"The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen, and LNG tanks are all in good shape."
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Blue Origin vows to fly its New Glenn rocket “before the end of this year”
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"Damn it, I told NASA I can offer next-day delivery to the lunar outpost, and you will not make me look like a con artist! Now get that running! No one goes home, gets to eat, or gets any sort of bathroom break until we're operational!"
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"NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told Limp and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos"
On first reading I thought Jeff had also founded a company called Limp. I couldn't imagine what they made...
On first reading I thought Jeff had also founded a company called Limp. I couldn't imagine what they made...
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At first reading, I thought that "Limp" and "Blue Origin founder" were descriptions.
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Speed from a company not known for it? I can't imagine how you get the rocket vertical without some kind of erector. Whatever went wrong it went wrong immediately.
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Smells a bit like they've decided when they need to be ready by to not screw up all their future plans, and have worked backwards from there.
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I guess that it depends a lot on how much bend metal the "already been working" has done. If they had a half built transporter and GSE system built, and orders for the rest of the equipment needed that might be posible. If the "already been working" is just CAD drawings, then it's harder to believe.
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The tanks are the least interesting bit of a tank farm. You can slice and dice them easily enough. It's the regulators and the plumbing and valving that's important.
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Resistance
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
The booster was not damaged?
Edit: I'm wrong, this was clarified below:
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To be fair, unless they had already started to build a second transporter-erector there's nothing but CAD drawings of that also.
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The one stored in the HIF.
The door was knocked open by the blast, but apparently everything inside was okay.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Welp this is.... mighty optimistic. But I approve the confident, can-do attitude. Hopefully they get 'er done. Even if it takes 3-4 more months than he stated, that would still be impressive. Also, Limp has to be the most unfortunate name in the recorded history of rocket programs.
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“We had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and ….. “
Could someone please explain what a “conop” is, I don’t recall seeing that word before.
Could someone please explain what a “conop” is, I don’t recall seeing that word before.
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Concept of Operations. It's a notional description of what a system does (how it's used by the user). A change in conops means doing it in a different way, not just a minor design change in the hardware.
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And yet the quote says they are long lead items, which really surprised me. I imagine SpaceX would just repurpose Ship building into tanks for a few weeks.
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That's not how manufacturing works unless you're Musk who does not understand how real manufacturing works. The end result, tanks built by a company with no experience building tanks, would not be anything usable or certifiable it would be scrap metal.
Also both tasks require different specialized tooling, you can't just take an assembly line and make it do something totally different for "a few weeks" on a moments notice. Plants get shut down for months to a year to undergo retooling for far more mundane changeovers on production
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Okay, sorry, this may be a bit irrational, but I hate this phrasing. Other Ars writers use "vow" a lot too, and it bugs me every single time. I think I get why -- it's a nice short word that fits well in headlines and helps drive clicks -- but I think it's being misused.
Whether part of the official definition or not, "vow" carries a sense that you will make something happen. Obviously, not every vow is a solemn vow, and not all vows should have the same weight, but it has that sense of "I will personally drive this to happen, whatever it takes."
Whereas Dave Limp actually said:
"We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter."
Which, to me, doesn't rise to the point of being a vow. Especially because, in the paragraphs above that statement, he was laying out the status of things. I think he was ending his post with a prediction rather than a vow, albeit a strongly worded one.
Vows and predictions are different. Some Ars writers transform predictions into vows pretty frequently. But I've rarely seen Eric Berger do it, which I've been happy about, which is why this one drew my attention so much.
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I suspect replacing the entire tank is a bit of a logistics nightmare, but bringing in 1/8 of an endcap requires a pickup.
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I won’t be volunteering to cut off the end cap and replace with a new one, especially if that is the LOX tank.
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A vow is a prediction for which someone has agency. It's not a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it's not entirely within Limp's control. But he does have a lot of say in whether BO achieves flight on his declared schedule.
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What would a replacement for the erector be? Vertical integration is about the only other thing, right? Limp comes from ULA and I believe that is how they do it. I bet they work with ULA to get this done. I would not be surprised if Jeff didn't just buy ULA for the manpower, launch pads, and parts.
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Con-cept of Op-eration. If I were to guess, the new plan might be to vertically stack elsewhere, and then wheel the rocket to the pad that way, which would be a different concept of operations from "transport the rocket, on its' side, to the pad; and then lift it into the vertical."
Granted, they would still need to build a tower of some sort for prop loading, access to assorted service points on the rocket. and to keep the rocket clamped down during engine startup/static fire; so I'm not really sure how much time they'll be saving. And that's even assuming they've got all the drawings and modeling done, and they're ready to start cutting steel.
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It's a double walled tank, the outer shell only needs to hold vacuum, not LOX.
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Six months? Maybe. Two weeks to clear the wreckage off the pad. Two months of steel and concrete work to rebuild the pad. Three months to install the plumbing, electrical, instrumentation at the pad.
Dave Limp indicated that BO has been working on vertical transportation for New Glenn for a while. BO has a manufacturing facility at the Cape. My guess is that the transporter is being constructed there now.
Dave Limp indicated that BO has been working on vertical transportation for New Glenn for a while. BO has a manufacturing facility at the Cape. My guess is that the transporter is being constructed there now.
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The clamps would be in the transporter. Like they are when they were using a transporter erector. Same with the fueling, it would be handled by the transporter, like it was when it was a transporter erector. The main difference of the transporter would be, being able to erect the craft vs being able to go up the ramp with a vertical New Glenn.
They might believe that redesigning the TE to handle the vehicle vertical is easier and faster than making the erector part of the vehicle.
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I'd love to see it happen. It really did seem like Blue Origin was on the edge of getting to a good launch pace.
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