So long as poor Blue Origin thrives on staying relevant in the space race, it will continue
to face unprecedented engine failures since it seems they operate in the case of trial
and error before getting the engine running.
Because in their case, it seems they love to see the engine failure before taking note
of faults and making corrections with other engines during the manufacturing phase, but
before the manufacturing gets to this stage, millions of dollars might have been lost on
testing one or two about the engine.
So, what's actually wrong with Blue Origin?
Why have their rockets blown up mercilessly just at the testing stage?
Please stick with us as we discover all these in this video.
From the look of things, Blue origin's impatience about launching rockets into space doesn't
seem to be just about the company alone but maybe about who does it best.
It appeared likely that two dragons of the space industry, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk,
would now compete for supremacy in space.
Bezos has yet to advance with the same strength of character shown by his leadership of Amazon
towards the blue origin, which is still far from being self-sufficient.
Even as one of the wealthiest men in the world, Bezos still needs to invest more than a billion
dollars in the blue origin each year to keep the company alive.
Jeff Bezos will eventually run out of time to stop Blue Origin's failures with this kind
of financial support, and that's maybe.
But we are not saying that Bezos and Blue Origin haven't smelled success in the space
race before now.
In fact, they have countless times, but we are saying that their failures are much higher
than the number of rocket successes they've reached.
In fact, dating back, Blue Origin accomplished a feat by successfully landing the brand-new
Shepard rocket and the capsule up and down a sub-orbital mission.
This was the first time in history that any space country or company could launch a first-stage
rocket into space in a vertical position before safely returning it to Earth.
But in 2015, SpaceX launched a feat that was more valuable by successfully landing its
orbital Falcon 9 rocket.
Technically speaking, the Falcon 9 Landing made much more sense because it took a lot
more energy to lift a payload into orbit and involved a lot more energy to bring the booster
back to the landing site.
After the Falcon 9 flight, Jeff Bezos jokingly tweeted to Elon Musk of SpaceX, "welcome to
the club."
Musk was obviously not amused, but this tweet highlighted the growing rivalry between Bezos
and Musk, two billionaires competing to build reusable rockets to transform the space industry.
The 21st-century Space Race was supposed to be led by Blue Origin and SpaceX.
It would be an incredible spectacle to watch, but it hasn't been because both companies
are still learning the ropes of a rocket launch, and none is perfect yet.
Let's flashback our mind and talk about the last blue origin rocket failure, when the
main engine on the new Shepard booster appeared to cut out about a minute after liftoff from
west Texas.
However, it was the new Shepard's first launch failure.
Fortunately, after firing an abort motor to escape the broken booster, the crew capsule—carrying
NASA-funded experiments but no crew members—safely landed under a parachute.
Blue Origin's launch facility is located north of Van Horn, Texas.
The company's live webcast showed the rocket taking off there.
A minute after liftoff, as the rocket approached supersonic speed, a single hydrogen-fueled
BE-3 engine powered the 60-foot tall or 80-meter booster off the launch pad after a nearly
hour-long delay.
At an altitude of about 8,500 meters, the be3 engine's exhaust flame appeared to change
in color and shape, and the power plant then seemed to shut down, causing the rocket to
tilt.
The 4-ton crew capsule spun around and tumbled after the solid field abort motor on its bottom
briefly fired, propelling the craft hundreds of feet away from the new Shepard rocket,
guided by reaction control system thrusters.
The abort motor delivered an instant pulse of 70,000 pounds of thrust to push the craft
away from the failing rocket.
Its motion stabilized as the capsule deployed three drogue parachutes and three main shoots
for a comparatively gentle descent to the surface.
After the incident, Erica Wagner, blue origins payload sales director, said that "it appears
we have experienced an anomaly on today's flight, this was unplanned, and we don't have
any details yet, but our crew capsule was able to escape successfully."
The mission's experiment payloads were saved by the unplanned in-flight abort, but one
of blue origin's two operational sub-orbital new Shepard boosters, which carried its own
research payloads, was lost in the launch failure.
This was the ninth flight of the booster, which is one-half of the launch system and
includes a capsule.
The craft fired soft landing thrusters before touching down on the desert floor in west
Texas about five and a half minutes after liftoff.
The emergency escape system worked as intended, quickly detaching the spacecraft from a rocket
explosion.
If a crew had been on board, they would have felt a strong jolt and gravitational forces
before landing.
The crew's absence was fortunate because the capsule was experiencing extreme G-forces
and would have been a terrifying ride., and not a pleasant one at that.
Wow!
Do those landing thrusters actually fire on landing?
Sure, looked like a hard landing.
The good aspect of this was that the escape worked just as it was designed; even if it
was a rough ride, it was at least survivable.
To really scrutinize this; who among these space forerunners is really taking the space
race serious; comparing a day in the life of Jeff Bezos and that of Elon Musk, and even
their work ethic;
To be sincere, Musk will famously sleep on the factory floor when needed and has stated
that he needs 4-5 hours of sleep, affecting his productivity.
On the other hand, Bezos said in interviews that he consistently gets 8-9 hours of sleep
a night.
He doesn't seem to lose sleep over anything, not to mention checking through what is going
on in Blue Origin.
However, he left most of his responsibilities on the desk of his CEO, Bob Smith.
So, some cultures will be neglected in Blue Origin.
But surprisingly, Blue Origin was finally awarded the contract to launch the ULA into
space amidst all the company’s failures.
ULA is a partnership between the top Pentagon contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Since 2000, ULA has launched its Atlas V heavy rocket about 80 times using the Russian-made
RD-180 engine.
The most recent statement from the U.S. Space Force is promising because Blue Origin's BE-4
engine appears to be ending this reliance.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Congress demanded a replacement for the Russian engines,
setting the stage for the BE-4.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February of this year made that demand even more urgent.
The most recent update from the American Space Force is also optimistic for Blue Origin,
which had one of its missions forced to abort after launch on September 12 for technical
reasons.
Its suborbital New Shepard rocket, which lacks a BE-4 engine, was used to launch that mission.
ULA claimed in its statement that the Vulcan program "has now set its sights on finishing
the BE-4 qualification tests and flight engine deliveries.
The final qualification testing of other components is being completed to support initial launch
capability."
By March 2023, the U.S. Space Force expects to have finished the initial certification
of the Vulcan rocket powered by the BE-4 engine.
The "largest and most stressful" national security missions are not envisioned to receive
final certification until 2025.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX recently received final approval to use its Falcon Heavy rocket
to launch the same kinds of sensitive, highly-classified missions that ULA hopes to launch with Vulcan.
While Vulcan can jettison its BE-4 engines for later reuse, SpaceX will use its Falcon
Heavy rocket with reusable boosters.
ULA and Blue Origin "have done a lot to reduce risk, but a lot of work and testing persists
in meeting this December's launch," according to Frank Calvelli, the Air Force's assistant
secretary for space systems.
Nevertheless, we hope it succeeds.
Maybe; if Jeff would work and get dirty with his engineering and science teams B.O.
would be more successful, and no, we don't expect
him to sleep on the factory floor.
Just stop getting in the way of progress by suing his competitors when he losses a contract.
Yea, Jeff doesn't like losing, but he reminds us of one of those spoiled rich kids who cried
and had a temper tangent when they were beaten black and Blue on the playing ground until
he got his participation trophy.
How about Blue Origin finally becoming successful with every rocket launch?
Do you think the company will surprise us in our sleep?
There is also information about Blue Origin's Engine Problem about the HUGE Capsule that
Blast Away From Booster During Launch, click on the video to know more about this.