New Glenn to make another launch attempt early Thursday | Hacker News Reader

New Glenn to make another launch attempt early Thursday

arstechnica.com

39 pointsrbanffy26 comments

Sure wish they'd launch during waking hours. I want to watch, but my sleep is more important.

Sometimes I would agree but... It is nice to wake up and know whether it is worth spending the time to watch or not (in the case of a scrub). Launches in the middle of the day can take up lots of time that I would be doing something else. In the modern era of internet video I can just watch it when I can enjoy it.

There's just something about watching it live, though. The uncertainty and excitement after a buildup. If you watch it later, you already know the outcome.

Looking forward to this! SpaceX needs to feel domestic competition.

New Glenn is competing with Falcon Heavy much more than with Starship, and also looks a lot closer to operational readiness than Starship will be in 2025.

Will be an interesting week.

how is it a lot closer to readiness if it has never had a successful launch?

Different development processes. New Glenn is ready to deploy a payload on its first flight. Starship as it is can’t deploy anything. It has the “pez dispenser” that is designed to release Starlink satellites one at a time, but it’s not ready.

I agree, though I do think it says a lot that some variation of this comment gets posted every time the subject of Blue Origin comes up, to the point where it's almost a cliche.

It's a little unfortunate that New Glenn is merely "competition for SpaceX"; not innovative enough to stand on its own as a marked improvement to private spaceflight capabilities the way something like Starship (or even Stoke Space's Nova, if it comes to fruition) will be.

But everyone has to start somewhere. New Glenn should be a great competitor to Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at least, and SpaceX does indeed desperately need competition right now (lest they risk becoming a monopoly).

> will be

It's a big if. I personally don't believe starship will ever get as far as carrying humans.

Even if Starship never carries humans (something I would debate you on) it would still qualify as a "marked improvement to private spaceflight capabilities". It may well clear that bar in a few months in fact, after they demonstrate orbital refueling in March[1] (or a bit later). All the other important parts (engines, heat shield, landing) have already been demonstrated as viable, and humans are a tiny percentage of all launches.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/01/

I disagree :) But I don't want to argue. Time will tell! I hope I'm wrong, it'll be incredible to see it all come together.

Can you expand a little bit why you think that?

As of right now, New Glenn is not a bottleneck for any short term endeavours that Blue Origin is planning.

The only real bottleneck is the cislunar transporter by Lockheed Martin. Once they have the Cislunar Transporter, their bottleneck will be the cost of the refueling flights, not the cost of upper stage expending flights that deliver payloads. That's when they are going to need to start replacing the GS2 refueler with something reusable.

Can Stoke Space deliver 135 tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to the Cislunar Transporter? Can Rocket Lab do that? Starship might, but it uses a different fuel, so who knows.

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