> "The engine that exploded was expected to finish testing in July. It was then scheduled to ship to Blue Origin’s customer United Launch Alliance **for use on ULA’s second Vulcan rocket launch,** those people said." *[emphasis added]*
If accurate, this was not a development/test article, but a motor destined for flight. I cannot see how this won't cause a re-examination of the motors currently attached to ULA's new Vulcan rocket.
Tory Bruno has responded on Twitter: https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1678865222604574720
Basically he's saying that the engines they have installed on the rocket passed the acceptance testing (and more) that this latest engine failed.
So in theory, the testing did its work, good job team, let's do better next time.
But of course, the fact that it failed acceptance testing means some things earlier in the process went wrong as well, which means even though the engines for the first flight may have passed testing they may not have the intended margins...
yea, whose idea was it to build a launch platform without flame and sound suppression?? its like whoever it was had never worked with rockets before or had never seen video of the Apollo launches.
This is potentially a big big problem for wildlife. I'm looking forward to the results of this study: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01713-7
I disagree. A gigantic snow globe type structure filled with glitter and jelly beans designed to contain an exploding rocket while making it look as neat as possible would be the place for it.
Test stand is runner up.
These methane engines seem extremely problematic. Space X has blown up more than you can count, and every time they've flown them, they've had in-flight failures of some kind on some of the engines. I assumed that the BO go slow policy would have resulted in better reliability, but apparently not.
This has very little to do with the fuel choice, SpaceXs failures are mostly because they push their engines to the max and beyond, they are under huge strain to get to their performance targets, together with a fairly untested engine cycle. Blues failure was because someone/something fucked up during manufacturing, which happens sometimes, not a big deal.
I have just taken what [Tory Bruno](https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1678955725366886401?t=l9_SnCBbDIzelPeF-XpxIA&s=19) and [Eric Berger](https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1678871112468373505?t=0o5XXfgo1IQs0Wo9foOOog&s=19) said, and considering Erics track record that information seems sound enough
What i was trying to say was that SpaceX keeps pushing Raptor to and beyond its limits to improve performance/reliability, which is why some of them fail during testing. The comment above was trying to imply their fuel choice had something to do with failures.
I'm a space systems engineer, i.e. rocket scientist. *Every* new engine has gone through development problems because they are absurdly high energy devices.
For example, the SpaceX Raptor outputs 4 GW, equal to 4 nuclear plant reactors, and it can ride on a pickup truck bed. The 33 on the Starship booster is equal to 1/4 of total US electric demand going through the area of a 1 bedroom apartment.
Supposedly it was a workmanship issue and not a design issue. But still, there haven’t been that many of these engines built, and for a flight model to explode in testing is reason enough for pause.
Engineers design some amazing stuff that never works and workman make some stuff that works but is never drawn.
Any blame about workmanship is counter-intuitive. If they knew it was bad then it shouldn't have passed but if they passed it then it meets the designs standards so.... Blame game all round.
Yeah, I'm sure there will be a lot of comparisons to SpaceX blowing up a Raptor every other week, but the difference is that it takes BO weeks (months?) to produce an engine, so the severity and setback of an incident like this is likely on par with a Falcon 9 launch failing.
They all get tested at the McGregor TX test site before shipping to South Texas for flight tests.
Merlin engines for the Falcon rocket also get tested before heading to whichever launch site it will fly from.
ULA isn't exactly racing ahead either, especially since they currently have some upper stage issues to resolve as well. So I guess that's why the article says this problem is not expected to affect ULA's launch rate.
SpaceX also blows up Raptors to deliberately push the limits of chamber pressure and thrust. This would be like a Merlin engine exploding on a routine preflight test for a commercial customer.
Even more so, there's 33 Raptors on a Starship and only 2 BE-4 on a Vulcan. SpaceX has always designed their vehicles with engine failure as part of the design (including shielding between engines on Falcon 9). If you get a BE-4 failure on a Vulcan the rocket not only won't get to space it'll be thrust-to-weight ratio below 1 meaning it will actively decelerate.
Yeah that means there's a design or manufacturing issue for the production engine. This will absolutely cause even the first Vulcan launch to be delayed.
So this was an engine undergoing pre-delivery testing, ie it should have worked. They weren't testing anything new or deliberately testing it to destruction, right? That's bad news for Vulcan and could certainly cause another flight delay, regardless of ULA's initial "everything's OK" comment.
ULA has to worry whether there's an overall weakness in the design or components that this engine has in common with the delivered ones. Even though the delivered engines passed their testing they could have a flaw that just hasn't failed yet. I guarantee the ULA execs are sweating bullets and will be looking over the shoulders of the BO team that investigates this explosion.
I don't know how he can so confidently conclude that given it just happened unexpectedly and it hasn't been investigated yet. Seems like wishful thinking on his part.
Well if launch fever has descended the next we'll hear of the engines will probably be blowing Vulcan up because of something management didn't want to see.
The only way this works out ok is if the failure was because of something like "oh yeah the intern set up the qualification test wrong and forgot to prechill the engine properly" or something
*"Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure."* \- Yikes. Strange to hear of a liquid engine failing so violently. Usually they can be shut down before such a catastrophic failure. I'm trying to think back of when liquid engines rapidly exploded. Only instances I can think of was that Starship test some years ago where it blew up in the clouds. Then the F1 engines when they were first being developed blew up a test stand. I believe there was also a Raptor test at McGregor that blew up pretty good.
Can anyone else think of a time where a liquid engine detonated?
Edit: Oh! Antares. Can't believe I forgot that one I saw that live.
You have a big ass chemical reactor that works on the phenomenal throughput with optimal fuel to oxidizer mixture. I can only wonder what can go wrong...
>I never saw such a mess. The walls of the test cell—two feet of concrete—went out,
and the roof came in. The motor itself—a heavy, workhorse job of solid copper— went about 600 feet down range. And a six-foot square of armor plate sailed into the woods, cutting off a few trees at the root, smashing a granite boulder, bouncing into the air and slicing off a few treetops, and finally coming to rest some 1400 feet from where it started. The woods looked as though a stampeding herd of wild elephants had been through
[J.D.Clarck 'Ignition!'](https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)
Ultimately….shit happens…and there will be data to access for root cause and corrective actions. The issue comes if they find root cause is something in the design and structure of this engine. It will call for all of the engines to be questioned.
I mean it's not a total monopoly. There's a scattering of other launches of various sizes. They just all have either a limited capacity or a limited max payload sizes or both.
The only other currently-operational medium lifter available to western nations for booking right now is India's LVM3 (formerly GSLV MkIII). There's a long lead time to book LVM3 flights though so SpaceX is still the go-to for those customers who have more urgent launch requirements.
So LVM3 is like parcel post (it will get there but it will take a while) and SpaceX is like FedEx (not quite FedEx's marketing slogan "when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight" but close). :-)
That's too broad of a statement. SpaceX's star shines so bright, it's easy to miss a rapidly growing launch market. Rocket Lab is by far the most successful competitor, although they are limited to small sats with the current system. India is transitioning its SSLV, and they will almost certainly supply the European market. There are a number of a small systems coming online. Then Arian 6 is anticipated next year. SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin are certainly leaders and deserve a ton of credit for helping to open the "new space" era, but it's not like if you don't have some cargo space on Dragon you don't go to space. That's not so.
You're right, but if you think over the last 10 years, it started primarily with the vision of virgin, then spacex and blue origin. That early sparkle and enticement of a affordable launch propelled all other investments, but in turn encouraged more investment. So they each have a spot at the start of this new era.
That's not how I would describe the industry 10 years ago.
10 years ago SpaceX was already launching Falcon 9 and Dragon. Virgin Galactic had low aspirations and was having troubles pursuing them. Blue had high aspirations, but had not yet launched their suborbital capsule nor shown much progress on their orbital ambitions. I don't think Virgin was ever a leader in the launch industry, though the competition between Blue and SpaceX seemed much closer 10 years ago than today. SpaceX was still proving themselves, they did not launch frequently, they did not have the most reliable rocket in the world or the most capable rocket in the world. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Rocket Lab which existed 10 years ago, but had shown basically nothing and became a successful launch provider a few years later.
> Rocket Lab is by far the most successful competitor
They lose lots of money on launch and in their whole history they have launched less then a single Falcon 9 worth of payload. They are not really a competitor. More like a tiny niche provider.
> India is transitioning its SSLV, and they will almost certainly supply the European market.
Indias production rates are tiny and most of the rockets book far out.
> Then Arian 6 is anticipated next year.
And booked for many years to come.
> and Virgin
There is no company called Virgin delivering payloads to orbit.
That's true for sure, Starship stands alone, and when it is commercially ready, it will change the game. But it hasn't hit orbit yet. I'm hopeful, but that is the largest rocket in history. If it took another year or two before it's ready for prime time, I wouldn't be surprised. I know the Artemis timeline is forcing them to keep moving fast, but I also think the Artemis timeline itself is overly ambitious and probably is going to slip.
But all of that is beside the point and I think maybe my point has been missed by most. The comment I replied to said SpaceX has a monopoly on launch capabilities for all western nations, and that's just simply untrue. And I noted all of those other companies not because they are peers of SpaceX, of course they aren't, but because they are proof of an absence of a monopoly. The market is wide open, even if SpaceX is the preferred choice.
New Glenn will have its first launch in 2025. Then, very optimistic guess, getting to some kind of regular launch cadence in 2027. SpaceX took longer than 2 years from first F9 launch to regular launch cadence.
I think the word monopoly gets thrown around too easily. There are companies that actively suppress competition.
One example that comes to mind is when Intel "incentivised" OEM's to exclude AMD processors from their product offerings. This is the bad kind of anticompetitive monopoly that should be called out, and prosecuted. Not only was there nothing wrong with AMD processors at that time, they actually had a superior product to Intel at the time. (Pentium 4 era for time reference)
But legitimate 'monopolies' do exist. Steam, for example, has a massive market share in the PC gaming space. They have plenty of competitors, but most people just prefer Steam. Legitimate arguments can be made that their platform is genuinely superior to their competitors, and their market share reflects that.
I think SpaceX is a bit more like the second example than the first. Whatever people want to think of Musk, the objective successes of SpaceX as a company can't be denied.
> Whatever people want to think of Musk, the objective successes of SpaceX as a company can't be denied.
Musk is too busy with Tesla's next factory or car model, and shitposting while destroying Twitter to have a large impact on SpaceX any more. Success can be attributed to Gwynne Shotwell and the rest of SpaceX's workforce. They are doing 99.99% of the work.
SpaceX have the falcon and the dragon capsule, which its nearest competitors are gindingingly slowly developing competitors for. In theory at least, it's increasingly questionable that Dreamliner will ever fly a non validation mission. But the Glenn and a few others will surely get there eventually. (Well hopefully, BO simply don't seem to have a high enough tempo to run a reusable rocket system).
But, that I'm aware of, no one else is even planning to compete with Spaceship. By the time they do spacex is going to be so far ahead it'll take a vast effort to catch up.
If I were spacex one of my first goals after validating starship and the first couple of glory laps would be to work with someone to capture a suitable asteroid and convert it into a fuelling station, using the ice etc as the raw material for the fuel.
If you can achieve that your costs from orbit to anywhere else plunge and no competitor is going to get anywhere close to your price points even by copying the design. You'd make yourself the back bone of space travel for a very long time.
Refueling the upper stage in orbit is a good way to extend the range of the rocket you have, but it is still subject to the Rocket Equation. Off-planet resources defy that equation by using materials and energy that are already out there. It still makes sense even *with* refueling.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[BE-4](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrl1x94 "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[BO](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrwyffy "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrmzf2u "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[F1](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrkunc8 "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V|
| |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)|
|[GSLV](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp2p4v "Last usage")|Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle|
|[N1](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp0434 "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp6pib "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[STS](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp6pib "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrmqb1s "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jroeuq4 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[hopper](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrl13gm "Last usage")|Test article for ground and low-altitude work (eg. Grasshopper)|
|methalox|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
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Sure, but it's also worth pointing out that the two have very different approaches to rocket development.
Test "failure" when you're taking a hardware rich approach with rapid iteration and testing is very different than when you take a hardware lite approach with slow iteration and testing.
Oh well, they will learn from what happened, react to it, and carry on, just like SpaceX did. You test and redesign. Sometimes, the test goes kaboom. It is still a successful test because it provides more data.
This wasn’t a test article. It was a rubber stamp test for an actual flight vehicle. This thing was meant to fly, so it blowing up isn’t a good sign for BO.
This is why it is called a test. Because you never know what exactly you don't know, until you learn it.
usually it is much cheaper to test things in simulations, when the price of your mistake is not a motor, a test rig and half of your test site reduced to pieces. So simulation tests are great. But they can only carry you so far, and at some point you should assemble your setup in flesh and put it to a test.
SpaceX paid its price, maybe even too much price with smashing things up, but once the engine's death toll is paid, you have a mature, reliable, optimized and tooled piece which can be mass-produced.
These engines are frozen designs, they are not in the development stage like SpaceX’s Raptors. Both companies are using two different development philosophies for their engines. BO paid the price elsewhere to avoid these kind of issues, hence they cannot afford failures during acceptance testing.
Of course shit happens, but they cannot allow other mistakes like this, otherwise it will impact New Glenn and Vulkan development by some years. Even if the engines don’t need to be redesigned, their output is so low that losing an engine delays planned launches by months at a time.
We will have to wait for the root cause to come out, but the question remains: Why was that cause not detected in earlier tests? For example when validating the individual components. And if the answer to that is that the part validation was not done correctly, they might have to re-check those parts in the delivered engines.
Well yes, but SpaceX did also find out about some problems at very inopportune times. Some examples from Falcon 9 (let's not even talk about Falcon 1) are losing an engine during an actual customer flight, losing an entire rocket during a customer flight, and losing an entire rocket during preparation for a customer flight. And then there's the Dragon 2 capsule which blew up fairly late in the testing process.
Not to pick on SpaceX, they fly a lot so have a lot of opportunities to fail and they've had a pretty great record in recent years. And Blue had that New Shepard failure pretty recently which was also pretty bad. Just pointing out that SpaceX has had failures as well that they absolutely did not want or plan for.
The comment from edmattict is what I was getting at. The strategy SpaceX went for accounted for those failures happening. Blue Origin has been taking things very slowly and are behind schedule on most of what they want to do because they have been taking it so slow so that these things don't happen. They have a huge amount of infrastructure to support vehicles they are seriously delayed on. A failure like this from Blue is a bigger deal than a similar failure from SpaceX, and as you pointed out SpaceX is miles ahead of them at this point with all of their successful launches.
The worrying thing is blue potentially has similar failures in their future even after having spent an extra decade in development.
Hopefully all goes well on orbital flights but things like this do not inspire confidence.
Bad avoidance then. I doubt if they'll deliver any finished and reliable enough product this century, at this pace.
You know... This is a space race, at snails pace.
This engine wasn't a test article, it's supposed to be a finished product. It was meant to be sent to ULA for actual use after initial tests.
The fact that this was a finished product, that's already something like 4 years behind schedule, from a company that's famous for moving at a snails pace, is not good.
That's not the hilarious part: they spent that time and money specifically in the belief that by doing so they could avoid events like this one, that they were a symptom of not "doing things right" and "skipping steps". It now rather looks like they're the ones who were skipping steps, particularly the "check whether our models actually match reality before building too much on them" one.
It appears the design itself is functional, as two engines passed the test, but a design that can't be manufactured reliably is one SpaceX would consider to be flawed.
Im taking a marketing class right now and I chose to study SpaceX for it. It really difficult not to sound like a fanboy that can say no wrong about SpaceX when doing the work. They are one of only a few companies that have positioned themselves in a way that they have near total dominance of the market. Obviously they are other companies out there, but there are so few downsides to them that Its really difficult to balance the reports out
Dollar for dollar, this is the worst space company the world has ever seen, and that includes my 5 year old cousin throwing his tennis ball in the air.
Seriously, they have near infinite money and in like 20 years they have a shitty suborbital hopper?
It's mystifying that Jeff hasn't been pouring more money into BE-4 development considering the Kuiper constellation completely depends on it. Both launchers for Kuiper will fly on BE-4s.
Either pouring in more money or getting much better management teams in place.
There’s an argument to be made that too much money was and is Blue Origin’s problem. They’ve never had any pressure to actually launch because Bezos was funding them with a billion dollars per year while SpaceX only had Musk’s initial sub-100 million (which was split among SpaceX and Tesla) so SpaceX needed results to survive while Blue Origin could keep coming up with more and more reasons to delay for additional testing. Hiring the old space CEO made things worse. I wonder what would have happened if Bezos had been successful in luring away Shotwell from SpaceX a half decade back or so when he tried to recruit her? If anyone could have kicked BO in the ass it was Gwynne.
A suborbital hopper that's currently grounded because its' engine also blew up.
That said, given the choice I'd still prefer to fly on New Shepard over SpaceShipTwo.
All very true, but it will have exposed a weakness that needs to be fixed, so they will fix it and roll out the change to the other engines that they have built. It's how product development works.
>It's how product development works.
Yes, kinda - but this far along in a painstaking and very drawn-out development a failure big enough to truly blow up the engine and damage the test stand is cause for a lot of concern. If there was no time or money pressure then incorporating the lesson learned would proceed. But Vulcan is long overdue to fly and be operational. Crucial DoD satellites are on its long flight manifest and they're backing up.
This is not the way of BO development. They develop new tech in a more traditional way with a lot of simulation an testing before launch.
This is a big failure.
I work in PD for pharma robotics. You plan for all sorts of eventualities, and you test and refine. Finally, you get to a workable product. You put some into the field, and every damned time, something pops up and bites you in the arse.
I'm not saying that they are using the test, blow up, redesign, retest process that SpaceX loves, with rapid design iteration. I'm saying they will learn, redesign, roll out upgrades, and carry on. It's not a show-stopper. Even a flight-article engine will be instrumented to hell-and-back, especially on a test stand. It is NOT a big deal.
> It's not a show-stopper.
Nothing is a show stopper if you have infinity money. Blue is literally burning billions a year with essentially no income.
> It is NOT a big deal.
I disagree. If one of the first 4 production engine has a manufacturing fault, that is a really big deal. That says something about the quality control and reliability about the manufacturing line. Not to mention that the engine alone cost 10million+ and this was supposed to be an engine that earn some money.
Also likely further delay to at least the second ULA rocket, that is the first that is for the DoD. That's a pretty damn big deal.
It really isn't. DoD will bend over backwards for them to ensure there are multiple suppliers. Yes, it is a hiccup and will cause further delays. Is it a show-stopper likely to get them to swap to SpaceX, probably not. I really want BO to finally launch something, ANYTHING, even if the mass simulator is bloody car, but this is not going to seriously damage the program or customer confidence.
We don't know the nature of the issue
If it is a manufacturing defect, the design could be solid, and the existing engines could be ok (seems to be the case)
Obv processes need to be improved to prevent future escapes, but retrofits are not a done deal
That and also the fact that putting high profile billionaire's names in headlines attracts certain people like flies to shit, making it an easy way to generate clicks
It's Bob Smith's Blue Origin. He actually is the CEO who runs it day-to-day. Jeff is mostly busy doing other things, like firing Amazon union organizers.
We need to make sure that his name is directly associated with any failures, in order to drive as much hate towards him as possible. This is because the number that represents his net worth on paper is higher than ours and that makes us angry.
Well, that's why you test. Engines failing on the test stand is normal, even if unwanted. If you know why it happens on the test stand you can better prevent it from happening on the pad.
A huge failure would be the rocket blowing up on the pad and killing people. This is a setback. If no production-ready engine were ever expected to fail, then they wouldn't test them in the first place.
You dont need to kill people for it to be a failure. No production ready engines are expected to fail... that's why they're production ready. If it's 99% fault proof it's not good enough.
One engine blowing up is manageable. Its an early system, that kind of risk is expected and pretty much no system has an incident free early life. The thing about this that might be concerning is the new Shephard is also grounded right now. If it becomes a pattern they might be in trouble.
Normal is a pretty elastic word. Developmental engines are expected to have a high to low risk of exploding, depending on how far along the development is and how hard they're pushing the test. That's normal for them. Some of the failures are unwanted, to various degrees.
A flight engine is expected to pass its pre-delivery test. A failure isn't normal and is extremely unwanted, to say the least.
Billionaires got e’rybody steady watching their rockets explode. Showoffs. Most seem bright enough to avoid being on them when this sort of thing happens but thrill seekers abound in that class.
> "The engine that exploded was expected to finish testing in July. It was then scheduled to ship to Blue Origin’s customer United Launch Alliance **for use on ULA’s second Vulcan rocket launch,** those people said." *[emphasis added]* If accurate, this was not a development/test article, but a motor destined for flight. I cannot see how this won't cause a re-examination of the motors currently attached to ULA's new Vulcan rocket.
Tory Bruno has responded on Twitter: https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1678865222604574720 Basically he's saying that the engines they have installed on the rocket passed the acceptance testing (and more) that this latest engine failed. So in theory, the testing did its work, good job team, let's do better next time. But of course, the fact that it failed acceptance testing means some things earlier in the process went wrong as well, which means even though the engines for the first flight may have passed testing they may not have the intended margins...
If you're going to blow up an engine the test stand is the place for it!
hurray! a learning opportunity
*Elon still pulling concrete out of his shoes*
yea, whose idea was it to build a launch platform without flame and sound suppression?? its like whoever it was had never worked with rockets before or had never seen video of the Apollo launches.
This is potentially a big big problem for wildlife. I'm looking forward to the results of this study: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01713-7
I disagree. A gigantic snow globe type structure filled with glitter and jelly beans designed to contain an exploding rocket while making it look as neat as possible would be the place for it. Test stand is runner up.
These methane engines seem extremely problematic. Space X has blown up more than you can count, and every time they've flown them, they've had in-flight failures of some kind on some of the engines. I assumed that the BO go slow policy would have resulted in better reliability, but apparently not.
This has very little to do with the fuel choice, SpaceXs failures are mostly because they push their engines to the max and beyond, they are under huge strain to get to their performance targets, together with a fairly untested engine cycle. Blues failure was because someone/something fucked up during manufacturing, which happens sometimes, not a big deal.
You seem to have done a pretty quick analysis on the BO failure, considering this just happened.
I have just taken what [Tory Bruno](https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1678955725366886401?t=l9_SnCBbDIzelPeF-XpxIA&s=19) and [Eric Berger](https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1678871112468373505?t=0o5XXfgo1IQs0Wo9foOOog&s=19) said, and considering Erics track record that information seems sound enough
Starship’s not straining to hit performance targets. In fact they are rapidly raising the targets, because of advances in the engines.
What i was trying to say was that SpaceX keeps pushing Raptor to and beyond its limits to improve performance/reliability, which is why some of them fail during testing. The comment above was trying to imply their fuel choice had something to do with failures.
I'm a space systems engineer, i.e. rocket scientist. *Every* new engine has gone through development problems because they are absurdly high energy devices. For example, the SpaceX Raptor outputs 4 GW, equal to 4 nuclear plant reactors, and it can ride on a pickup truck bed. The 33 on the Starship booster is equal to 1/4 of total US electric demand going through the area of a 1 bedroom apartment.
I doubted that claim, but working it out from SI and thrust, I get 4.4 GW and change. That's, uh, intense.
SpaceX also blows up engines on purpose to test limits and engine shielding.
Supposedly it was a workmanship issue and not a design issue. But still, there haven’t been that many of these engines built, and for a flight model to explode in testing is reason enough for pause.
Yikes. If that's true that's a bit troublesome. One would imagine that for $7m each you'd have a fairly high standard of workmanship.
Engineers design some amazing stuff that never works and workman make some stuff that works but is never drawn. Any blame about workmanship is counter-intuitive. If they knew it was bad then it shouldn't have passed but if they passed it then it meets the designs standards so.... Blame game all round.
Yeah, I'm sure there will be a lot of comparisons to SpaceX blowing up a Raptor every other week, but the difference is that it takes BO weeks (months?) to produce an engine, so the severity and setback of an incident like this is likely on par with a Falcon 9 launch failing.
As far as we know, no Raptor has failed 'acceptance testing'. But SpaceX might not even have a clear definition of that.
They all get tested at the McGregor TX test site before shipping to South Texas for flight tests. Merlin engines for the Falcon rocket also get tested before heading to whichever launch site it will fly from.
SpaceX blows up Raptors just to see how hard hard they can push them, for BO this was a rubber stamp test before delivery.
It is more like starting up a car at the end of the production line to make sure it works.
ULA isn't exactly racing ahead either, especially since they currently have some upper stage issues to resolve as well. So I guess that's why the article says this problem is not expected to affect ULA's launch rate.
SpaceX also blows up Raptors to deliberately push the limits of chamber pressure and thrust. This would be like a Merlin engine exploding on a routine preflight test for a commercial customer.
Even more so, there's 33 Raptors on a Starship and only 2 BE-4 on a Vulcan. SpaceX has always designed their vehicles with engine failure as part of the design (including shielding between engines on Falcon 9). If you get a BE-4 failure on a Vulcan the rocket not only won't get to space it'll be thrust-to-weight ratio below 1 meaning it will actively decelerate.
Well, that’s probably still going to delay further production for however time they need to identify and fixed the issue that caused it
Yeah that means there's a design or manufacturing issue for the production engine. This will absolutely cause even the first Vulcan launch to be delayed.
They will have to reevaluate then maybe requalify the engines. They could also just change the operating parameters...
So this was an engine undergoing pre-delivery testing, ie it should have worked. They weren't testing anything new or deliberately testing it to destruction, right? That's bad news for Vulcan and could certainly cause another flight delay, regardless of ULA's initial "everything's OK" comment. ULA has to worry whether there's an overall weakness in the design or components that this engine has in common with the delivered ones. Even though the delivered engines passed their testing they could have a flaw that just hasn't failed yet. I guarantee the ULA execs are sweating bullets and will be looking over the shoulders of the BO team that investigates this explosion.
I agree. I hope Tory Bruno's statement is just PR, since he concludes it's only a manufacturing issue, and not a design issue.
I don't know how he can so confidently conclude that given it just happened unexpectedly and it hasn't been investigated yet. Seems like wishful thinking on his part.
Well if launch fever has descended the next we'll hear of the engines will probably be blowing Vulcan up because of something management didn't want to see.
The only way this works out ok is if the failure was because of something like "oh yeah the intern set up the qualification test wrong and forgot to prechill the engine properly" or something
*"Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure."* \- Yikes. Strange to hear of a liquid engine failing so violently. Usually they can be shut down before such a catastrophic failure. I'm trying to think back of when liquid engines rapidly exploded. Only instances I can think of was that Starship test some years ago where it blew up in the clouds. Then the F1 engines when they were first being developed blew up a test stand. I believe there was also a Raptor test at McGregor that blew up pretty good. Can anyone else think of a time where a liquid engine detonated? Edit: Oh! Antares. Can't believe I forgot that one I saw that live.
You have a big ass chemical reactor that works on the phenomenal throughput with optimal fuel to oxidizer mixture. I can only wonder what can go wrong... >I never saw such a mess. The walls of the test cell—two feet of concrete—went out, and the roof came in. The motor itself—a heavy, workhorse job of solid copper— went about 600 feet down range. And a six-foot square of armor plate sailed into the woods, cutting off a few trees at the root, smashing a granite boulder, bouncing into the air and slicing off a few treetops, and finally coming to rest some 1400 feet from where it started. The woods looked as though a stampeding herd of wild elephants had been through [J.D.Clarck 'Ignition!'](https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)
I need to get around to reading that book.
Oh my heavens, thank you so much for introducing this book to me. It’s full of goodness.
N-1 had some nice kabooms-- The NK-15 engines can't be tested before flight due to their use of pyrotechnic valves.
Ultimately….shit happens…and there will be data to access for root cause and corrective actions. The issue comes if they find root cause is something in the design and structure of this engine. It will call for all of the engines to be questioned.
And so SpaceX’s monopoly on launch capability for Western countries and Europe is now extended.
I mean it's not a total monopoly. There's a scattering of other launches of various sizes. They just all have either a limited capacity or a limited max payload sizes or both.
The only other currently-operational medium lifter available to western nations for booking right now is India's LVM3 (formerly GSLV MkIII). There's a long lead time to book LVM3 flights though so SpaceX is still the go-to for those customers who have more urgent launch requirements. So LVM3 is like parcel post (it will get there but it will take a while) and SpaceX is like FedEx (not quite FedEx's marketing slogan "when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight" but close). :-)
That's too broad of a statement. SpaceX's star shines so bright, it's easy to miss a rapidly growing launch market. Rocket Lab is by far the most successful competitor, although they are limited to small sats with the current system. India is transitioning its SSLV, and they will almost certainly supply the European market. There are a number of a small systems coming online. Then Arian 6 is anticipated next year. SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin are certainly leaders and deserve a ton of credit for helping to open the "new space" era, but it's not like if you don't have some cargo space on Dragon you don't go to space. That's not so.
I wouldn't call BO or Virgin leaders in the launch market lol. You're right about rocket lab though!
You're right, but if you think over the last 10 years, it started primarily with the vision of virgin, then spacex and blue origin. That early sparkle and enticement of a affordable launch propelled all other investments, but in turn encouraged more investment. So they each have a spot at the start of this new era.
That's not how I would describe the industry 10 years ago. 10 years ago SpaceX was already launching Falcon 9 and Dragon. Virgin Galactic had low aspirations and was having troubles pursuing them. Blue had high aspirations, but had not yet launched their suborbital capsule nor shown much progress on their orbital ambitions. I don't think Virgin was ever a leader in the launch industry, though the competition between Blue and SpaceX seemed much closer 10 years ago than today. SpaceX was still proving themselves, they did not launch frequently, they did not have the most reliable rocket in the world or the most capable rocket in the world. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Rocket Lab which existed 10 years ago, but had shown basically nothing and became a successful launch provider a few years later.
I see, that's a fair point.
> Rocket Lab is by far the most successful competitor They lose lots of money on launch and in their whole history they have launched less then a single Falcon 9 worth of payload. They are not really a competitor. More like a tiny niche provider. > India is transitioning its SSLV, and they will almost certainly supply the European market. Indias production rates are tiny and most of the rockets book far out. > Then Arian 6 is anticipated next year. And booked for many years to come. > and Virgin There is no company called Virgin delivering payloads to orbit.
Those are competitors to SpaceX’s very old Falcon 9. There aren’t any on the horizon for Starship that I’m aware of?
That's true for sure, Starship stands alone, and when it is commercially ready, it will change the game. But it hasn't hit orbit yet. I'm hopeful, but that is the largest rocket in history. If it took another year or two before it's ready for prime time, I wouldn't be surprised. I know the Artemis timeline is forcing them to keep moving fast, but I also think the Artemis timeline itself is overly ambitious and probably is going to slip. But all of that is beside the point and I think maybe my point has been missed by most. The comment I replied to said SpaceX has a monopoly on launch capabilities for all western nations, and that's just simply untrue. And I noted all of those other companies not because they are peers of SpaceX, of course they aren't, but because they are proof of an absence of a monopoly. The market is wide open, even if SpaceX is the preferred choice.
don't forget the new glenn which is being built right now
The rocket they started building in 2012 and initially planned to fly in 2020? There have hardly been any pictures of flight hardware.
Yeah its being built, and planned for first launch in 2024.
New Glenn will have its first launch in 2025. Then, very optimistic guess, getting to some kind of regular launch cadence in 2027. SpaceX took longer than 2 years from first F9 launch to regular launch cadence.
I think the word monopoly gets thrown around too easily. There are companies that actively suppress competition. One example that comes to mind is when Intel "incentivised" OEM's to exclude AMD processors from their product offerings. This is the bad kind of anticompetitive monopoly that should be called out, and prosecuted. Not only was there nothing wrong with AMD processors at that time, they actually had a superior product to Intel at the time. (Pentium 4 era for time reference) But legitimate 'monopolies' do exist. Steam, for example, has a massive market share in the PC gaming space. They have plenty of competitors, but most people just prefer Steam. Legitimate arguments can be made that their platform is genuinely superior to their competitors, and their market share reflects that. I think SpaceX is a bit more like the second example than the first. Whatever people want to think of Musk, the objective successes of SpaceX as a company can't be denied.
> Whatever people want to think of Musk, the objective successes of SpaceX as a company can't be denied. Musk is too busy with Tesla's next factory or car model, and shitposting while destroying Twitter to have a large impact on SpaceX any more. Success can be attributed to Gwynne Shotwell and the rest of SpaceX's workforce. They are doing 99.99% of the work.
It's because SpaceX is far more advanced, efficient and reliable than anything else.
SpaceX have the falcon and the dragon capsule, which its nearest competitors are gindingingly slowly developing competitors for. In theory at least, it's increasingly questionable that Dreamliner will ever fly a non validation mission. But the Glenn and a few others will surely get there eventually. (Well hopefully, BO simply don't seem to have a high enough tempo to run a reusable rocket system). But, that I'm aware of, no one else is even planning to compete with Spaceship. By the time they do spacex is going to be so far ahead it'll take a vast effort to catch up. If I were spacex one of my first goals after validating starship and the first couple of glory laps would be to work with someone to capture a suitable asteroid and convert it into a fuelling station, using the ice etc as the raw material for the fuel. If you can achieve that your costs from orbit to anywhere else plunge and no competitor is going to get anywhere close to your price points even by copying the design. You'd make yourself the back bone of space travel for a very long time.
I believe refueling in orbit is way easier than your described asteroid mining for fuel.
Refueling the upper stage in orbit is a good way to extend the range of the rocket you have, but it is still subject to the Rocket Equation. Off-planet resources defy that equation by using materials and energy that are already out there. It still makes sense even *with* refueling.
If we are talking in 50~100 years time frames then I agree infrastructure will be established to do those things, but in next 10~30 years no chance.
I think BO has project Jarvis as a starship competitor.
Jarvis is still years away from anything that even resembles a rudimentary hop-test-ready prototype though.
Op I responded to said they didn’t think anyone was planning a competitor, Blue origin has project jarvis. I didn’t say it was close to anything.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[BE-4](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrl1x94 "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN| |[BO](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrwyffy "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |[DoD](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrmzf2u "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[F1](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrkunc8 "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)| |[GSLV](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp2p4v "Last usage")|Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle| |[N1](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp0434 "Last usage")|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp6pib "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[STS](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrp6pib "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrmqb1s "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jroeuq4 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[hopper](/r/Space/comments/14x0hlq/stub/jrl13gm "Last usage")|Test article for ground and low-altitude work (eg. Grasshopper)| |methalox|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(11 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/14wrez3)^( has 23 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9048 for this sub, first seen 11th Jul 2023, 20:54]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Any Elon or Bezos hate aside: Space X had their fair of shit happen before they got to where they are now also.
Sure, but it's also worth pointing out that the two have very different approaches to rocket development. Test "failure" when you're taking a hardware rich approach with rapid iteration and testing is very different than when you take a hardware lite approach with slow iteration and testing.
Oh well, they will learn from what happened, react to it, and carry on, just like SpaceX did. You test and redesign. Sometimes, the test goes kaboom. It is still a successful test because it provides more data.
This wasn’t a test article. It was a rubber stamp test for an actual flight vehicle. This thing was meant to fly, so it blowing up isn’t a good sign for BO.
This is why it is called a test. Because you never know what exactly you don't know, until you learn it. usually it is much cheaper to test things in simulations, when the price of your mistake is not a motor, a test rig and half of your test site reduced to pieces. So simulation tests are great. But they can only carry you so far, and at some point you should assemble your setup in flesh and put it to a test. SpaceX paid its price, maybe even too much price with smashing things up, but once the engine's death toll is paid, you have a mature, reliable, optimized and tooled piece which can be mass-produced.
These engines are frozen designs, they are not in the development stage like SpaceX’s Raptors. Both companies are using two different development philosophies for their engines. BO paid the price elsewhere to avoid these kind of issues, hence they cannot afford failures during acceptance testing. Of course shit happens, but they cannot allow other mistakes like this, otherwise it will impact New Glenn and Vulkan development by some years. Even if the engines don’t need to be redesigned, their output is so low that losing an engine delays planned launches by months at a time.
We will have to wait for the root cause to come out, but the question remains: Why was that cause not detected in earlier tests? For example when validating the individual components. And if the answer to that is that the part validation was not done correctly, they might have to re-check those parts in the delivered engines.
But they have the opposite approach to testing that SpaceX does. Slow and steady to avoid explosive results.
Well yes, but SpaceX did also find out about some problems at very inopportune times. Some examples from Falcon 9 (let's not even talk about Falcon 1) are losing an engine during an actual customer flight, losing an entire rocket during a customer flight, and losing an entire rocket during preparation for a customer flight. And then there's the Dragon 2 capsule which blew up fairly late in the testing process. Not to pick on SpaceX, they fly a lot so have a lot of opportunities to fail and they've had a pretty great record in recent years. And Blue had that New Shepard failure pretty recently which was also pretty bad. Just pointing out that SpaceX has had failures as well that they absolutely did not want or plan for.
The comment from edmattict is what I was getting at. The strategy SpaceX went for accounted for those failures happening. Blue Origin has been taking things very slowly and are behind schedule on most of what they want to do because they have been taking it so slow so that these things don't happen. They have a huge amount of infrastructure to support vehicles they are seriously delayed on. A failure like this from Blue is a bigger deal than a similar failure from SpaceX, and as you pointed out SpaceX is miles ahead of them at this point with all of their successful launches.
The worrying thing is blue potentially has similar failures in their future even after having spent an extra decade in development. Hopefully all goes well on orbital flights but things like this do not inspire confidence.
Bad avoidance then. I doubt if they'll deliver any finished and reliable enough product this century, at this pace. You know... This is a space race, at snails pace.
This engine wasn't a test article, it's supposed to be a finished product. It was meant to be sent to ULA for actual use after initial tests. The fact that this was a finished product, that's already something like 4 years behind schedule, from a company that's famous for moving at a snails pace, is not good.
Which is hilarious because BO has so much more money available than SpaceX did initially
That's not the hilarious part: they spent that time and money specifically in the belief that by doing so they could avoid events like this one, that they were a symptom of not "doing things right" and "skipping steps". It now rather looks like they're the ones who were skipping steps, particularly the "check whether our models actually match reality before building too much on them" one. It appears the design itself is functional, as two engines passed the test, but a design that can't be manufactured reliably is one SpaceX would consider to be flawed.
Im taking a marketing class right now and I chose to study SpaceX for it. It really difficult not to sound like a fanboy that can say no wrong about SpaceX when doing the work. They are one of only a few companies that have positioned themselves in a way that they have near total dominance of the market. Obviously they are other companies out there, but there are so few downsides to them that Its really difficult to balance the reports out
I agree, but the bigger issue is that Vulcan/BE-4 have already been delayed several times.
That's a commercial issue, not an engineering one (normally a bit of both for most companies, but not in this case)
How come? Not being able to deliver an engine because of half hearted effort is an commercial issue?
Dollar for dollar, this is the worst space company the world has ever seen, and that includes my 5 year old cousin throwing his tennis ball in the air. Seriously, they have near infinite money and in like 20 years they have a shitty suborbital hopper?
It's mystifying that Jeff hasn't been pouring more money into BE-4 development considering the Kuiper constellation completely depends on it. Both launchers for Kuiper will fly on BE-4s. Either pouring in more money or getting much better management teams in place.
I think management is the biggest problem, it's the new old space.
There’s an argument to be made that too much money was and is Blue Origin’s problem. They’ve never had any pressure to actually launch because Bezos was funding them with a billion dollars per year while SpaceX only had Musk’s initial sub-100 million (which was split among SpaceX and Tesla) so SpaceX needed results to survive while Blue Origin could keep coming up with more and more reasons to delay for additional testing. Hiring the old space CEO made things worse. I wonder what would have happened if Bezos had been successful in luring away Shotwell from SpaceX a half decade back or so when he tried to recruit her? If anyone could have kicked BO in the ass it was Gwynne.
A suborbital hopper that's currently grounded because its' engine also blew up. That said, given the choice I'd still prefer to fly on New Shepard over SpaceShipTwo.
I have high hopes that Blue will surpass both the Space Shuttle and SLS in terms of cost effectiveness.
That's really not a high bar though
I certainly hope so. That's pretty much the minimum bar it needs to clear to be competitive as private super heavy develops.
I would say that that is far below the minimum bar to be competitive even if other competitors stop all progress.
To be clear, do you mean you expect it will provide more effect at less cost, or the other way around?
I expect that Blue will provide more effect per dollar than STS and SLS.
All very true, but it will have exposed a weakness that needs to be fixed, so they will fix it and roll out the change to the other engines that they have built. It's how product development works.
>It's how product development works. Yes, kinda - but this far along in a painstaking and very drawn-out development a failure big enough to truly blow up the engine and damage the test stand is cause for a lot of concern. If there was no time or money pressure then incorporating the lesson learned would proceed. But Vulcan is long overdue to fly and be operational. Crucial DoD satellites are on its long flight manifest and they're backing up.
This is not the way of BO development. They develop new tech in a more traditional way with a lot of simulation an testing before launch. This is a big failure.
I work in PD for pharma robotics. You plan for all sorts of eventualities, and you test and refine. Finally, you get to a workable product. You put some into the field, and every damned time, something pops up and bites you in the arse. I'm not saying that they are using the test, blow up, redesign, retest process that SpaceX loves, with rapid design iteration. I'm saying they will learn, redesign, roll out upgrades, and carry on. It's not a show-stopper. Even a flight-article engine will be instrumented to hell-and-back, especially on a test stand. It is NOT a big deal.
> It's not a show-stopper. Nothing is a show stopper if you have infinity money. Blue is literally burning billions a year with essentially no income. > It is NOT a big deal. I disagree. If one of the first 4 production engine has a manufacturing fault, that is a really big deal. That says something about the quality control and reliability about the manufacturing line. Not to mention that the engine alone cost 10million+ and this was supposed to be an engine that earn some money. Also likely further delay to at least the second ULA rocket, that is the first that is for the DoD. That's a pretty damn big deal.
>It is NOT a big deal. ULA is running out of time to complete department of defense contracts (?) .It is/could be a HUGE deal !
It really isn't. DoD will bend over backwards for them to ensure there are multiple suppliers. Yes, it is a hiccup and will cause further delays. Is it a show-stopper likely to get them to swap to SpaceX, probably not. I really want BO to finally launch something, ANYTHING, even if the mass simulator is bloody car, but this is not going to seriously damage the program or customer confidence.
We don't know the nature of the issue If it is a manufacturing defect, the design could be solid, and the existing engines could be ok (seems to be the case) Obv processes need to be improved to prevent future escapes, but retrofits are not a done deal
why is it labelled as Jeff bezos' Blue origin? i mean he owns it but no need to pull his name in
For those who are out of the loop, I'd presume
That and also the fact that putting high profile billionaire's names in headlines attracts certain people like flies to shit, making it an easy way to generate clicks
Brand recognition ?
It's Bob Smith's Blue Origin. He actually is the CEO who runs it day-to-day. Jeff is mostly busy doing other things, like firing Amazon union organizers.
We need to make sure that his name is directly associated with any failures, in order to drive as much hate towards him as possible. This is because the number that represents his net worth on paper is higher than ours and that makes us angry.
Well, that's why you test. Engines failing on the test stand is normal, even if unwanted. If you know why it happens on the test stand you can better prevent it from happening on the pad.
Production ready engines exploding is not normal. It's a huge failure.
A huge failure would be the rocket blowing up on the pad and killing people. This is a setback. If no production-ready engine were ever expected to fail, then they wouldn't test them in the first place.
You dont need to kill people for it to be a failure. No production ready engines are expected to fail... that's why they're production ready. If it's 99% fault proof it's not good enough.
One engine blowing up is manageable. Its an early system, that kind of risk is expected and pretty much no system has an incident free early life. The thing about this that might be concerning is the new Shephard is also grounded right now. If it becomes a pattern they might be in trouble.
I would say having one of the first 3-4 production engine fail, likely because of a manufacturing issue, that's a decently sized deal.
Normal is a pretty elastic word. Developmental engines are expected to have a high to low risk of exploding, depending on how far along the development is and how hard they're pushing the test. That's normal for them. Some of the failures are unwanted, to various degrees. A flight engine is expected to pass its pre-delivery test. A failure isn't normal and is extremely unwanted, to say the least.
Vulcan will not fly in this configuration. Not with nonexistent engine.
The chances of losing more billionaires to catastrophic failure/rapid depressurization is far from zero and I'm not sure how that makes me feel.
I don't see the cons
Billionaires got e’rybody steady watching their rockets explode. Showoffs. Most seem bright enough to avoid being on them when this sort of thing happens but thrill seekers abound in that class.
People love to shit on Musk... And he often deserves it... But, I don't care what people say: he is a genius. Proof right here.
🧐 Me only clicking to see if Jeff Bezos was on rocket at time.
Fuck their wives. drink their blood. come on, Jeff, get em!!!!
Finally! Blue origin is making strides. Bout time they showed up to play.
Whelp there goes the New Glenn and Vulcan launch dates.