alt Hacker NewsOuch, losing the rocket is unfortunate, but the damage to the launch infrastructure is going to easily mean over a year of repairs. I hope they're going to take this as an opportunity to update the infrastructure from lessons learned from the flights so far, and to be able to support some of their future ambitions (e.g. Jarvis).
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Eric Berger of Ars Technica:
> I'm hearing that it is possible that Blue Origin decides to go directly to the larger 9x4 variant of New Glenn after this failure. Obviously no decisions like that will be made without more data review.
https://xcancel.com/SciGuySpace/status/2060190522539401631#m
That is a very fair point. While I have no skin in the game, it is fascinating to see if the Us with Artemus or China with Chang'e will be the first to make it back to the Moon manned.
At this point is is looking like the winners will merely be those that have the least loses and launch pad loses can take a long time to recover from.
Credit to Space X, they have become very good and fixing launch pads with Starship. What used to be year(s) long pauses, now only take a few months.
I think that if companies want to scale up rocket launches (and let's disregard the cost / environmental impact / etc for now), they also need to scale up launch sites, at the moment they seem like single points of failure.
I have only armchair amateur half a world away knowledge of this, but I want to believe all they need is an exhaust diffuser thingy and refueling capabilities; the former can probably be built cheap enough anywhere, the latter can be made portable.
(of course then you also have the challenge of assembling and loading a rocket, lmao. But a hub-and-spokes setup with VAB(s) and launch sites spread out around it like an airport could work. Bonus evil villain points if the launch sites are underground to contain explosions in case of failure.
(this post is just imagination / castles in the sky)
It's an understandable but wrong attitude. If you don't have high profile failures like this, you aren't taking enough R&D risk. It's a fiercely ambitious industry and these launch attempts amount to what literally are moon shots. The race is on between various companies and countries as to who gets there first.
Boeing is pretty much out of the race at this point. Just too busy navel gazing and lobbying. There's a big risk that the next person on the moon might be from China. Blue Origin and SpaceX are the best things to happen to the rocket industry in decades. So, yes Blue Origin had a RUD with New Glenn. They should, learn and adapt and launch the next one. It would be good for SpaceX to have credible competition. And New Glenn seems like it could become that.
But if they only get their lessons every few years, they'll be competing against a fully reusable Starship rather than Falcon 9 & Falcon heavy by the time this thing becomes a serious launch vehicle. The goal posts are moving.