Blue Origin thread.

[GuessingEveryDay]

https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1878470474822480233

[tater]

LOL

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, tater said:

The coverage was annoying, I kept muting it. From what I have read this morning and what I saw on X last night they did not discuss what any of the issues actually were. Boo.

I’m not saying that showmanship is what space endeavor should be about but the hype along with timing in the middle of the night combined with poor PR comms and stringing ppl along with multiple opaque count down restarts on a night before a workday all combined to more disappointment than necessary for those who took time to try and watch live.  The timing may have been restricted for solid reasons but that makes the handling of messaging even more important.  And remember that investors definitely care about messaging and PR; I’m not just talking about general public opinion.  Putting on a good show does matter and SpaceX has a better grip on this, imo.

I’m a little confused how the icing didn’t show up in wet dress.  

Probably different dewpoint and humidity but I’d think the math for the icing wouldn’t be hard to project from the wet dress measurements if they monitored vent temps and ambient humidity and dewpoint etc at wet dress and did the math for conditions during countdown.

I’m assuming water ice at the vent opening as any other seems like it would have responded to multiple melting attempts.  I would think they wouldn’t be venting hydrogen or methane and oxygen from the same vent for flame control reasons, but I suppose if methane and hydrogen were vented from same lines or vent the gaseous hydrogen could freeze the methane I suppose.  But given those are used on different stages it doesn’t seem practical to share venting.  <shrug>

So I’m guessing water vapor at the outlet, or much less likely, water or other contamination in the liquid.  I’m just spinning my gears here I suppose because last night was not fun.

[tater]

Showmanship is not at all required—but if you are gong to do a livestream, have some attention to detail.

For one, as a buddy of mine texted me, "...the real problem is Ariane (Cornell), and the fact that they recruited her from the paint department at Home Depot."

I replied that I would in fact rather listen to paint dry than listen to her, hence me muting BO streams.

Like it or not, SpaceX has set the streaming standard at this point—in part because they fly so much it's minimalist. I never used to watch the "patter" SpaceX streams back in the day. They used to have 2 streams per launch as you may recall. One was 1-2 engineers, with the employees cheering in the background, the second was the bare min host call outs, and otherwise just the launch comms.

Other companies like ULA, Rocket Lab, etc also have decent streams, even if long/tedious in some cases. At the very least you hear the actual mission control comms at points, and they tend to communicate what issues they are actually working. If they want you to watch for 3 hours, they need to discuss the problems that caused you to be there for 3 hours vs 30 min.

[darthgently]

35 minutes ago, tater said:

 

Showmanship is not at all required—but if you are gong to do a livestream, have some attention to detail.

 

Let me specify what I meant by showmanship exactl.  Mostly the managing of expectations and not exhausting people’s dopamine and cortisol circuits by keeping them in the loop.

Musk does this naturally by saying the right things at the right times.  He clearly states the grand goals overall, the modest goals of the test, the typically harsh odds of success/failure, then in P T Barnham fashion declares, “Success possible, excitement guaranteed!”.  The SpaceX team follows this tone during the stream and it just works.

BO did a great job of communicating the grand goals, and an ok job of most everything else, but failed at managing expectations and keeping ppl in the loop and exhausted the “audience”.

It never hurts to put on a good reality-based show is my only point

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Like it or not, SpaceX has set the streaming standard at this point—in part because they fly so much it's minimalist. I never used to watch the "patter" SpaceX streams back in the day. They used to have 2 streams per launch as you may recall. One was 1-2 engineers, with the employees cheering in the background, the second was the bare min host call outs, and otherwise just the launch comms.

I only watch the starship streams these days and they really are a blast. Even my wife loves them and she has very little interest in space or rocketry. 

[tater]

Until they do something novel, blue origin is going to be a little bit behind the eight ball on streaming viewership. People expect rocket boosters to land these days so it’s not as interesting. SpaceX has made it far too routine.