Meanwhile, New Glenn flew the same day starship was raining debris from a failed second stage…
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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Raining debris from a failed first stage....
Did it? It seems like nobody is reporting what happened to it. Did it just miss the barge? Self destruct as it went off course? Did it plummet in a giant fireball and make a huge splash?
I can't find any info at all...
Very few things are known. What we do know is that at one point contact was lost with the booster and later it was declared a complete loss.
I'm not saying it's impossible that it did an autonomous soft landing in the ocean, but that would surely be mentioned and hopefully even shown.
Leaving us with the logical conclusion that it had an uncontrolled descent with a hard crash. Whether it fell as one piece of debris or a shower of fragments is of course unknown. A complete loss of telemetry points towards an energetic failure. But it is possible it was a simple comms failure. So maybe I shouldn't have compared it to the starship fireworks, it might have been intact until it hit the water.
And the same week as 5 Falcons
Still hilarious to have “theelonmusketeers” posting memes making fun of Blue right after SpaceX has a high profile RUD
Honestly, spaceX fans taking issue with Blue is a bit silly in general. There’s plenty of market demand to go around and more suppliers could only help the future of human space flight
I'm fine with more suppliers hitting the market, especially if they're working on reuse. New Glenn 1st stage reuse will be helpful if they can get it working. Same with Neutron. And Stoke Nova full reuse.
My issues with BO are more about their whole "business" model being noncompetitive, either through lawsuits or the megabillionaire owner paying for everything and underbidding and winning contracts that should go to real companies, like Rocket Lab, Stoke, Astrobotic, etc.
My issues with BO are more about their whole "business" model being noncompetitive, either through lawsuits
Say what you want about this, but most major government procurement contracts involve some sort of legal battles. Kinda the name of the game. I was working the contract on the NASA side when it happened and the space enthusiasts blew it way out of proportion.
or the megabillionaire owner paying for everything and underbidding and winning contracts that should go to real companies, like Rocket Lab, Stoke, Astrobotic, etc.
You mean, like, how SpaceX underbid for HLS?
In any case, this is just plain wrong. Blue generates bids that they expect to turn a profit, they just have far better facilities and economies of scale than everyone else besides SpaceX.
I understand that some level of contract protests and lawfare is normal. I think their actions like patent and launch pad disputes that just slow down the competition leave a bad taste. Their HLS infographic era was pretty pathetic. Selling ULA engines then turning around and competing with them was underhanded (but predictable). And, personally, without getting into details, they were a pain to deal with when I worked at a component subcontractor.
I think my feeling in general is just that they've talked so much big game for so long for no good reason and are just annoying and hard for me to root for.
SpaceX underbidding HLS is a murky one, because they were developing Starship already. There's no way BO was building their HLS without the contract.
On the ULA engine topic, New Glenn was announced and BE-4 was under development years before they won the contract with ULA