Good bet somebody was cursing a blue streak once they found out about the orbit. Sacre bleu!
Seriously, that’s a damned shame. Hope they, and we, get to the bottom of that soon. In the modern telemetry era you’d not expect a major off-nominal in trajectory would be a surprise to anyone. But this sorta sounds like it was. Or maybe that’s just poor word choice by the authors.
The next Starship test launch will be in March April May (???)
What happened to move fast, break things fast iteration?
It broke fast.
Stuff’s breaking so fast you don’t even have to launch first.
“The final mishap report identified the direct cause of the mishap as a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line and led to a thrust anomaly during the second-stage engine burn,” the agency stated. “Blue Origin identified nine corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence of the event,” the FAA added
Speaking of New Glenn…
That was incredible to watch, but horrible for Blue Origin. Wow.
A static fire test, no satellites aboard.
Awesome but …
Was that at planned engine start time, or a randomly timed explosion during preparations?
As best I could tell, I didn’t see anything that looked like a standard engine start. More like a propellant leak that found a source of ignition.
Static engine firing test for the first stage (no second stage mounted). This was a stage that was planned to be launched soon.
Yes, I got that the entire evolution was a planned static test fire.
And I see this new cite says it did in fact happen during the planned engine start, not at some other random moment seconds, minutes, or hours earlier in their pre-fire countdown. Which was the question I was trying to ask.
Still not good news, but IMO better news than a random propellant leak or rogue fire way out of time sequence.
On the scale of bad news, with an accident that kills people at a 10, I’d rate an accident that obliterates your only launch pad as a 9. This wasn’t a slightly bad test for Blew Upagain, this is a major disaster. And a big delay for Artemis, too. NASA had just a couple of days ago given them a contract for some moon rover launches.
Destroying a pad is always, as you say, a very bad thing. Really fouls up your schedule. But rebuilding it is simply conventional terrestrial civil engineering.
Even worse if you also discover you need significant first stage redesign to prevent a recurrence.
Multiple sources have confirmed that there is significant damage to Blue Origin’s launch site in Florida, LC-36A. The company invested years and at least hundreds of millions of dollars in this facility… The company does not have another launch site for New Glenn. It has begun preliminary work on a nearby pad, LC-36B, and has plans to develop another site at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. But these projects are just getting started. Rebuilding the company’s pad, or finishing a new one, will likely take at least a year, even with a major effort by Blue Origin, and drawing upon Jeff Bezos’ nearly infinite resources. One source familiar with pad rebuilds estimated that 15 months was a “best case” scenario.
A year to 15 months to fix the pad. Ouch. I wonder if Space-x can take on the moon lander contracts