Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches massive New Glenn rocket into orbit on 1st flight (video)

Apr 17, 2023
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Congrats Blue for reaching orbit.

Can't wait to see where Blue is in 12 months and Jan of 26. That will say a lot about them. Is Blue still just Jeff's side hobby or will they be a real aerospace company/player? It will be interesting to see if they deliver actual results. Not so interested in the PR spin. I just have a feeling landing the 1st stage is going to be a lot of trial and error.

It was an interesting launch, it seemed to rise up very slowly from the launch pad, maybe it was the night launch and black background that made it look like it was taking a while to get going. Hopefully the next launch will be during the day.
 
I watched the video, which was impressive, up the point of booster reignition for the landing sequence. At that point, the video of the booster engines froze, and its altitude and velocity data froze, along with the event time line slowly scrolling along the bottom of the screen. I get the impression that the data link with the booster may have been completely lost.

i was disappointed that there was no video of the booster landing attempt. "We didn't have booster landing, but man, we got close," just raises the question about how "close". Did the booster come down on the ship, or miss it? If it came down on the ship, did it fall over? Did it do any damage? Was it even base end first? If it landed in the water, was it at least properly oriented and at zero velocity at the water's surface? Even if the data stream from the booster was stopped, what about video taken from the landing ship?

Anyway, good to see this much success in the first launch.

Before its first successful Falcon 9 landing, SpaceX had tried to land first stages twice on an uncrewed "drone ship" — once in January 2015, and then again in April. In those failures, the booster stage hit its target but came in a little too hard and crashed on the ship's deck. Blue Origin had first successfully landed its suborbital "New Sheppard" rocket about the same time. But landing something bigger like New Glenn is not as easy.
 
Jan 22, 2025
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Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its first-ever flight early this morning (Jan. 16).

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches massive New Glenn rocket into orbit on 1st flight (video) : Read more
Did it really? There is something curious abut this launch.
They very carefully state that it reached orbital speed but after that they waited 47 minutes before the second firing to take it to a ridiculously high orbit.
How many orbits did it do when it reached orbital speed? None or half one since an orbit takes around 90 minutes. Is this why they don't mention the number of orbits?
If the second burn comes from a restart of an engine and this is such a momentous event, how come there is no video and they never mention this momentous event?
Did it actually reach the higher orbit? If so, why no video and no mention and no mention of how many it did and no mention of what happened next? They did say that they didn't know where it was and couldn't say where it would land. Perhaps it is till there? Why would they not know where it is?
There are too many unanswered questions and lots of evasion from BO. I reckon it got to orbital speed and then ditched and never actually orbited except for the half orbit at LEO.
It is in their interest to tout a success and keep any incriminating details quiet.
 

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