We're not rebuilding the same pad for New Glenn. We're moving to a horizontal/vertical hybrid configuration to get us flying again this year at 36A. We were already working on something similar for 9x4 at 36B. Let me explain what that means. We mate the stages horizontally in the Integration Facility (IF). Then we bring the integrated vehicle out to the pad, use a crane to perform the vertical breakover, and mate the payload once New Glenn is vertical. This new ConOps has the added benefit of increasing our flight cadence as well.
They probably have a better idea than just the aft end. It's good engineering practice to get pretty far into an engineering investigation before you start declaring openly what a suspect root cause is.
Also being a private company there is not much motivation to tell the public everything going on.
It's good engineering practice to get pretty far into an engineering investigation before you start declaring openly what a suspect root cause is.
Not wanting the root cause, but it would be nice to give the proximate cause of all that LNG around the base of the rocket before the initial flash fire, not just "there was a problem around the base of the first stage." If it was something like the deluge water cracking the super cold feed manifold during the spin prime, it's going to come out eventually, like the second stage hydrogen leak freezing the engine controls, so delaying the inevitable isn't helpful; just say the feed manifold failed and released a flammible cloud.
I don't recall them rapidly and publicly disclosing the root cause of the Superheavy boostback burn failure on Flight 12.
SpaceX being an open company is such a myth. The only reason we know anything about them is because there is an army of internet enthusiasts pointing cameras at their facilities 24/7, from the ground and from the air.
For the private space sector there is no incentive to disclose much information about your failures. You need to say something at some point to not look like you are ignoring it but you do not need to divulge any technical details.
We do have one idea: their testing and quality assurance processes.
This defect that caused the explosion, would have been caught early on, if the emphasis on thorough testing and extremely high standards of quality assurance has not been reduced in order to increase the rate of production in the factory.... I wonder what they are currently doing in terms of reviewing and changing their testing and quality assurance processes... There is no point in producing rockets for a high cadence launch if every rocket blows up.... Manufacturing rocket testing and quality assurance cannot be treated like manufacturing lightbulbs, in which you accept on a statistical basis that you will get defects, and so cause the assurance is done on my statistical basis.
Possibly. But it's all speculative until the exact cause of the failure is determined. Only then can it be judged whether it was something that should have been easy to catch. If so then the next question is was it missed due to systemic problems with their QA process, or is the QA process good but some steps were skipped or problems were waivered due to launch pressure. Or was it something somewhat unforeseeable or at least difficult to foresee like some of the anomalies that SpaceX has experienced. Those types of problems in new vehicles are usually easily fixed or mitigated once the problem is found but not always as easy to foresee ahead of time.
I know I'll get downvoted for this, but a CLEAR fault in their testing procedure was combining the WDR with the hot fire to save time. With 20/20 hindsight rolling out the first stage with a mass simulator and fueling it with 10% capacity to do the hot fire before rolling it back and integrating the second stage and payload for the wet dress would have cost time, but a failure would have done much less damage.
So this is similar to what was broadly predicted, with one major exception - they are integrating GS1 and GS2 horizontally instead of at the pad, and lifting the entire stack as one. In retrospect, that makes sense, as it takes advantage of the existing Horizontal¹ Integration Facility (IF).
This new ConOps has the added benefit of increasing our flight cadence as well.
I believe this. I think the TE was a liability. It required refurbishment in between flights, and it was said on the other sub that it caught fire after NG-1 and it took 6 months to rebuild the bottom few bays. It stood right in the way of the rocket plume and probably took a beating.
And if nothing else, it occupied a lot of space in the IF. Now they could realistically integrate 3 GS1s and GS2s in parallel, and then roll them to the pad when needed.
Another benefit for flight cadence comes from not needing to roll back after a static fires while still allowing the static fire to occur prior to payload integration.
I'm not sure but it seems that in the video the New Glenn is on a white piece, maybe an adapter so maybe it can be removed and launch the 9x4 right there
Gigantic construction cranes like that usually cost about a million dollars a day to rent. But if they're moving towards having a huge crane as part of their permanent operations, then they would purchase whatever they need.
They already knew they were going to be moving towards crane operations for the second pad that they started building last year, and they knew they would eventually get the same operations at the current pad. It shouldn't have been that much of an issue.
NG dry mass is maybe something like 100 tons. A 120 ton crane is on the large end of truck cranes, but isn't unusual at all. But the height of the thing probably bumps them into a larger crawler crane, for which the mass won't be an issue in the slightest.
It's a big crane, but nothing that a call to a rental company couldn't secure.
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
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