.  The same as used in landing I think.

Why would pitch and yaw be worse and roll the same?   Gimbal range going from 7 to 9 engines would be reduced for pitch and roll but yaw should be fine if one considers the outer gimbaling engines as on port and starboard.  If I’m making correct assumptions

[Kartoffelkuchen]

Tbh, I think we‘re overinterpreting a little here. Announcing „engines at full thrust“ on the webcast doesn‘t mean they are at their max physically-able thrust, but rather at the required and expected thrust for that mission. Which might as well only be 90% of what they could run at. Many possible reasons for that.

Has someone run the numbers for the Vulcan launch? I think ULA was quite open regarding masses and such specifics, if masses can be estimated for New Glenn as well and then compared to the Vulcan launch one could estimate whether the engines produced thrust in the same ballpark or if they were throttled for this launch. I don‘t think increasing the number of engines is something BO is even considering.

[Exoscientist]

8 hours ago, Kartoffelkuchen said:

Tbh, I think we‘re overinterpreting a little here. Announcing „engines at full thrust“ on the webcast doesn‘t mean they are at their max physically-able thrust, but rather at the required and expected thrust for that mission. Which might as well only be 90% of what they could run at. Many possible reasons for that.

Has someone run the numbers for the Vulcan launch? I think ULA was quite open regarding masses and such specifics, if masses can be estimated for New Glenn as well and then compared to the Vulcan launch one could estimate whether the engines produced thrust in the same ballpark or if they were throttled for this launch. I don‘t think increasing the number of engines is something BO is even considering.

 This employment posting suggests they are considering 9 engines:

 

  Bob Clark

[darthgently]

On 1/18/2025 at 6:58 PM, Kartoffelkuchen said:

Tbh, I think we‘re overinterpreting a little here. Announcing „engines at full thrust“ on the webcast doesn‘t mean they are at their max physically-able thrust, but rather at the required and expected thrust for that mission

Fair.  Still, my gut tells me that without the ULA SRBs I’m having trouble imagining them not going actual full throttle, or very close.  They would logically be motivated to get it clear of the pad in a timely manner should there be a maiden flight mishap and I think they like erred to more throttle.  Will be great to find out what really happened someday

[AckSed]

Eric Berger gives the overview of BO right now, and their hopes for the future (spoiler: ISRU): https://arstechnica.com/features/2025/01/after-the-success-of-new-glenn-blue-origin-to-focus-on-launching-frequently/

Surprising is the photo of Musk and Bezos talking at the recent inauguration, but Bezos says, "[In the space race]There are going to be multiple winners."

Edit: Someone downthread put up a list of things BO is known to be working on:

Quote

Blue Origin's known projects are:

Rocket engines

• BE-1: Peroxide 8.9kN.
• BE-2: Kerolox 140kN.
• BE-3PM: Hydrolox 490kN, used on BO New Shepard.
• BE-3U: Hydrolox 710kN, used on BO New Glenn second stage.
• BE-4: Methalox 2,400kN, used on ULA Vulcan and BO New Glenn first stage.
• BE-7: Hydrolox 44kN, intended for use on Blue Moon.

Vehicles

• New Shepard: Fully reusable, suborbital, for tourism and sounding rocket-type experiments at microgravity and partial Earth gravity. Development began 2006, first launched 2015, 28 launches to date.
• New Glenn: Partially reusable, orbital, heavy-class. Dev began 2012, first launched 2025, one launch.
• (New Armstrong: Speculative successor to New Glenn.)
• Blue Moon Mark 1: Deliver 3mt of cargo to lunar surface. To be launched by New Glenn.
• Blue Moon Mark 2: Under dev by "SLD National Team," a consortium of six companies.
• Blue Ring: Orbital transfer vehicle. Test article launched in January 2025.

Orbital habitats ("destinations")

• Orbital Reef: Part of the NASA Commercial LEO Development Program (CLD Phase 1). To consist of rigid and inflatable modules. In collaboration with ASU, Boeing, Genesis Engineering, Redwire Space, Sierra Space.

Enabling technologies

• Blue Alchemist: An autonomous solution to transform lunar regolith into solar cells. NASA dev contract awarded in 2023.

Edit: Upon a few seconds of belated thought, combined the "crewed" and "uncrewed" vehicle categories, given that only New Shepard has carried humans, and there's no known crew capsule for New Glenn.

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:19 PM by AckSed
More info

[magnemoe]

On 1/27/2025 at 3:02 AM, darthgently said:

Fair.  Still, my gut tells me that without the ULA SRBs I’m having trouble imagining them not going actual full throttle, or very close.  They would logically be motivated to get it clear of the pad in a timely manner should there be a maiden flight mishap and I think they like erred to more throttle.  Will be great to find out what really happened someday

True but an engine who is not redlined is more reliable, its risk math I don't thing we know enough of but guess BO had done plenty of work on. An benefit of going for 9 engines is that you can drop the second stage earlier this is not so important for an ship landing but very important for boost back. Yes they are not planning on it but its tempting with lighter cargo.  

[darthgently]

7 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

True but an engine who is not redlined is more reliable, its risk math I don't thing we know enough of but guess BO had done plenty of work on.

Agreed, which is why I guessed very close to full throttle, not full throttle, in one of my replies above.

 It isn’t like this was the first use of these engines in a launch so I think they were confident of how much throttle was safe after the ULA launch

Edited Tuesday at 04:33 PM by darthgently