* I wouldn’t have known Bezos was launching were it not for a synchronicity that alerted me.
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OK now this is getting downright suspicious.
Watching the second stage ignition on the everyday astronaut live stream it was apparent to myself as well as the everyday astronaut that something very strange happened with the second stage. That’s why I asked about it.
Then come to find out that the story is that it is not going to launch the Mars orbiters. Rather it’s going to remain in low orbit.
So I go looking around the reddit threads and come across a link that at one point was showing the orbit of the second stage.
Not anymore apparently.
The Blue origin video at 1:46:46 should have the anomaly.
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OK here’s a physics explanation for a pitch-up maneuver for a second stage with a low thrust to weight ratio (which can happen with high Isp fuels – the most extreme case being ion drives with LH2+LOX intermediate):
The second stage engine is designed for efficient vacuum operation. The pitch up maneuver is so that the more efficient operation regime occurs sooner and for a longer period of time than otherwise.
And this video out the backend of the second stage may explain the anomaly that looked like an aggressive vertical pitch maneuver.
But the magnitude and direction of the maneuver in that more recent clip may not match.
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Something else regarding the pitch-up maneuver discussed by Scott Manley: It can compensate for booster-stage fuel conservation in preparation for an extended landing burn – as turned out to be necessary when the booster missed the barge.
That said, this image is an interesting snapshot evincing a couple of things:
- No Desis
- Gray…
While Musk defended the dearth of “color” in SpaceX by appealing to legal restrictions placed on defense industry workers, and one might cope in a similar manner here, the age thing…
The Seattle area aerospace industry has, like AT&T’s Bell Labs in its final days before the breakup, been a black hole sucking in and neutralizing talent. It must be Hell working in that environment for some of the more perceptive employees and they’d probably work for peanuts to get out and do something real.
Bezos is another of my wayward virtual sons that seems to get serious when it comes to rockets but just can’t take that final step and own up to what it would take to, themselves, cultivate the next generation rather than eating the seed corn in centralized hoards by their private capture of positive network externalities.
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It did not miss the barge. That was a safety maneuver. Just like SpaceX does bringing super heavy back over the water, and then sidling up to the capture tower.
It really was impressive. As manley alluded to, this may be due to the continuous throttling offered by the engines relative to the lack thereof in Merlin.
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Although I’ve looked and been unable to find any official documentation of this safety maneuver, your imputation is likely correct. It makes sense for the reasons you state.
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