Failure of Blue Origin's New Shepard a reminder that spaceflight is still hard

Amazing how fast that capsule separated from the rocket, wonder how many “G” it pulled
 
Looks like they found the upper limit of their current booster design as 21 flights. Not to shabby to be honest.
 
Scrabo said:
Amazing how fast that capsule separated from the rocket, wonder how many “G” it pulled
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Hard to tell, since Blue doesn't publish many of its numbers. Digging around, I find that the escape rocket has 70,000 pounds of thrust, and that of the 165,000 pounds total launch mass, 120,000 pounds is fuel. That leaves ~45,000 pounds of structure/capsule/wetware.

Six seats, 220-pound max, crew alone is 1,320 pounds. Let's assume 10,000 pounds for the loaded capsule.

Assuming I'm calculating this properly, with a 70,000 pound thrust escape motor, that comes out to ~7 Gs at the start of the burn, a bit more at the end. However, the burn is pretty short, so it'd probably be done by the time one realized it had happened.

The main body normally lands afterward, but not this time...free fall to the desert.

The capsule deploys parachutes, with a ~8 G hit for like a tenth of a second. Just prior to touchdown, the capsule fires another rocket to slow the impact to a bit over 3 Gs (about a half-second). Got that from this set of plots....

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ds-full-acceleration-profile-c_fig5_333810041

Ron Wanttaja
 
I dunno, maybe the scale and dust from the rockets made it look worse than it was, but that looked like a lot more than 3G's when it hit the ground.
 
Salty said:
I dunno, maybe the scale and dust from the rockets made it look worse than it was, but that looked like a lot more than 3G's when it hit the ground.
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The retros stir up dust bigtime; looks the same as prior landings. Otherwise I believe you'd have seen a bounce.
 
Salty said:
Not as many as when it hit the ground.
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The capsule hit the ground at a nice leisurely pace after the parachutes deployed.

The booster on the other hand???
 
azpilot said:
The capsule hit the ground at a nice leisurely pace after the parachutes deployed.

The booster on the other hand???
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I'd like to see the video on the booster "splashdown".
But I think they won't show it, because those paying a quarter million bucks per seat to ride it likely won't be impressed.
 
The article below shows a good representative example of abort booster numbers. Based on the article below, the Orion abort test booster can experience a velocity change of 405 mph in two seconds. That works out to an average acceleration of 9.22 g's for two seconds. I'd expect the New Shephard abort booster to similar.

(Math - 405 mph x 5280 ft/mile / 3600 sec/hr = 594 ft/sec - 594 ft/sec / 2 seconds = 297 ft/sec^2 - 297ft/sec^2 / 32.2 ft/sec^2 = 9.22 g's)

https://www.northropgrumman.com/spa...-nasas-orion-spacecrafts-launch-abort-system/
 
I wasn't there!
I didn't do it!
It was an accident!
I only wanted a souvenir!
Who could possibly know they actually needed that part, they have thousands of parts.

:devil:
Did I miss anything?
 
The booster that failed was the 3rd New Shephard rocket built. It had never carried people. This was the 9th flight of booster number 3. Vehicle #4 has done all of the passenger flights, and has flown 8 times. Booster #1 failed back in 2015. Booster #2 was retired after the planned test of the abort booster back in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Shepard
 
Kenny Phillips said:
I'd like to see the video on the booster "splashdown".
But I think they won't show it, because those paying a quarter million bucks per seat to ride it likely won't be impressed.
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Ya, that video won't be going public.
 
azpilot said:
The booster that failed was the 3rd New Shephard rocket built. It had never carried people. This was the 9th flight of booster number 3. Vehicle #4 has done all of the passenger flights, and has flown 8 times.
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In related news, sales have reportedly slowed for the next passenger flight of the New Shepard #4.
:)
 
azpilot said:
The booster that failed was the 3rd New Shephard rocket built. It had never carried people. This was the 9th flight of booster number 3. Vehicle #4 has done all of the passenger flights, and has flown 8 times. Booster #1 failed back in 2015. Booster #2 was retired after the planned test of the abort booster back in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Shepard
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Minor points: Booster #1 successfully performed liftoff, ascent and capsule sep staging, but failed during the (company's first-ever) landing attempt. And BO fully expected to lose Booster #2 during the capsule abort test, but it survived and made a successful propulsive landing. So far, New Shepard has actually proven to be a pretty robust system.

GaryM said:
In related news, sales have reportedly slowed for the next passenger flight of the New Shepard #4.
:)
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Weirdly, Monday afternoon a trusted friend of mine encountered one of the scheduled passengers for the next flight. "Zero regrets. He’ll be ready to go soon as they’re cleared to continue." I've no doubt that's the case for most of them.

After all, for those with the funds (or connections), this looks like a heckuva lot of fun.

 
flightwriter said:
Weirdly, Monday afternoon a trusted friend of mine encountered one of the scheduled passengers for the next flight. "Zero regrets. He’ll be ready to go soon as they’re cleared to continue." I've no doubt that's the case for most of them.
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The kind of person that is willing to do this in the first place is the kind of person that is willing to fly on New Shepherd after the investigation is complete.
 
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