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...
"Dark Sky" funded by the Pentagon. Sounds chipper.
If there's anything in the name, I would guess an anti-satellite EMP.
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.
If that were the case it'd be just another treaty violation from out of control spooks.
China is testing FOBS weapons, any relevant treaty is already a joke.
"We broke the treaty because they broke the treaty" fails as an argument when Both Sides™ use it, though.
I wonder if it might need some extra mass simulators (probably not depending on how heavy the payload is)
Eric Berger is reporting a scrub.
https://bsky.app/profile/sciguyspace.bsky.social/post/3lfmbm...
https://x.com/sciguyspace/status/1878713938109776032?s=46&t=...
https://xcancel.com/sciguyspace/status/1878713938109776032?t...
The stream has now confirmed it.
Some more info from Ars: https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/an-icy-vent-line-may-h...
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I'm sure the weather will git gud soon.
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.
They really need to establish communications to let the viewers know why they are adding time to the clock.
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.
"An error occured. Please try again later"
Can't use the word "error" in corp speak. "Something unexpected happened." Or maybe just "Oops."
Sometimes this extreme spin just makes me angry, to be honest.
"An unexpexted error..."
If you skimp on testing, errors are always unexpected.
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.
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.
"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"
Yeah it’s really taking their audience for granted. Not a good first look
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.
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.
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.
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.
There was never harm in positive publicity - even though I think the ”new space” operators targets commercial payloads foremost. Blue origin would not become Boeing but a logistical service provider, something like Maersk, chugging in the background.
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
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.
> The alternative is to not adjust the clock and let it run out and not launch at all then?
holy false dichotomy, Batman
The alternative is simply to adjust the clock and say why.
Scrubbed, as per Eric Berger: https://bsky.app/profile/sciguyspace.bsky.social/post/3lfmbm...
Had a feeling that'd happen when the countdown jumped to T-00:00:00 then disappeared forever.
Oh well.
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
Same link without site tracking: https://www.youtube.com/live/Yb-27DvLcN8
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?
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.
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
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!
or does one feel like a tech company, the other like a government agency?
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
Nobody would be surprised if they scrubbed today, frankly it'll be more surprising if they launch.
Space is hard.
If they stick the landing first try I'm really impressed abd SpaceX has real competition.
In the words of the Steve Miller Band:
T0 keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future
Hopefully we’ll fly like an eagle
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 :/
Hold on, some engineer is doing a few last git commits to make it work. When cicd job is done, t0 in 10minutes.
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...
Future generations will be dumbfounded why didn't everyone just ask the computer to get what they need.
> 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."
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.
Job failed with transient error with 23 seconds to go
Not if GitHub Actions goes down again
New Glenn has the throttle range to hover and they test more than SpaceX. You will probably be disappointed.
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!
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.
Those barges can withstand a ridiculous amount of force - it'll be standing at the end of the day regardless of what happens. But I generally agree. I think the orbital test is likely to succeed, but landing on the first go - that would be simply epic. There's just too many unknown unknowns to go straight to success IMO, but I'd love to be proven wrong!
Given their development pace, they really must succeed if they want their "slowly and carefully" model to be competitive.
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)
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.
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.
Ya’ll need to chill out. How many times does your Prime delivery happen on time? Always an hour or two behind. Same day though.
Poor rocket drivers are peeing in soda bottles. That’s what’s holding this thing up. Give science some leeway.
I'd worry less about the urinary tract, and more about the massive object that devastated Uranus
https://bgr.com/science/uranus-collision-early-solar-system/
It's scrubbed for today: Blue Origin on Twitter: https://x.com/blueorigin/status/1878715911563313651
Is it scrapped? I'm watching with no sound, and the T- timer disappeared.
The commentators stopped speaking a while ago - the sound is just ambient.
What’s the function of the tower near the launch pad with a huge orange fire at its top?
Methane flare. Liquid methane will turn to gas as it warms up, so they need to get rid of it somehow. Nitrogen and oxygen they can just vent. Generally methane is flared to prevent explosive gas buildup and (the worst of) greenhouse gas effects. Sometimes it's cooled back into a liquid, but that is apparently more effort than it's worth because flaring seems common practice.
Edit: just remembered the second stage is hydrogen. So it might be flaring that, or maybe the smaller flare off to the side is hydrogen.
The countdown timer just went up 15 minutes :( Hopefully it doesn't get scrubbed.
Why do they intend to leave the booster attached to the payload, at 19,300 x 2,400 km? Is there a specific reason they choose not to deorbit it?
I don't know the actual reason on this launch, but leaving stuff up there is not uncommon. On a test launch such as this, they might not want to relight the second stage engine too many times. They also may not have navigation down pat. Better leave one large bird up there where it's easily tracked, than to possibly have it explode leaving lots of smaller debris. Or to try to deorbit it and hit London.
There are tens, if not hundreds, of discarded second stages orbiting Earth right now.
According to AP News the launch was scrubbed.
I was at jetty park. I am now frozen. Going back to the hotel. Hopefully they can try again tomorrow.
The timer is gone from the video, the launch seems to be scrubbed?
Competition is needed in this space. Hope this launch goes well.
EDIT: Launch never happened.
Annnnd back up to T-38. Can't do it, going to bed. Hope I don't miss any fireworks (or glory).
Now that it's scrubbed, just how long was their launch window?
Three hours is the publicly specified capability
cancelled today: https://x.com/blueorigin/status/1878715911563313651
> We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.
it keeps getting delayed...
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Hoping they succeed and bring Musk down back to earth.
Musk doesn't care and unfortunately Blue Origin failed to launch today.
It's over.
Don't be silly, of course he cares whether spacex remains uncontested or not, both from a business perspective but also from the political leverage it brings (starlink etc).
Either SpaceX isn't uncontested already (lots of people are developing rockets, so they aren't uncontested), or this wouldn't have changed that (lots of people developing rockets are absolutely nowhere near SpaceX, and they still wouldn't be whether or not this had worked).
Im not sure I follow - can you show me another rocket currently in development that is as close as SpaceX offerings in terms of payload/price performance as new glenn?
If new glenn were to succeed it would have a massive impact on SpaceX (and starlink)
Billionaires head to space while the world burns. Fun.