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Bezos' Blue Origin Suffers Fiery Setback Building New Rocket (bnnbloomberg.ca) 63

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Blue Origin sustained failures in recent weeks of testing including a factory mishap that damaged a portion of a future New Glenn rocket, the long-awaited centerpiece of the Jeff Bezos-backed startup's push to take on SpaceX. The upper portion of one rocket crumpled into itself, in part due to worker error, while it was being moved to a storage hangar, according to people familiar with the situation.

In a separate incident, another upper rocket portion failed during stress testing and exploded, the people said. Repairs are underway, another person said, noting there were no injuries during either episode. The previously unreported incidents illustrate the hurdles Blue Origin is grappling with while ramping up production of New Glenn, which is four years overdue. At the same time, new Chief Executive Officer Dave Limp has hired a slate of executives to shake the company out of a years-long R&D slump.

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Bezos' Blue Origin Suffers Fiery Setback Building New Rocket

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  • SpaceX (Score:3, Insightful)

    by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @08:09AM (#64726254)
    Has run away with the industry. New startups like Blue and stalwarts like Boeing are not going to be able to catch them. The same thing will happen with Tesla too. Once you can take your eyes off the road, and FSD becomes safe enough, the industry wonâ(TM)t be able to catch up. Hate him you might, but the genius of Elon Musk is out of this world and that has become obvious. He out innovates all of his competitors.
    • It's obvious most of it is because he simply cares about what companies are doing, not that he's particular smart. If that's true he's a genius, I'm sure it helps but it's not a big factor at scale. Jeff Bezos really can give a shit less what's going on at his companies.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • That's the thing, he's actively engaging in giving less of a shit by adding layers of plausible deniability and obfuscating legal liability.

        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          But that's really not where the expression seems to come from.

          Try: "I could care less."--kind of stating it as a theoretical, but highly unlikely, possibility.

    • Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @08:21AM (#64726278) Homepage
      Neither of those are happening though. RocketLab is already launching their Electron rocket with partial reuse. And many electric cars are also showing up from other companies than Tesla, with Tesla's market share going down with it now under 50% of all US electric cars sold. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/business/tesla-electric-vehicles-market-share.html [nytimes.com]. As for self-driving, Tesla is not ahead of others there either, with Waymo well ahead of Tesla. Both SpaceX and Tesla have done really impressive things, and they continue to innovate, but there's no unduplicatable genius of Musk here. And since you mention Boeing, it is worth noting that part of what got Boeing into its current situation was its complacency of thinking that no one could do things as well as Boeing.
      • Neither of those are happening though. RocketLab is already launching their Electron rocket with partial reuse. And many electric cars are also showing up from other companies than Tesla, with Tesla's market share going down with it now under 50% of all US electric cars sold. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/business/tesla-electric-vehicles-market-share.html [nytimes.com]. As for self-driving, Tesla is not ahead of others there either, with Waymo well ahead of Tesla. Both SpaceX and Tesla have done really impressive things, and they continue to innovate, but there's no unduplicatable genius of Musk here. And since you mention Boeing, it is worth noting that part of what got Boeing into its current situation was its complacency of thinking that no one could do things as well as Boeing.

        I don't think Waymo is well ahead of Tesla. Waymo is targeting a different market. You can't just buy a Waymo car and take it anywhere.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        Waymo and Tesla aren't even in the same game. Waymo drives on "invisible, pre-laid tracks", so to speak (able to deviate from them, but not designed to in the general case), rather than solving any arbitrary scenario on the fly, which is Tesla's goal. One can argue over which approach is better, but they're very different tasks and can't be directly compared.

        Also, see if you can note any trend here in Waymo's locations:

        * Phoenix, Arizona
        * Los Angeles, CA
        * San Francisco, CA
        *

        • You have to have vision solved to distinguish "squishy white stuff that's okay to drive over" and "stuff that will ruin your car or kill someone if you try to drive over it".

          So, pretty much the same shortcommings as drivers in Western Washignton State. Perhaps a software rule that detects snow and refuses to pull the car out of the garage would serve many of us well..

      • Many of us bought and/or rented BEVs from other companies. Some Chinese companies are making real progress, but the Tesla ecosystem is insanely advanced. If I ever buy a new car (I'd prefer to hold out for FSD ride sharing) I'll investigate Nio and BYD who I consider Teska's closest competitors. I will drive each for a week. But I think when including service and charging infrastructure, I'll end up buying Tesla. I've tried or ridden in 25 other brands of modern cars and it is extremely clear to me that man
      • RocketLab is running the equivalent of updated 1960s sounding rockets, equivalent to the Black Brant range. They're a looooong way from competing with SpaceX.

    • Re:SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)

      by RocketSW ( 1447313 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @08:27AM (#64726300)

      I wouldn't exactly call Blue Origin a "new startup." Bezos founded it in 2000, 2 years before Musk founded SpaceX.

      • Re: SpaceX (Score:5, Informative)

        by D.McG. ( 3986101 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @08:58AM (#64726376)
        And in 24 years they have never put a rocket into orbit. ULA has launched only one rocket using two Blue Origin BE-4 engines. Engines which are lower thrust, higher mass, and needlessly larger than SpaceX's Raptor. SuperHeavy / Starship / Raptor was only on paper just 8 years ago and has flown 4 times. Blue Origin has had 3x more time and nothing to show for it.
        • ...spacex and musk are going to run away with reusable launches... ...reminds me of nothing phone which has a business plan of "take over apple's iphone market share"... ...yeah right...
        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          It was also much better funded than SpaceX for most of that 24 years.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Which is why you'd never get there. Elon is the smarter pick. It boggles my mind how people can see EVERYTHING he does in so many fields successfully, and think they have a better grasp of good ideas than that man. PROTIP: When Elon thinks about something in a different way than you do, sit down and really really read everything you can get your hands on and make sure you really know what the fuck you are talking about, because chances are, you're deluded. The proof is in the pudding with that man, and ther
          • ...but... he hasn't .... and SpaceX has had multiple successful launches. So I'm not sure where you were going with this.
      • It's funny that Blue moves so slowly that nearly everybody forgets that, as you correctly pointed out, Blue is older than SpaceX and was far better funded (being capitalized by Bezos, who's Amazon provided nearly unlimited funding). All of which makes it that much more impressive that Musk's SpaceX has launched so many satellites (including national security payloads, science missions, and the massive Starlink constellation) and hauled astronauts to and from the ISS while also hosting private manned space m

    • I certainly don't claim to be a genius...no one does, but I am at least above average. I remind myself though, that no matter how smart I am or think I am, it never really seems to keep me from saying or doing something stupid from time to time.

    • Note that crumpling a tank and blowing up a test article would be just another Tuesday for SpaceX; their greatest virtue has been the fact that they are not scared of breaking stuff.

      The trick is to break stuff testing, and to learn from the experience and carry on.

      • Yes, but why are we still learning this lesson? I understand that we blew up rockets in the 50's and 60's because engineers used slide rulers and computer modeling wasn't feasible back then, but why is this still happening? Is it really cheaper to explode rockets than to build a computer model of the forces involved?

        • Is it really cheaper to explode rockets than to build a computer model of the forces involved?

          In theory, theory and practice are the same.
          In practice, they are not.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by BigZee ( 769371 )
          Modeling is one thing but the margins for these engines are tiny so every one needs testing once it's been built. It's possible that might change with Raptor as they are going to build a very large number of them but for now at least, they need to be tested.
        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          Computer models are *widely* used, but to test how things play out in the real world, you have to fly them, and there's no substitute for actual flight hours and actual flight data.

          The AMOS-6 explosion was a great example. They basically discovered new cryogenics + composites physics that wasn't even known of before (helium causing solid oxygen to cause liquid oxygen pooling in buckles between the liner and the overwrap, and the changes in tension during pressurization causing fibre friction to cause igniti

        • Adding a single gray stripe of paint about 6" wide to a Falcon 9 causes enough thermal shift to significantly change the reentry burn and glide paths. That is just one example of how finicky rockets are. There is so much chaos of small things having big shifts that models are great, but they cannot capture the fidelity of reality. The Stage 2 that blew up in July resulted from "a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle's oxygen system." Such cracking was a lurking flaw that was n

        • In the words of the late great Dale Earnhardt Sr "If ya ain't wrecking, ya ain't racin". Pause for a second, discount the vernacular, and while certainly not eloquent, I think it is a good way to look at anything pushing the envelope. Sure, you can have models and simulations and they'll get you there closer and faster than 50's tech ever could but until you smack a wall you don't really know your limits.

          Hopefully though unlike Dale you have excellent safety equipment so you can give it another go after
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      FSD is never going to work reliably. Tesla will give up and buy someone else's technology instead. Others are already well ahead of them, and haven't fallen into the trap of thinking that throwing more "AI" at it will fix the problem.

      Isn't it funny how when a SpaceX rocket explodes and throws debris all over the place it's a massive success and all just part of their iterative design process. When someone else's rocket explodes it's a catastrophe that set them back years.

      I have a feeling we will be seeing o

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Isn't it funny how when a SpaceX rocket explodes and throws debris all over the place it's a massive success and all just part of their iterative design process. When someone else's rocket explodes it's a catastrophe that set them back years.

        When you do it on purpose, it's a success. When you don't it's a failure.

        Nobody thinks the C204 capsule exploding was a success, nor the first three launches of Falcon 1.

    • Bwaahahahahahahahah!!!

    • Blue Origin was founded in 2000, two years before SpaceX. It does not qualify as a new startup.

    • Hate him you might, but the genius of Elon Musk is out of this world and that has become obvious. He out innovates all of his competitors.

      His reason for success is very similar to Steve Jobs: He's smart but not a technical whiz, but knows how size up markets, industry capabilities, and consumers to target products. He also creates an Aura of Being Part of History like Jobs did to get staff to toil long hours for shit wages and/or stock options.

      Jobs was also a manipulator and troll, although less likely to d

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Elon Musk is not Tony Stark -- a kind of super-genius engineer of everything. He's more of a Steve Jobs figure than he is the second coming of Sergei Korolev. People think Steve Jobs "invented" the smartphone, and people think Elon Musk was the founder of Tesla and the technical brains behind PayPal and SpaceX, none of which is true. Both Jobs and Musk are sharp tech businessmen with a really canny sense of when something technologically ambitious is about to become commercially feasible.

      Musk's genius i

      • Yeah, there are people who like to say that Musk did not start Tesla and credit Eberhard and Tarpenning with that (technically true) as though that makes Elon less of the "Mr Tesla" guy the world sees, but It's a mis-direction. The entity called Tesla, pre-Elon, was never going to go anywhere - it was doomed to die. Its Roadster was simply NOT going to be a commercial success, and would never have made it into mass production as a consumer product. At best, the company was a DeLorean Motors minus John DeLor

    • The same thing will happen with Tesla too. Once you can take your eyes off the road, and FSD becomes safe enough, the industry wonâ(TM)t be able to catch up.

      The only place the industry is trying to "catch up" to Tesla is in the USA. In the rest of the world I see far more different branded EVs than Tesla. Incidentally Tesla currently has zero autonomous Robo taxis on the market. Tesla also has zero Level 3 certified self driving systems on the market, unlike say Mercedes.

      Ford and Chevy may be playing catchup to Tesla. The rest of the industry in other parts of the world is laughing at them.

    • Kinda on topic... I have a Tesla with Supervised FSD 12.3.6. It is like magic. I can drive from my house to work, a distance of around 70 km through a major highway (100km/h), inner city roads, and around 10km of rural roads and barely have to intervene. There are consecutive days when I never intervene and when I do, 90% of the time, it's because I'm not sure how the car will react to something like a car pulling out of the intersection and there's no way it would clear the lane. FSD might have brakes
  • by Aviation Pete ( 252403 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @08:29AM (#64726306)

    Chief Executive Officer Dave Limp has hired a slate of executives to shake the company out of a years-long R&D slump

    So that's what you do to increase R&D? And I thought you let go of the MBAs and hire some more engineers instead. Silly me!

    • Yeah, that statement is, on its very face, stupid.

      Replace an exec who has failed to lead or proven to make poor decisions. Hiring more like that will change the output of the engineers? Just dumb.

      You gather your senior engineers. You tell them what you want. You listen to what they say about what portions of what you want are possible, difficult, or impossible, and what kind of research effort is required to move things from one column to another. Then you make the decisions you're paid to make, and ch

  • by pz ( 113803 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @08:31AM (#64726316) Journal

    In a separate incident, another upper rocket portion failed during stress testing and exploded, the people said.

    This brings to mind the foreword to "Ignition!" by John D. Clark, where Isaac Asimov writes:

    Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstand-
    ingly mad. I don't mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving luna-
    tic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.

    There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some
    that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison
    sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only
    liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into
    one delectable whole.

    Spaceflight is hard.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by C0L0PH0N ( 613595 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @10:41AM (#64726616)
    I watched the amazing Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, as he toured Bezos's Blue Origin factory. I was sort of astonished to see that all the cylindrical sections are manufactured and handled horizontally. After watching videos about SpaceX's factory for years, I see the wisdom of having all the cylindrical structures built and handled vertically. They are vastly less likely to "crumple". In fact, watching the video of the Bezos factory, that horizontal structure kept hitting me as just asking for trouble. And I guess they got it. :) I found myself not at all surprised. In fact, I bet it happens more often than they would like to admit. And the sections might have to be "overbuilt" slightly, to keep them rigid while horizontal. Which is not the orientation in which they will eventually be used.
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Falcon 9 is assembled horizontally.

      • But Starship is not precisely because of the learning from Falcon 9.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Starship is not because of particular tradeoffs that SpaceX thought were worthwhile. Vertical assembly has some benefits but it's got a lot of drawbacks too. It's more expensive, more dangerous, and you can't transport the thing (or the parts it's made with) very far.

          As far as structure goes, Starship has to be structurally sound lying on its side anyway because that's how it reenters.

  • Not that I have high hope that they'll make deadline for ESCAPDE that has a launch window deadline at October. If they don't make it, it'll be 18 months out for the next window to go to Mars.

  • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @12:39PM (#64727024)

    Maybe there just aren't enough really good rocket "scientists" to support this many rocket companies.

  • ...still better than Boeing!

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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