What?
Blue Origin shouldn’t fail now, no doubt, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos has
been facing countless frustrations in its rocket development.
Especially the New Shepard rocket which seems to be a death trap.
And being an expensive rocket, since the last time it faced a fatal explosion, it has been
lying dead in the factory without any news of recent development.
But Blue Origin has refused to release details of the New Shepherd failure, which raise the
question, what is really going on that the company has decided to keep things in secret.
Let’s find out everything about it in today’s video.
Blue Origin always seemed like a company that Bezos created to build him bigger and more
expensive toys.
But we don’t want to believe that all its space project will not get into the moon – No
humans were aboard the new Shepard rocket when its launch ended in failure because it
was carrying out a sub-orbital scientific research mission, but the failure has kept
the new Shepard fleet grounded for more than six months.
As far as we are concerned, New Shepherd is the only active rocket owned by Blue Origin
and serves as the company's primary power to perform space tourism and microgravity
research.
Unfortunately, due to an anomaly, the rocket has not witnessed another launch.
One minute into the last flight that brought the rocket to its knees, at an altitude of
approximately nine kilometers, the rocket's single main engine failed as it was throttling
back up after passing through the period of Maximum Dynamic pressure.
At that point, a large fire broke out in the B3 engine, and the new Shepard capsule's motor-powered
Escape system fired as intended, successfully separating the capsule from the exploding
rocket.
At an altitude of approximately 5.5 miles, a built-in abort system separated the crew
capsule from the booster and then deployed parachutes, which brought the capsule safely
back to earth.
It is assumed that the booster was blown up in the explosion.
“It appears we’ve experienced an anomaly with today’s flight – this was unplanned
and we do not have any details yet, but our crew capsule was able to escape successfully”
During the livestream of the launch, Erika Wagner, who is senior director of emerging
space markets at Blue Origin, said the rocket safety system operated as expected;
In his words he said: “You can see how our backup safety systems kicked in today to keep
our payload safe during an off-nominal situation.
Safety is our highest value at Blue Origin.
It’s why we built so much redundancy into the system.”
On this particular vehicle's ninth flight overall, the mission, named NS-23, carried
"36 payloads from academia, research institutions, and a few experimental instruments.
According to the company, two additional experiments meant to study the effects of ambient exposure
to the space environment that were attached to the booster's exterior were destroyed.
It was the first dedicated payload-only flight since August 2021 and the fourth New Shepard
program flight this year.
Blue Origin has launched 31 people into space on New Shepard rockets in six crewed "tourist"
flights that last 10 to 15 minutes each.
Earlier passengers include Bezos in July 2021 and the Star Trek actor William Shatner three
months later.
New Shepard's most recent flight, a research mission without a crew that took off on September
12, 2022, was strange.
The first-stage booster of New Shepard, which could be used again, was lost, but the upper-stage
capsule landed safely with the help of parachutes.
Since then, Blue Origin hasn't said much more about the condition of the New Shephard rocket.
But that could be because there isn't much to say yet.
The company is still looking into what went wrong.
"We are looking to get back into flight with New Shepard by the end of this year," Ariane
Cornell, vice president of commercial and international sales, said at a conference
in Washington.
However, we should expect the New Shephard rocket to be on the launch stand again before
the end of 2023.
But another thought, will that be feasible?
The company has released few details about its investigation into why its 59-foot-tall
New Shepard rocket aborted a research capsule roughly one minute after liftoff in September
in Texas.
There were no humans aboard the rocket.
The mishap grounded Blue Origin's only operational rocket, which is at the heart of the company's
space tourism and microgravity research operations.
But carrying out a little comparison, you’ll find out that spacex crew dragon have an edge
over Blue origin’s new shepherd.
One of the most significant differences between the two spacecraft is that the SpaceX dragon
can fly in orbit, whereas the new Shepherds are only designed for sub-orbital flight.
The dragon's ability to reach orbit allows it to perform more complex missions such as
resupplying the ISS, conducting scientific experiments in space, and launching satellites
into orbit.
Besides, while the new Shepard is still trying to hide its failures, dragons have sent eight
crews into orbit, and in just over two years, SpaceX has surpassed China's total number
of astronauts launched into orbit, which dates back to 2003 and in the time the crew dragon
has been operational.
The launch has also exceeded even the Russian soyuz vehicle in terms of the total number
of people flown into space during that period.
Moreover, the crew dragon has safely returned the US's capability of human space flight
which had been lost since the space shuttle retirement, and all this launch didn’t put
the crew dragon on the ground like in the case of the new shepherd.
Space is hard, and we all know that.
But there seems to be a lack of clear purpose and aims at Blue Origin Company.
The company administration kind of have too much focus on finance and PR and not enough
on engineering.
And too much management, that also lack clever thinking.
What are they trying to achieve?
The aims seem so vague and generalized, without achieving a goal.
They can't seem to make up their minds if they are a tourist operator who makes rockets,
or a rocket company that does tourism on the side for cash.
If it was any other type of enterprise run this way, it would have been blames on of
lack of finances as regards to a front for tax dodging and government contract procurement.
What could really be wrong with blue origin that is hitting them with greater force of
frustration in rocket launches?
To be candid, personal overseeing and dictation also affects Blue Origin, for instance the
difference between Bezos and Musk is simple.
Musk has a true passion for what he is doing and he put in all his commitment to do what
he believes is a true service for humanity.
Bezos on the other hand my just be in for money and fame.
Again, while Musk will also be open to speak with the media, Bezos won't say a thing unless
it's right after something went right.
Musk shares some of his technologies incite especially on twitter in order to get inspire
on the next technology that will help mankind, whereas bezos has everything hidden in deep
dark places and won't share any tech he has developed.
If Musk has any hidden agendas for going to the moon or Mars it will be only for the betterment
of mankind, perhaps bezos just want to get there to set up a new amazon prime distribution
center before people show up so he can overcharge for stuff, set up more Amazon store and make
more money.
We all were impressed in 2016 when Blue Origin did great with it’s launch.
They did a safe rocket return, a controlled hover, and even turned off the engine then
relaunch it.
They said they were expecting it to crash but it didn't.
That was extremely impressive.
But at this time in question, Blue Origin has got the main stream media confused.
They probably fully understand what happened with the booster.
But they have been super secretive about answering the questions surrounding the g-forces involved
in that emergency escape system.
Don't forget that the people who had their experiments on board that capsule mentioned
that the forces the experiment experienced when the emergency escape was triggered, but
nobody has yet to find out what triggered it.
Everyone has been super hush about it ever since.
Those forces were probably enough to kill or severely injure people, if anyone was onboard.
Blue Origin is probably doing their best to keep that from entering the public discussion.
That rocket is the only functional money maker they have aside from the BE-4 they've struggled
with.
People aren't going to sign up if even the escape system is potentially deadly.
Do you think there is anything mysterious about the G-force that was experience during
the last New Shephard rocket launch?
While they are struggling on that, SpaceX has released a new date for the Starship orbital
launch after taking care of FAA $175,000 Fine, just click on the video to know more about
this.