Blue Origin New Glenn Mission NG-1 – Live
108 comments
·January 13, 2025DriftRegion
rubzah
"Dark Sky" funded by the Pentagon. Sounds chipper.
findthewords
If there's anything in the name, I would guess an anti-satellite EMP.
baq
They did meaningful mission badges in NROL a few decades ago, someone found the birds thanks to that and they stopped. Best to assume nothing.
aa-jv
If that were the case it'd be just another treaty violation from out of control spooks.
raverbashing
I wonder if it might need some extra mass simulators (probably not depending on how heavy the payload is)
thomascountz
Eric Berger is reporting a scrub.
https://bsky.app/profile/sciguyspace.bsky.social/post/3lfmbm...
https://x.com/sciguyspace/status/1878713938109776032?s=46&t=...
mkl
https://xcancel.com/sciguyspace/status/1878713938109776032?t...
The stream has now confirmed it.
freeqaz
Some more info from Ars: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/an-icy-vent-line-may-h...
hooli_gan
[flagged]
dotancohen
Welcome to HN. Don't post memes here, only posts that add value. If you want to post memes, try Reddit or Digg. But if you have additional context or information to add, then your input is appreciated.
doublerabbit
Ah Yes. HM were the simplest jest of enjoyment will get you downvoted.
moffkalast
I'm sure the weather will git gud soon.
evil-olive
with every other rocket launch livestream I've watched (SpaceX, NASA, Rocket Lab, etc) when there's a delay they would announce it explicitly.
instead, it was at T-18min, they spent a few minutes talking about how fancy the engines were, and then finish with "alright, with 35 minutes left on the countdown..."
edit: they did it again. 11 minutes, they've pretty clearly told the talking heads to vamp, so they're rambling about how cool the "rocket park" is (and how they had to relocate a bunch of turtles while building it) and meanwhile the countdown disappears for a few seconds then resets to 38 minutes.
Tepix
They really need to establish communications to let the viewers know why they are adding time to the clock.
gmueckl
Cynically, this feels like Corporate Messaging 101: don't ever admit that anything bad happened. Ignore it if you can. If you can't anymore, spin it into something positive at all costs. If it's bad news, be as vague and euphemistic as possible.
93po
To be fair, SpaceX did/does(?) the same thing - they use pretty opaque messaging when things went wrong early on. And do stuff like deliberately not show explosion footage on the live stream.
dailykoder
"An error occured. Please try again later"
dotancohen
It also took SpaceX some time to figure out how to communicate scrubs to the viewers. I think they guy's name was Inspruker who did a really good job of keeping us up to date even when he was lacking official information. This was back before they were landing the rockets, when we'd wait literally months between Falcon launches.
So SpaceX has had a decade of figuring out what, and how, to inform the viewers. Blue Origin might not be comfortable with that yet.
mrguyorama
SpaceX still insists on being cagey too. I watched a launch a while back where the center stage failed to land itself, and the hosts pretty obviously were instructed to beat around the bush and pretend nothing was wrong ("A telemetry failure" as you could see it in the video footage belly flopping into the ground) and do literally anything other than admit the center stage had a minor failure that resulted in it's loss. Like it's not even a big deal, the boosters were right then having a picture perfect landing.
But a profit driven company cannot be honest about anything ever. Honesty is never as profitable as being extremely controlling about the information you share.
I consider this a huge negative of the privatisation of space. When the Shuttle killed people, we could expect great transparency and a general peeling back of the curtain. The public got to learn that their government agency was suffering from management failures by loser managers unwilling to face reality.
We will not get that same transparency when a SpaceX rocket inevitably kills someone. Especially with Musk hanging around the oval office.
DriftRegion
"if we're adding time to the clock, it means that the team thinks that there might be a possibility that they can sort it out"
whycome
Yeah it’s really taking their audience for granted. Not a good first look
fsloth
Audience? You mean all the space clients like Nasa, DoD and zillions of new space satellite vendors like IceEye etc? The public stream is nice to have but not critical.
I personally felt it was obvious when the countdown was reset. IMHO the show before countdown from 10s to zero is just filler.
whycome
Literal audience. It’s a public broadcast/stream with a director and host and production design. It’s a deliberate choice to include it as part of their venture. There is value in the positive public opinion of the launch and coverage.
echoangle
They have some production value in the stream though, so it looks like they’re trying to make it appealing. It’s probably a recruitment tool for them.
sbuttgereit
Audience as in taxpayers perhaps.
Whether informing the public directly or indirectly by communicating with the press about the products they want public agencies to purchase isn't critical, but it could be important. Having a public that already warmly embraces your company, or at least is warmly embraced by those that might be vocal in support or not, could make some projects easier to sell vs. a public that is indifferent or even hostile.
ragebol
You know what's a worse look: showing your viewers 1000s of little rockets parts. Looks cool perhaps, but doesn't inspire confidence either.
But damn it's annoying those delays
jjallen
The alternative is to not adjust the clock and let it run out and not launch at all then?
Do you really think that’s better?
I don’t.
evil-olive
> The alternative is to not adjust the clock and let it run out and not launch at all then?
holy false dichotomy, Batman
mkl
The alternative is simply to adjust the clock and say why.
ragebol
Scrubbed, as per Eric Berger: https://bsky.app/profile/sciguyspace.bsky.social/post/3lfmbm...
yellowapple
Had a feeling that'd happen when the countdown jumped to T-00:00:00 then disappeared forever.
Oh well.
Laremere
If you are reading this in the future, or just prefer YouTube, Edit: Blue origin is streaming it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/OOEPTWQrN7A
Original: the AP is restreaming the launch here: https://www.youtube.com/live/Yb-27DvLcN8?si=W1Qt7DfaSz7yxuL9
purpleidea
Same link without site tracking: https://www.youtube.com/live/Yb-27DvLcN8
willvarfar
What's the normal vibe on how it feels to work for Bezos on Blue Origin and how does it compare to working for Musk at SpaceX? Is one feeling like startup vs the other feeling like enterprise, or does one feel like the boss is too involved and the other too distant, etc?
_moof
Can't speak for Blue but SpaceX felt like an aerospace company, and Musk had next to nothing to do with my day-to-day there.
freeqaz
I had a close friend who was at Blue for a few years under Bob Smith (former CEO). It wasn't great. Just a toxic culture it seemed like, and their HQ is a giant stretch fabric tent with terrible acoustics lol
exmadscientist
Everyone I know locally who has worked for SpaceX has had pretty negative things to say about it overall.
Everyone I know locally who has worked for Blue Origin has had extremely negative things to say about it, pretty much without qualification.
So, not great!
null
admissionsguy
or does one feel like a tech company, the other like a government agency?
whycome
This is going to get scrubbed I think. So many pushbacks. They should make scrubbed missions retain the flight designation and the new flight should get a new number.
“Anomalies” “workarounds” “off-nominal situations” “whatever they’re finding that may be a little bit off” are all words you don’t wanna hear at launch I guess.
Okay that’s probably one too many delays now. I’ll have to see if it launches in the morn
baq
Nobody would be surprised if they scrubbed today, frankly it'll be more surprising if they launch.
Space is hard.
golol
If they stick the landing first try I'm really impressed abd SpaceX has real competition.
Polizeiposaune
In the words of the Steve Miller Band:
T0 keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future
purpleidea
I'm staying up to see Blue Origin crash their rocket into the barge, but they keep pushing back the launch so idk if it's even going to take off :/
BozeWolf
Hold on, some engineer is doing a few last git commits to make it work. When cicd job is done, t0 in 10minutes.
purpleidea
I always genuinely wondered how close to the various launches someone actually runs `git commit`.
One day our ancestors will look back on this time and wonder why we all re-developed similar code over and over again, instead of sharing it with copyleft and spending our energy as a society solving real problems like disease, fundamental physics, and so on...
throw5959
Future generations will be dumbfounded why didn't everyone just ask the computer to get what they need.
panick21_
They have costume avionics and costume ground system. The hardware both on the rocket and the launch site is just completely different. And likely plugs into back-ends that are pretty company specific. I question how much of that code can reasonably unified.
And why only talk about software? You can make the same argument for the avionics hardware, hell you can make the argument for the whole rocket. And if you just think this far enough you can just make the socialism argument "why have 2 companies at all, only have 1 (potentially government) company (ie Design Bureau) that enough". And that argument generally doesn't work, doing the same thing multiple times to figure out what is best isn't such a bad idea.
> disease, fundamental physics, and so on
We need space and rockets to research fundamental physics. Diseases get researched in space all the time. Making access to space cheaper has lead to more companies wanting to do more with space research.
swed420
> One day our ancestors will look back on this time
"You see, capitalism was indeed a necessary and inevitable bootstrapping phase of human development. Even Marx agreed this was the case. However, by the 21st century, generations had been indoctrinated to an extent that left them assuming capitalism was an unalterable and fundamental law of nature, instead of the global existential threat it had evolved into by its late stages."
blahyawnblah
Job failed with transient error with 23 seconds to go
steve_taylor
Not if GitHub Actions goes down again
Klaus23
New Glenn has the throttle range to hover and they test more than SpaceX. You will probably be disappointed.
somenameforme
Testing in simulations and testing in reality are radically different. I hadn't actually heard anything about this until now but I'd be surprised if they're giving themselves more than a 10% chance of success, assuming it's an orbital test. Looking things up, it turns out that the booster is named "So You're Telling Me There's a Chance", and that is probably not entirely tongue in cheek!
Klaus23
The chances of the rocket reaching orbit on the first attempt are not too bad. Ariane 6 did it and only failed on the third engine relight.
Nailing the landing is a lot trickier, but if they have any early problems they would ditch it in the sea. They would have to have a problem just before landing for the rocket to take out the barge. If you want to count tipping over as a crash, that would make it more likely, but still less than SpaceX because of the soft landing and more legs.
lutorm
Given their development pace, they really must succeed if they want their "slowly and carefully" model to be competitive.
null
ragebol
T-0 keeps getting pushed back. Nice for them to have this ability technically. Not all rockets can do this AFAIK, at least not as often as I've seen today.
Anyone know how often can do this, or what the technical limit it for this (so besides orbit insertion & other trajectory stuff or for reasons of running out the range flight restrictions etc)
bobs_salsa
Outside of those mission requirements you mentioned there are also some limitations in any cryo cooled liquids onboard.
Either the pressure increases internally, liquid off-gases and needs to be refilled (where there is a finite amount left to use), or risk of components freezing up can all play a factor into how long a rocket can stand on the pad for. As a result it’s less a question of how often can they delay the launch and more a question of how long can the rocket stay out on the pad for you to delay into.
Likely a heep of other reasons as well.
ragebol
Ah, thought of boil-off already which can of course be replenished. But indeed the tank when that comes from can run out as well of course.
dmead
I was at jetty park. I am now frozen. Going back to the hotel. Hopefully they can try again tomorrow.
Anyone know more about the payload? Here's what I've found: It's carrying the "Blue Ring Pathfinder Payload", part of the "Dark-Sky 1 Mission"
> Dark-Sky 1 is jointly funded by DIU and Blue Origin. [5]
DIU is "The Pentagon’s commercial technology arm, the Defense Innovation Unit"
[1] https://www.blueorigin.com/news/blue-ring-pathfinder-payload
[2] https://www.diu.mil/latest/companies-selected-for-diu-orbita...
[3] https://www.meritalk.com/articles/diu-orbital-logistics-awar...
[4] https://www.geekwire.com/2024/blue-origin-ring-darksky-1/
[5] https://spacenews.com/defense-innovation-unit-awards-three-c...