[HN Gopher] New Glenn's Progress Towards Maiden Flight
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New Glenn's Progress Towards Maiden Flight
Author : _Microft
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-02-25 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.blueorigin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.blueorigin.com)
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| More bad news for the Blue Origin team, but at least they've got
| pockets deep enough to absorb the delay to revenue.
| xt00 wrote:
| I hate to say it, but this slow pace feels like Blue Origin is
| being run by the folks next door to it from Boeing.... If
| people didn't already notice, you can spell Boeing from the
| letters in BluE OrIGiN (a bit out of order)...
| _Microft wrote:
| The bad news mentioned here are that New Glenn's maiden flight
| is delayed by approximately a year compared to earlier
| estimates.
|
| Things being delayed in space-flight related activities is
| completely normal but it is disappointing anyways. If SpaceX
| manages to get Starship to orbit and back, I do not see how
| Blue Origin could reasonably compete with them. It's not that
| they are a national space program that is supported no matter
| what because of national security reasons. They actually have
| to compete for something sooner or later.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| While I certainly agree that aggressive timelines often get
| modified, especially with new launch systems, initial
| estimates in 2016 were for first flight in 2020.[0] Then they
| pushed to 2021.[1] Additionally, the fact that they called
| out Q4 2022 (late in the year) doesn't give me a lot of
| confidence they'll even get it done in 2022 either.
|
| [0]: https://www.geekwire.com/2016/jeff-bezos-lifts-curtain-
| blue-...
|
| [1]: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/blue-origin-resets-
| schedule-fi...
| shazmosushi wrote:
| New Glenn is a case of "I don't have to outrun the bear, I
| just have to outrun you".
|
| The Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy are being phased out in favor
| of ULA's Vulcan (which uses its BE-4 engines). Falcon 9 is
| otherwise dominant.
|
| Despite sharing its BE-4 engines with ULA, New Glenn will
| eventually win a few national security payloads per year. If
| the economics of reusability pan out for them, they might
| eventually even beat the Vulcan!
|
| We'll see if they can take their future taxpayer-funded first
| stages and launch commercial satellites with bargain basement
| internal costs, like SpaceX has achieved.
| Teever wrote:
| > It's not that they are a national space program that is
| supported no matter what because of national security
| reasons.
|
| To be fair the whims and ego of one of the world's richest
| men who owns a company as vast as Amazon is a pretty close
| second to ensuring secured funding.
| FlyMoreRockets wrote:
| Considering how US space program funding is subject to the
| whims of presidential administrations and congressional
| funding, New Origin may actually come out on top of this
| comparison.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| How so? SpaceX is a proven launch system at this point,
| ULA has plenty of business, and SLS isn't going anywhere
| soon, so there aren't many options for new entrants.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Blue Origin at least gets a bit of the pie with supplying the
| BE-4 for ULA.
|
| But ya, definitely challenging.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| You make a good point here, I sometimes forget BE-4 is
| being used on other boosters.
| Diederich wrote:
| > I do not see how Blue Origin could reasonably compete with
| [SpaceX Starship].
|
| I could be wrong, but I don't think Blue has any plans (at
| least in public) for full re-usability.
|
| Though New Glenn is a beast, it's not _that_ much more
| powerful than Falcon Heavy, and both of those platforms still
| throw away the 2nd stage.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I feel fairly certain that Blue Origin has plans for second
| stage reuse. Whether these plans have gone much past the
| napkin phase is another question.
|
| SpaceX mocked up a plan to reuse the second stage of Falcon
| 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE These plans
| were scrapped to concentrate on Starship.
|
| If the Falcon 9 is big enough to have enough margin to
| support second stage reuse, New Glenn definitely does too.
| Diederich wrote:
| Right; I have no doubt that Blue/people inside of Blue
| are having serious thoughts about 2nd stage re-use, at
| least to a level roughly equivalent to what you pointed
| out SpaceX has revealed.
|
| However, I suspect 2nd stage/full re-use is fundamentally
| so much harder than 'just' 1st stage re-use that it
| requires a full re-use design from top to bottom, a la
| Starship/Superheavy.
|
| Of course, Blue has been historically far more closed
| than SpaceX, so it's possible that they have legit, in
| progress full re-use! That would be great.
| AJ007 wrote:
| It's amazing that Blue Origin is older than SpaceX.
| ptmcc wrote:
| Granted for much of its history it was a science project.
| Blue was _tiny_ for most of its history.
|
| The push to scale up and become an operational launch
| company has only ramped up in the past several years.
|
| They still move somewhat slowly and are fiercely private,
| but those early years were targeting different goals.
| throw4738950727 wrote:
| bo is a vanity project by someone who made billions selling
| counterfeits and factory rejects as legitimate products to
| unsuspecting consumers, to produce a rocket that will be obsolete
| before it ever flies.
| dint wrote:
| Lots of interesting news this morning from Blue Origin's normally
| quiet press room. Also of note is a series of videos showing
| progress at their Cape Canaveral rocket factory & launch
| facility:
|
| The stage 1 simulator, and integration & test facilities:
| https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1364968313047162880?s=...
|
| "Tank Cleaning and Testing" facility:
| https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1364968720364429317?s=...
|
| Launch Complex 36:
| https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1364969291746074628?s=...
|
| It's exciting to see BO making progress on their campaign to
| catch SpaceX in the commercial launch space. I'm curious whether
| the slow, deliberative approach they show here will pay off in
| reliability, ability to scale, etc once they start putting kgs in
| orbit.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Those are some impressive facilities. Billions of dollars for a
| factory and a launch complex for a rocket smaller than the
| massive one that SpaceX is building in tents at Boca Chica,
| Texas.
|
| It seems obvious that you have to build the factory before you
| can build a rocket but Musk has figured out how to get around
| that.
|
| He did it the old way at Tesla for the Model 3: built out the
| factory before building the car, his "alien dreadnought" highly
| automated factory that then went through "production hell" and
| was 2 weeks away from bankrupting the company.
|
| He then built a giant tent in the parking lot of his factory,
| and iterated on a factory design, took that design and used it
| to build giga-Shanghai, producing vehicles of higher quality
| than his American built ones.
|
| Who knew that a factory design doesn't have to be "big design
| up front" and can instead be more software style iterative
| design?
| vkou wrote:
| > Who knew that a factory design doesn't have to be "big
| design up front" and can instead be more software style
| iterative design?
|
| Anyone who's ever done manufacturing? Anyone who's ever built
| something with their hands? Anyone who realizes that when
| assembling anything from 30,000 parts, it's going to take a
| lot of time and iteration to get your build quality to an
| acceptable level?
|
| Now, this may all come as a shock to software people, but
| anyone who has actually built stuff out of real, physical
| objects, would be aware of this... And why you should never
| buy a version 1.0 of anything.
|
| I legitimately don't understand why software engineers think
| that other professionals can't understand the concept of
| iteration. When GM builds a car factory, they aren't doing it
| from zero. They are building it on top of a hundred years of
| manufacturing experience and iteration. When Tesla was
| building its first car factory, it had nearly-zero years of
| institutional manufacturing experience and iteration. Of
| _course_ a big up-front build was going to be a disaster. It
| 's why they still can't figure out how to align the interior
| panels in their cars.
| z3rgl1ng wrote:
| Indeed, software borrows its iteration concepts from
| manufacturing and is now several decades behind the
| innovation curve.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yep. I know Tesla has manufacturing people who get it, but
| some of Tesla fans are just lost in the wilderness.
| "Tesla's plant has so many robots!" -- that's every car
| plant these days! Nobody wants to pay for labor or deal
| with recalls for inconsistent welds.
|
| Here's a random video of a GM SUV production process --
| just filled to the brim with robots.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ow7gmZTIpo
|
| They're obviously aiming to cut cost and build time as much
| as possible, so they automate where they can without
| sacrificing quality for things like spacing gaps. Over
| time, that'll be automated too. GM as an example spends
| like $30 billion/year in CapEx -- that'll buy a lot of
| robots!
| bob33212 wrote:
| That is the problem. The Execs at GM are MBAs who are
| good at pulling financial levers. "Reduce costs by X%",
| "Increase R&D budget by Y%".
|
| Tesla is playing a different game based on first
| principals. "How low can we get cell cost?", "How can we
| get range to 300 miles without extra costs?"
|
| Obviously finance is important. If you run out of cash
| you can go bankrupt. But in the long run whoever is
| innovating the fastest without going bankrupt wins.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| This is pretty meme-y. Elon's got a degree in physics and
| econ... Mary Barra has an engineering degree and managed
| an auto manufacturing plant. Which is probably why GM
| makes a profit on every car they sell and Tesla..
| doesn't...
|
| There is no doubt Tesla is a revolutionary company and as
| a "car guy", I'm ecstatic that they somehow bootstrapped
| a new American auto manufacturer. Their commitment to
| reducing electric car costs likely put a huge dent in the
| trajectory of climate change which as an unequivocal
| good. My only point is that they could have done all that
| and built a "normal" manufacturing plant in the South
| somewhere and never have been two weeks away from
| shutting the company down vs. trying to "First
| Principles" design a new way to build cars that had them
| reinventing the wheel in messier, more expensive way.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Are you including the profits GM dealerships make on
| undercoating, transmission fluid flushes at 30k miles in
| those numbers?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| No - those are on the books of GM dealerships and don't
| impact GM's financials whatsoever.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Tesla's GAAP gross margin is 21%, GM's is 11%.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| GM (and all other auto manufacturers) include their R&D
| expense in their COGS since they acknowledge they must
| release new models every year. Tesla, doesn't.
|
| Tesla also doesn't include showroom costs in their COGS,
| but they can't sell cars without them.. (all other autos
| only include the revenue they receive from their dealer
| networks as the top-line revenue figure).
|
| These are the kinds of thing that makes people suspicious
| about their ultimate financials.
|
| https://seekingalpha.com/article/2783335-how-teslas-
| deceptiv...
|
| I don't care at all about stock prices, I'm actively
| shopping for an electric car and Teslas are near the top
| of my list since they're so technologically advanced, but
| they're just not very well as a manufacturer or as a
| responsibly run corporation which annoys me since I'm in
| corporate finance.
|
| As an example, if Tesla and GM both had $10,000 cars for
| sale. GM's "Cost of Goods Sold" would include the
| manufacturing costs, costs for R&D and their revenue
| would only be $8k since the dealer networks have their
| own books - but then GM isn't responsible for all of the
| showrooms and sales staff, etc.
|
| Tesla's revenue would show $10k, but would only include
| the cost to manufacturer (the R&D expense is "below the
| line") and they wouldn't include any costs to have
| hundreds of showroom locations - even those those
| showrooms are necessary to sell cars at any volume, and
| Tesla has to pay for out of that $10k sales price.
|
| It's obviously not apples-to-apples to compare those
| "GAAP Gross Margin" between those two things.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Your original statement "Tesla doesn't make a profit on
| every car" is a blatant untruth. That's an understandable
| mistake for a layman to make given the misinformation out
| there, but you claim to be in corporate finance and
| should have better standards.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I felt like "by the accounting standards used by
| literally every other company in the auto industry" was
| implicit. So apologies - "Tesla doesn't make a profit on
| every car, If you use the accounting standards in place
| for every other auto manufacturer."
|
| There are a lot of weird short seller conspiracies out
| there but "In order to increase apparent profitability,
| Tesla uses different accounting than every other auto
| company" is a factual statement and so is "If you use
| actual industry GAAP, Tesla isn't yet GM profitable."
|
| I hope they get there! I hope they sell 10M cars per
| year.. but to hold them up as a manufacturing leader is
| pretty silly.
| Animats wrote:
| Space-X has a large rocket factory. It's in Hawthorne,
| California. It looks much like an ICBM factory from the
| 1960s. Boca Chica is a launch and final assembly facility.
| mft_ wrote:
| The "massive" rocket he's referring to is Starship,
| multiple versions of which are being built in Texas, not
| Ca.
| [deleted]
| Diederich wrote:
| As a pretty big SpaceX fan, the additional delay is quite
| disappointing. I was greatly looking forward to seeing New Glenn
| go up...and back down...late this year.
| Animats wrote:
| _This updated maiden flight target follows the recent Space Force
| decision to not select New Glenn for the National Security Space
| Launch (NSSL)_ Or, we don 't really have a customer.
| shazmosushi wrote:
| It looks like the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2
| Launch Services Procurement (LSP) contract that Blue Origin
| refer to was awarded in August 2020 (six months ago).
|
| https://www.afrc.af.mil/News/Article/2305576/space-force-awa...
| _Microft wrote:
| They have actual customers signed up to launch their satellites
| on New Glenn [0][1].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn#Launch_service_custo...
|
| [1] (german)
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn#Geplante_Starts
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Both Telesat's Lightspeed and Amazon's Kuiper are planning on
| launching very large constellations on New Glenn, so those
| two alone represent a _lot_ of launches.
| walrus01 wrote:
| This also pushes further back the schedule for Amazon's Kuiper,
| unless they plan to use third party launch services.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| I feel like they have to use a third party at this point. The
| friction between Musk/SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the FCC makes me
| think that Kuiper needs to get on orbit ASAP to begin testing.
| Starlink is rolling out quickly, and if Amazon doesn't get
| moving now they are really going to be in a tough spot.
| throwawayX1 wrote:
| I really hope that SpaceX gets some serious competition by
| another partially reusable rocket. We need multiple viable launch
| providers in the market.
|
| I don't think this will happen, but that announcement reads a lot
| like delay announcements that shadow a future cancellation. ('we
| continue to remain committed ...', 'persuing other
| opportunities', 'growing market ...' (it isn't) ...)
|
| There are two aspects here:
|
| A) With the way Blue Origin operates, I highly doubt New Glenn
| can be competitive with Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy financially, at
| least without heavy discounts funded by Bezos. More so once
| Falcon Heavy gets the upgraded fairing they are developing for
| government launches.
|
| Blue might still get some business from the US government and
| from Starlink competitors that don't want to help fund Spacex,
| but the market seems very limited. We are already at a point
| where Falcon 9 can handle most payloads, and there are no
| commercial use cases for larger payloads on the horizon.
|
| Which brings me to the second point:
|
| If Musks claims for Starship regarding cost and reusability come
| true, no one will be remotely competitive with that rocket. It's
| in a whole different league with a huge payload capacity and full
| (1st + 2nd stage) reusability.
|
| Starship has a chance of reaching orbit maybe late this year, but
| more likely in 2021. The question is if Bezos will be willing to
| pump billions into Blue Origin for the 4+ years until they can
| catch up with their own second generation rocket, currently
| nicknamed New Armstrong.
|
| A first New Glenn launch would probably mean start of scheduled
| service in late 2023, at which point Starship might already be
| launching regularly.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| "If Musks claims for..." Elon makes many claims, most of them
| never become true, or become true years later than he said.
|
| - Full autonomous driving by 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021... He
| said it was 6 months from release in Jan 2017. That was
| obviously a complete lie.
|
| - You could sleep in your car with Autopilot driving by 2019
|
| - Tesla vehicles will be assets that make you money. "1 million
| robotaxis on the road by 2020"
|
| - Tesla will make a mini-sub in a couple days to save that
| youth soccer team stuck in an cave
|
| - There will be fewer fatalities per million miles if Autopilot
| is engaged than if it wasn't. Suprise, fatalities/mile is
| actually higher with Autopilot.
|
| - "In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land &
| not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY"
|
| - Tesla Roadster would be out by 2020
|
| - Tesla Semis on the road by 2019
|
| - Teslas will be able to swap batteries faster than you could
| refill an ICE vehicle instead of recharging your battery
|
| - Taking Tesla private
| [deleted]
| throwawayX1 wrote:
| It's notable that non of your quotes concern SpaceX.
|
| One should definitely be wary of Musks often inflated / over-
| optimistic claims, but Starship has a good chance of holding
| true to most of what was promised.
| labcomputer wrote:
| So 50% of your points are that Musk was wrong about self-
| driving. Fair enough, but why stop copy-pasting there?
|
| As far as I remember, Tesla built a public battery swap
| station in a former car wash at Harris Ranch and real
| customers did use it. I also recall that the swapping
| hardware was demonstrated on video to do two pack swaps in
| the same time it took to re-fill a gas Audi. So I'm not sure
| what your point is with that.
|
| The mini-sub was actually built, but not used. Not sure if
| I'd count that as "never came true".
|
| As for the Roadster and Semi delays... the Semi _is_ on the
| road (there are at least two of them), and it 's not like
| Tesla is the only car manufacturer to miss shipping targets.
| Are the CEOs of those companies "liars" too?
| Nekhrimah wrote:
| > [Blue Origin's] second generation rocket, currently nicknamed
| New Armstrong.
|
| Great post. Just clarifying that New Armstrong will be the
| third generation, behind New Glenn (second) and New Sheppard
| (first).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Amazon's Kuiper constellation and Telesat's Lightspeed
| constellation are more than enough to ensure viability of New
| Glenn.
| Iolaum wrote:
| Will the end product be competitive if their launch costs are
| 2+ times the cost of their main competitor?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| There are enough companies that won't launch on SpaceX
| because SpaceX is a competitor and enough companies that
| spread their launch contracts as a kind of insurance that a
| second vendor could stay viable. But with Blue Origin, ULA,
| Ariane and Roscosmos fighting for that second spot thats a
| small number of launches spread over quite a few vendors...
| throwawayX1 wrote:
| That's an interesting thing to consider.
|
| Unless they subsidize, New Glenn will have to be quite
| expensive. As the announcement says, they spent 3.5 billion
| just on a factory and a launchpad, and they are years away
| from launching.
|
| Amazon, as such a high visibility public company, may have a
| hard time justifying a 2X+ price difference versus launching
| on Falcons, and for Starship the difference could be
| significantly more.
|
| It's also questionable if Amazon is willing to wait 3 years
| to get any significant amount of sats into orbit. That will
| give Starlink a big advantage.
|
| Of course SpaceX also has an incentive to delay Kuiper, so
| they might not bid for it at all, or only provide very
| limited availability.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That 2.5B is sunk costs. They should be pricing based on
| operating costs and the market, mostly ignoring sunk costs.
| throwawayX1 wrote:
| Sure, my point is that nothing about Blue Origin implies
| a lean, cost conscious way of operating or that New Glenn
| will be cheap to build and fly.
|
| The money has to come from somewhere.
|
| Either it's from Bezos, or it's from launches with a
| price that won't make it easy to win many customers in
| the very small market of large payloads.
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