[HN Gopher] New Glenn Update - Blue Origin
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New Glenn Update - Blue Origin
Author : rbanffy
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-11-20 21:21 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.blueorigin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.blueorigin.com)
| toss1 wrote:
| Interesting that "...additional vehicle upgrades include a
| reusable fairing..."
|
| I wonder how they'll be implementing that since SpaceX gave up on
| recapturing fairings (seemingly too soon, but only from the POV
| of someone with no internal info).
| kanisae wrote:
| They still recover the fairings. They gave up on trying to
| catch them out of the air and now just let them land in the
| water and pick them up.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_fairing_recovery_progra...
|
| > SpaceX performs some amount of cleaning and refurbishing
| before using the previously flown fairings on a subsequent
| flight. SpaceX has reflown fairing halves more than 300 times,
| with one being reflown for 34 times.
|
| They gave up on catching them in nets, because it turns out
| they're fine splashing directly into the water.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| For those who aren't aware, the next flight is to lunar orbit,
| with a planned landing on the moon:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Moon_Pathfinder_Mission_1
| sanex wrote:
| That seems like a big jump between flights. I'm used to the
| spend and explode fast incremental iterations of SpaceX.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Seems BO is taking the NASA approach of not being so cavalier
| with testing. You can tell people you _expect_ the thing to
| fail, but repeatedly seeing them fail is still seen as a
| negative.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It worked pretty well for F9.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Mostly because the whole landing thing was pretty novel.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| NASA still had much smaller jumps in capability between
| flights. Check out the Smarter Every Day NASA talk.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing - big leap. But maybe there's
| no real difference between ending up in Earth orbit versus
| lunar orbit, in that the basic aspects (thrust, staging,
| navigation, etc) are all there already? But everything
| relating to the lander (releasing it, landing it) would be
| new.
| proee wrote:
| I think SpaceX is taking the re-usability part of Starship as
| foundation. Meaning they won't move forward until it's
| solved. With Falcon they added it as a bit of a secondary
| priority. They've spent so much resources trying to get the
| second stage back to earth. I think they should have just
| focused on getting the whole system flying to orbit, throwing
| away second stage for now, and using that platform to replace
| falcon. Eventually, they could refactor second stage to get
| it back to earth. But perhaps it's all too coupled that it
| has to be solved at one time (not later).
| gangstead wrote:
| The incremental improvements to the engine thrust is par for the
| course. The exciting thing in this announcement is the new 9x4
| configuration (9 and 4 engines in the first and second stages vs
| the current 7x2). They don't mention whether the tanks will get
| stretched to allow for more fuel, or if this just burns the fuel
| faster. Starship generations keep getting both more engines and
| longer.
| zaphoyd wrote:
| Based on the photo posted by the Blue Origin CEO the tanks are
| definitely getting stretched (also looks like a slightly
| different fin, landing leg, and fairing config)
| DennisP wrote:
| Yep, 70 tons to LEO is more than the Falcon Heavy.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yup, the thrust improvements were expected. The BE-4 engines
| have quite a low chamber pressure for their engine class, so
| they can gain significant performance just by increasing
| chamber pressure.
|
| Additionally, the New Glenn fairings are very large for their
| weight capacity. New Glenn has 3x the fairing volume compared
| to the Falcon Heavy, but can throw less mass. So many expected
| that BO designed it this way because they expected to increase
| performance of their engines in the future, making the
| weight/volume ratio of their fairing more balanced.
|
| New Glenn has 45t of capacity now. Increasing thrust by 15%
| should increase that to 51t, thus making New Glenn 7x2 also
| just barely a Super Heavy booster. Perhaps they didn't call
| that out because that would overshadow the 9x4 announcement.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| > New Glenn has 3x the fairing volume compared to the Falcon
| Heavy, but can throw less mass.
|
| To be fair, the Falcon Heavy has way too little fairing
| volume for it's lift capacity (and apparently it is in the
| process of getting an extra 50% or so?)
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(page generated 2025-11-20 23:00 UTC)