What will be the outcome of New Glenn's second flight (NG-2)?

[sstli2]

What do you think will happen? Choose the closest option.

[jimvela]

Too few choices.
Launch snd staging, not quite nominal 2nd stage flight, payload separation.

Botched payload orbital insertion, failure to land booster.

[Comga]

Too few choices.
Launch and staging, not quite nominal 2nd stage flight, payload separation.

Botched payload orbital insertion, failure to land booster.

Too many choice
What’s the boundary between reentry and landing?

My opinion is that the booster will go “off-nominal” somewhere on that unspecified border between a reentry burn, which Blue has not said if they are doing again, and “landing”, like in hypersonic descent or at the supersonic start of the landing burn, far above the barge.  Remember, Blue has never tried either of those, because NS is configured in a different manner.

It’s amusing that my quite optimistic “fails on landing” vote is in the middle of the pack.

PS. Any demerits for leaving another large chunk of space debris in a long-lived orbit?
Full success includes deorbiting the second stage, or they’re just hacking their way into the launch market.

[sstli2]

Too few choices.
Launch snd staging, not quite nominal 2nd stage flight, payload separation.

Botched payload orbital insertion, failure to land booster.

You put the worst outcome. In your case, "botched payload orbital insertion" means "Fails to reach orbit or deploy payload". Deploying the payload and failing to land is still a successful mission. Failing to deploy the payload is not.

If you feel the need to elaborate, that's what the posts are for.

What’s the boundary between reentry and landing?

My opinion is that the booster will go “off-nominal” somewhere on that unspecified border between a reentry burn, which Blue has not said if they are doing again, and “landing”, like in hypersonic descent or at the supersonic start of the landing burn, far above the barge.  Remember, Blue has never tried either of those, because NS is configured in a different manner.

I would call that re-entry. My intent with "landing" is really alluding to the the final phase, near the drone ship.

PS. Any demerits for leaving another large chunk of space debris in a long-lived orbit?
Full success includes deorbiting the second stage, or they’re just hacking their way into the launch market.

Generally no one does de-orbit burns outside of LEO, they put the stage in a disposal orbit. SpaceX only did a disposal burn for the first time just this year on a GTO mission, if I recall correctly.

They were compliant with stage disposal regulatory guidelines on the first flight. This flight is going to LEO, so I would expect them to de-orbit the stage, again compliant with regulatory guidelines.

[redneck]

New Glenn is due for a clean flight with a perfect landing.  Unlike Starship, they don’t seem likely to make same mistake twice or even ten times. 

Better is the enemy of good enough, but perfect keeps you from being fed to the shark tank.  Turtles are awesome.

Perfect is an illusion of a limited mind. It means you believe there is no room for improvement anywhere. Both companies going for all up testing should concern people that have done development.

I voted orbital insertion and landing failure. Likely to take a few tries to get it right when the vehicle has little track record to inform the operation. 

[laszlo]

New Glenn is due for a clean flight with a perfect landing.  Unlike Starship, they don’t seem likely to make same mistake twice or even ten times. 

Better is the enemy of good enough, but perfect keeps you from being fed to the shark tank.  Turtles are awesome.

Perfect is an illusion of a limited mind. It means you believe there is no room for improvement anywhere. Both companies going for all up testing should concern people that have done development.

"Perfect", in this context, simply means "all documented requirements fulfilled to the documented standards". As for all-up testing, it worked out pretty well for the Saturn Vs, especially Apollo 8.

[redneck]

New Glenn is due for a clean flight with a perfect landing.  Unlike Starship, they don’t seem likely to make same mistake twice or even ten times. 

Better is the enemy of good enough, but perfect keeps you from being fed to the shark tank.  Turtles are awesome.

Perfect is an illusion of a limited mind. It means you believe there is no room for improvement anywhere. Both companies going for all up testing should concern people that have done development.

"Perfect", in this context, simply means "all documented requirements fulfilled to the documented standards". As for all-up testing, it worked out pretty well for the Saturn Vs, especially Apollo 8.

Expendable systems have little choice in the matter. Whether it hits 200 feet or 200 miles, the vehicle is lost. Reusable systems should have and exercise the option of incremental flight expansion. Much like a new class of supersonic aircraft may have a large number of flights before it passes the sound barrier. First flights sometimes don't even retract the landing gear. Same with new equipment types and cars.  You don't go from drawing board to Indy without a lot of intermediate testing.

As for Apollo, good point, but it is an outlier compared to all the vehicle types that failed early and often.

[AmigaClone]

New Glenn is due for a clean flight with a perfect landing.  Unlike Starship, they don’t seem likely to make same mistake twice or even ten times. 

Better is the enemy of good enough, but perfect keeps you from being fed to the shark tank.  Turtles are awesome.

Perfect is an illusion of a limited mind. It means you believe there is no room for improvement anywhere. Both companies going for all up testing should concern people that have done development.

"Perfect", in this context, simply means "all documented requirements fulfilled to the documented standards". As for all-up testing, it worked out pretty well for the Saturn Vs, especially Apollo 8.

Expendable systems have little choice in the matter. Whether it hits 200 feet or 200 miles, the vehicle is lost. Reusable systems should have and exercise the option of incremental flight expansion. Much like a new class of supersonic aircraft may have a large number of flights before it passes the sound barrier. First flights sometimes don't even retract the landing gear. Same with new equipment types and cars.  You don't go from drawing board to Indy without a lot of intermediate testing.

As for Apollo, good point, but it is an outlier compared to all the vehicle types that failed early and often.

In some ways NASA was lucky that there were only 3 deaths related to the Apollo program. Had an incident similar to Apollo 13 occurred at the same point of the Apollo 8 mission, then the result would have been three more dead astronauts - and possibly no means to recover their bodies.

[lightleviathan]

I'm voting for a successful mission, failure on landing for the booster. Blue obviously has experience designing reusable launch systems, and they certainly can execute, but I would be surprised if they got it on the second try.

[sdsds]

To describe it as a complete success I'd want the booster safely back in port. I'm predicting the booster makes a credible attempt at a landing burn and remains sufficiently in control that it gets within visible range of the recovery platform.

[Vultur]

To describe it as a complete success I'd want the booster safely back in port. I'm predicting the booster makes a credible attempt at a landing burn and remains sufficiently in control that it gets within visible range of the recovery platform.

Yeah, this is hard to vote on because I think the result might be something in between complete landing failure and complete success (booster returned in usable condition).

[sstli2]

If you think it will land in one piece, call it a success. This poll asks nothing about what comes after.

[Robotbeat]

I voted complete success.

[sstli2]

It's launch day:

- 92% of you believe the mission will be successful. Only 8% voted for a failure to put the payload into orbit.
- 31% believe they will successfully recover the booster.
- 15% believe they will get no further than NG-1.
- 45%, the most popular choice, believe that it will be able to complete a re-entry burn, but will fail somewhere around landing.

As far as my vote: I voted for a complete success. I believe their ability to hover and the lift of their strakes will allow a large tolerance for landing, and they appear to have made the necessary changes to support engine relight. If their engineers are 75% confident, I'm inclined to believe it. If not, I sure hope it gets close.

[sstli2]

Looks like 69% of you were wrong. Kudos to the optimistic 31%.

[sdsds]

Congratulations to Blue; congratulations to the 20 forum members who predicted a fully successful mission.

[jongoff]

Looks like 69% of you were wrong. Kudos to the optimistic 31%.

As one of the pessimistic ones, I'm extremely glad to be proven wrong here. Having New Glenn start hitting its stride is a big deal for the industry. Second company to successfully recover a booster from an orbital launch via powered landing. Pretty dang amazing.

Way to go Blue!

~Jon

[Tywin]

Looks like 69% of you were wrong. Kudos to the optimistic 31%.

With Blue always optimistic!!

[Tywin]

Looks like 69% of you were wrong. Kudos to the optimistic 31%.

As one of the pessimistic ones, I'm extremely glad to be proven wrong here. Having New Glenn start hitting its stride is a big deal for the industry. Second company to successfully recover a booster from an orbital launch via powered landing. Pretty dang amazing.

Way to go Blue!

~Jon

Soon Gravitics to New Glenn

[rpapo]

Looks like 69% of you were wrong. Kudos to the optimistic 31%.

As one of the pessimistic ones, I'm extremely glad to be proven wrong here. Having New Glenn start hitting its stride is a big deal for the industry. Second company to successfully recover a booster from an orbital launch via powered landing. Pretty dang amazing.

Way to go Blue!

~Jon

And the only two companies to succeed so far are American.  Not that I'm remotely close to being a MAGA, but it is something to be proud of.  Though I expect the Chinese will succeed relatively soon.