Errant upper stage spoils Blue Origin’s success in reusing New Glenn booster

Blue Origin's reused first stage hit its targets, but New Glenn's upper stage did not.

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[EllPeaTea]

Press release from AST SpaceMobile
https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...of-BlueBird-7-on-the-New-Glenn-Launch-Vehicle

During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle. While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will de-orbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy.

 

[Proesterchen]

Tragic.

 

[Statistical]

Oof. Nailed the hard part, fail on the "easy" part relatively speaking. While insurance covers the cost of the lost sat this really slows down AST rollout. Time is the real loss here.

 

[Fatesrider]

The spacecraft “will be de-orbited” and AST said it expects to recover the satellite’s undisclosed cost under an insurance policy.

Okay, so while they recover the cost of the satellite, how much did the company lose with the insurance policy? And until BO has a much longer successful full mission track record, what will the price of insurance do to the overall costs for customers?

The "cost of doing business" is a thing. I get that. But in rockets, it's not always routine enough for the kind of gambling insurance companies engage in.

I gotta admit it'd be interesting to read how the insurance industry deals with "new space" now that private money is on the line, and how much that costs, or saves, the people who buy policies. It's not exactly "dark money", but it IS kind of an opaque part of that "cost of doing business" thing.

 

[Rachelhikes]

The mission isn't getting the booster back, the mission is delivering the payload to where it is supposed to go. Customers don't care about the launch company's booster — they care about their payload. Blue Origin needs to prove it can do the part that matters reliably. Pretty damn disappointing, even with a successful booster landing.

 

[Statistical]

Okay, so while they recover the cost of the satellite, how much did the company lose with the insurance policy? And until BO has a much longer successful full mission track record, what will the price of insurance do to the overall costs for customers?

The "cost of doing business" is a thing. I get that. But in rockets, it's not always routine enough for the kind of gambling insurance companies engage in.

I gotta admit it'd be interesting to read how the insurance industry deals with "new space" now that private money is on the line, and how much that costs, or saves, the people who buy policies. It's not exactly "dark money", but it IS kind of an opaque part of that "cost of doing business" thing.

The insurance policy cost was sunk money either way. You buy the policy regardless of successful or failure you don't get the money back. Nothing to suggest the policy won't simply pay in full. If it doesn't it was because AST cut costs by insuring for less than full value but that is rare for new sats & launchers.

The big loss is time. it slows down their rollout. NG can lift six to eight of these sats but as a risk reduction measure they only did one. Since that failed not only do they have to rebuild this lost sat very likely the next launch on NG will be one sat only. Now throw in a 30 to 60 day grounding until the root cause is found. AST was hoping to launch six to eight sats this summer and now it is more likely the first multiple sat launch on NG will be 2027.

 

[Black_Mokona]

The insurance policy cost was sunk money either way. You buy the policy regardless of successful or failure you don't get the money back. Nothing to suggest the policy won't simply pay in full. If it doesn't it was because AST cut costs by insuring for less than full value but that is rare for new sats & launchers.

Every time you make a mistake, the cost of your next insurance policy rises sharply.

 

[Statistical]

Every time you make a mistake, the cost of your next insurance policy rises sharply.

Not really by any meaningful use of the world "sharply". I would point out Falcon 9 had 1 partial failure (flight 4) and 1 complete failure (flight 19) in the first 20 flights and it wasn't uninsurable. We went through the same gnashing of teeth with F9. Claims of doom and it was uninsurable. That they would see contact cancellations left and right. None of that happened.

Now if BO loses 3 of the next 4 payloads ok they got a problem but there is nothing to suggest that will happen.

I certainly wouldn't want to be the insurance company who wrote the NG-3 policy. They are likely drinking pepto and tums cocktails tonight.

 

[ai_fodder]

Blue Origin, founded and owed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

nice...

 

[Erbium168]

If you want a white collar occupation that requires honking great brass balls, just train as an actuary for satellite launches.

 

[wesleyd]

Bet BO would rather deploy the payload properly than the landing.

 

[Statistical]

If you want a white collar occupation that requires honking great brass balls, just train as an actuary for satellite launches.

Can you imagine the swing from elation on a successful launch and ascent to the crushing blow finding out there is an upper stage failure and your company will be writing a nine figure check.

 

[Ildatch]

So given the observed orbit, are we thinking maybe an engine relight failure for the second burn?

 

[Proesterchen]

While insurance covers the cost of the lost sat this really slows down AST rollout. Time is the real loss here.

It's just one of apparently dozens of birds they were planning to launch this year, according to this very article, and with launch contracts in place with Twitter's current parent company, they're not even grounded while this rocket gets fixed.

 

[Statistical]

So given the observed orbit, are we thinking maybe an engine relight failure for the second burn?

That seems likely to me. Since the upper stage is likely intact I would assume BO got plenty of good telemetry to figure out exactly why it didn't relight. For ksp fans hopefully they didn't press space instead of z in their excitement.

 

[wagnerrp]

The insurance policy cost was sunk money either way. You buy the policy regardless of successful or failure you don't get the money back. Nothing to suggest the policy won't simply pay in full. If it doesn't it was because AST cut costs by insuring for less than full value but that is rare for new sats & launchers.

The big loss is time. it slows down their rollout. NG can lift four of these sats but as a risk reduction measure they only did one. Since that failed not only do they have to rebuild this lost sat very likely the next launch will be one sat only. Now throw in a 30 to 60 day grounding until the root cause is found. ASTS was hoping to launch 4 sats this summer and now it is more likely the first 4 sat launch will be end of the year at best.

The loss of time is because New Glenn is not available as a viable launcher. Loss of a single satellite in a constellation of ~90 is not itself a significant slowdown.

 

[DougF]

So given the observed orbit, are we thinking maybe an engine relight failure for the second burn?

Or maybe the second stage or satellite had a different elapsed time than the booster..nah, nobody could be THAT incompetent, surely.
LOL.

 

[tRexx]

I wonder if the single satellite payload was a deliberate attempt to control risk of loss.

 

[BadSuperblock]

The mission isn't getting the booster back, the mission is delivering the payload to where it is supposed to go. Customers don't care about the launch company's booster — they care about their payload. Blue Origin needs to prove it can do the part that matters reliably. Pretty damn disappointing, even with a successful booster landing.

That is a false opposition. The mission is both getting the booster back and delivering the payload.

Customers don’t care about the booster, but if you continue thinking that way, you are Old Space. Because the business models of both SpaceX and Blue Origin assume that they can take market share through lower cost, which requires launch volume, and for that to be sustainable requires booster reusability. Booster recovery is required for the business models to work!

So the fact that the customer doesn’t care about the booster is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the customer cares about successful payload delivery, but not just that…they care about successful delivery at the lowest price. Which means the customer cares about booster recovery indirectly, because if Blue Origin can’t do that, then the customer chooses a company with a lower launch cost.

 

[Statistical]

The loss of time is because New Glenn is not available as a viable launcher. Loss of a single satellite in a constellation of ~90 is not itself a significant slowdown.

But it is both. The next launch was suppose to be 6 to 8 of those sats but unless the executives have balls of steel that is likely off. So not only do they lose this sat, they then lose the time until their next launch, then that launch is likely 1 sat not 6 to 8. Which means they won't be doing multi-sat launches on NG until probably 2027 unless Amazon LEO is willing to drop back.

AST known planned launches for 2026
NG3 - 1 sat
F9 ?? - 3 sats
F9 ?? - 4 sats
NG 6??? - 6 to 8 sats
So the goal would be as many as 16 sats completely by end of this year. Now very likely they will have no more than 8 (3+4+1).

 

[Statistical]

I wonder if the single satellite payload was a deliberate attempt to control risk of loss.

Absolutely. NG can lift 6 to 8 of them. That is a lot of risk to take though.

 

[NetMage]

Loss of a single satellite in a constellation of ~90 is not itself a significant slowdown.

Given that it was their second full size satellite and launched alone, they probably had more testing and development to complete before multiple satellite launches that now will be delayed, which is probably why they no longer think 60 satellites this year is possible.

 

[Znomit]

What were the odds of failure?

 

[dennis.kext]

This is so routine now, I totally forgot about this launch and missed it! Sucks for BO, but that fact that this is their "first real major failure" is awesome.

Just a bit of snark/sassiness, if this was a SpaceX failure "Elon's rocket blows up, again" would be the main heading in all the papers. To be fair, right now anything is more exciting than "Iran day 47".

 

[Statistical]

It's just one of apparently dozens of birds they were planning to launch this year, according to this very article, and with launch contracts in place with Twitter's current parent company, they're not even grounded while this rocket gets fixed.

There is no dozens. It was 14 to 16 and F9 is a total of 7. The question is if it were you would you put 8 sats on the next NG launch after losing one on this launch. If not then that 8 sat launch becomes 1. So the company is looking at 8 sats deployed by end of year vs planned 16.

 

[Drunkahedron]

Not really by any meaningful use of the world "sharply". I would point out Falcon 9 had 1 partial failure (flight 4) and 1 complete failure (flight 19) in the first 20 flights and it wasn't uninsurable. We went through the same gnashing of teeth with F9. Claims of doom and it was uninsurable. That they would see contact cancellations left and right. None of that happened.

Now if BO loses 3 of the next 4 payloads ok they got a problem but there is nothing to suggest that will happen.

I certainly wouldn't want to be the insurance company who wrote the NG-3 policy. They are likely drinking pepto and tums cocktails tonight.

You're right, but you're also arguing against a strawman. New Glenn is still insurable, but it looks much riskier now than it did yesterday, and insurance premiums will increase accordingly.

 

[Statistical]

You're right, but you're also arguing against a strawman. New Glenn is still insurable, but it looks much riskier now than it did yesterday, and insurance premiums will increase accordingly.

Will it though.

Launches are usually insured in advance. Launches for the next year probably two years are already locked down. So any new insurance policy would be for launch 10 or 15 not launch 5. The insurance executive for launch 5 likely has hearburn right now but that contract was signed a long time ago.

If BO nails the next 10 launches insurance prices might go down not up. Also I don't think anyone in the business thinks it looks "much" riskier. They were likely assumming a failure rate of at least 5% possibly 10% given lack of history and 1 failure in the first 5 doesn't mean that assumption is incorrect. Now if they lose another payload in the next couple that changes thing.

 

[Malmesbury]

What were the odds of failure?

As of before this launch, Ed Kyle estimated thus

https://launchreport.neocities.org/reliability.txt

================================================================
Lewis
Successes Point AdjWald Consc. Last Dates
Vehicle /Attempts Est* 95%CI* Succes Fail
===============================================================
New Glenn 2/2 0.75 0.29-1.00 2 None 2025-
================================================================

so 75%

Using the following methodology - Lewis, J. & Lauro, J., "Improving the Accuracy of Small-Sample Estimates of Completion Rates", Journal of Usability Studies, Issue 3, Vol. 1, May 2006, pp. 136-150.

 

[Reynold]

I gotta admit it'd be interesting to read how the insurance industry deals with "new space" now that private money is on the line, and how much that costs, or saves, the people who buy policies. It's not exactly "dark money", but it IS kind of an opaque part of that "cost of doing business" thing.

That would be fascinating information to have, what the insurance premiums are for various launch vehicles, from ISRO to Arian 6 to F9 to New Glen. The insurance companies must have good models for that, since money is on the line, in contrast to us forum speculators, but I'm sure it is VERY proprietary.

I would be willing to bet real money that you can get cheaper premiums per $1M of your satellite on a F9 than on a Vulcan right now, though. . .

 

[wagnerrp]

Given that it was their second full size satellite and launched alone, they probably had more testing and development to complete before multiple satellite launches that now will be delayed, which is probably why they no longer think 60 satellites this year is possible.

60 this year hasn't been possible in a long time. This is a big satellite with a lot of hardware, and that's an aggressive ramp up from basically zero.

 

[wagnerrp]

But it is both. The next launch was suppose to be 6 to 8 of those sats but unless the executives have balls of steel that is likely off. So not only do they lose this sat, they then lose the time until their next launch, then that launch is likely 1 sat not 6 to 8. Which means they won't be doing multi-sat launches on NG until probably 2027 unless Amazon LEO is willing to drop back.

AST known planned launches for 2026
NG3 - 1 sat
F9 ?? - 3 sats
F9 ?? - 4 sats
NG 6??? - 6 to 8 sats
So the goal would be as many as 16 sats completely by end of this year. Now very likely they will have no more than 8 (3+4+1).

If they have the satellites ready to fly, then it's a question of how much they're willing to pay for priority scheduling on Falcon 9.

At 6.1t, how are they intending to get four up on a Falcon 9? Even three is pushing it.

 

[Statistical]

If they have the satellites ready to fly, then it's a question of how much they're willing to pay for priority scheduling on Falcon 9.

At 6.1t, how are they intending to get four up on a Falcon 9? Even three is pushing it.

Yeah that is a good question. Maybe the 3 & 4 is out of date. With 6 tons seems 2 & 2 is more likely but that makes things worse. It also likely means 8 on NG is dubious. 6 maybe but could be as low as 5.

 

[Ildatch]

Wait.. it didn't make its target altitude and its inclination is wrong? (Article says it was going for 49 degrees but tracking says it's at 36?) Would it be normal for there to be an inclination change during 2nd stage maneuvering?

 

[Statistical]

Wait.. it didn't make its target altitude and its inclination is wrong? (Article says it was going for 49 degrees but tracking says it's at 36?) Would it be normal for there to be an inclination change during 2nd stage maneuvering?

Normal no but given barge landing they may have indeed planned on the 2nd stage raising the inclination at apogee (SES2) except SES2 doesn't seem to have happened. It would have been nice if BO gave us specific details before the launch and then it would be easier to piece together what happened.

On edit:
Never mind I compute the plane change of 13 degrees would require ~1,700 m/s so that seems dubious. Then again given how light the payload is that might not be impossible and would stack the deck a bit for the booster. I don't know. If BO press release had all the intended orbits at MECO, SECO1, and SECO2 it would be very easy to know for sure. Right now it looks like they missed wide on inclination but maybe that was spot on for SECO1.

 

[eduardopozo56]

That is a false opposition. The mission is both getting the booster back and delivering the payload.

Customers don’t care about the booster, but if you continue thinking that way, you are Old Space. Because the business models of both SpaceX and Blue Origin assume that they can take market share through lower cost, which requires launch volume, and for that to be sustainable requires booster reusability. Booster recovery is required for the business models to work!

So the fact that the customer doesn’t care about the booster is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the customer cares about successful payload delivery, but not just that…they care about successful delivery at the lowest price. Which means the customer cares about booster recovery indirectly, because if Blue Origin can’t do that, then the customer chooses a company with a lower launch cost.

You said it yourself
Customer wants delivery at best price. Without delivery, the price is irrelevant, customer could not care less if the price is due to reusability, cheaper material, new tech or having superman on your roster.

If you cant deliver, the mission has failed for the customer, as simple as that, even if they cut the price by 50%, noone will want to flight if they cannot prove reliable delivery.

 

[Statistical]

You said it yourself
Customer wants delivery at best price. Without delivery, the price is irrelevant, customer could not care less if the price is due to reusability, cheaper material, new tech or having superman on your roster.

If you cant deliver, the mission has failed for the customer, as simple as that, even if they cut the price by 50%, noone will want to flight if they cannot prove reliable delivery.

Yeah good thing nobody in the industry is dumb enough to write off a LV after one failure. If they did we would have no LV not even F9.

 

[Reynold]

Normal no but given barge landing they may have indeed planned on the 2nd stage raising the inclination at apogee (SES2) except SES2 doesn't seem to have happened. It would have been nice if BO gave us specific details before the launch and then it would be easier to piece together what happened.

Though I wonder if they were launching the maximum number of satellites for a NG if they could afford this inclination change deltaV-wise? Since they were only launching one satellite they may have had the margin to plan to do an inclination change as part of the SES2 burn, just as SpaceX has margin for some flights to do a dogleg and/or RTLS, but not their max payload Starlink launches.

 

[Statistical]

Though I wonder if they were launching the maximum number of satellites for a NG if they could afford this inclination change deltaV-wise? Since they were only launching one satellite they may have had the margin to plan to do an inclination change as part of the SES2 burn, just as SpaceX has margin for some flights to do a dogleg and/or RTLS, but not their max payload Starlink launches.

Yeah it is very atypical. For max sats no they couldn't afford to do it this way. After first post I went back and did that math. The plane change would cost a staggering 1,700 m/s so normally would be something to avoid BUT with 6t vs 36t capability the upper stage had dV to spare so maybe they did intend that to booster the booster odds. Hard to say. Would have been nice if BO shared more details prior to launch. If they had we could go "yeah everything was nominal at SECO1" so the failure was post SECO1 and it looks like a simple relight failure. If the target at SECO1 was 49 deg well 36 is worse than the relight failure.

On edit: someone on NSF brought up an alternate theory. The rocket was off course (49 vs 36 deg inclination) as such they intentionally didn't make the SES2 burn so the low apogee is the symptom not the problem. Again with BO sharing so little data before launch on how this launch was supposed to look hard to say. That is made harder by very vague statements of BO. We put the sat into wrong orbit doesn't necessarily mean a relight error just what many (myself included) assumed.

 

[bb-15]

From the article;

”Officials reported a similarly precise trajectory on the second New Glenn launch, which dispatched two NASA science probes toward Mars in November.”

I keep in mind that New Glenn has successfully lunched two probes sent to Mars on only its second flight. Also this recent NG launch is only its third flight. IMO it will take more time/flights to accurately decide on how viable NG is as a launcher.