u/snoo-boop

Another recent article about Blue Origin's major role in Lunar landings.

> That adds challenges to NASA’s Artemis return-to-the-moon program, which already has little margin of error for meeting a goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of 2028.

> Blue Origin is one of two companies — Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the other — that NASA has hired to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface.

> The plan for Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander relies on multiple New Glenn launches to get that lander to the moon.

> When Blue Origin won its $3.4 billion moon lander contract in 2023, NASA envisioned not needing the company until the third landing mission. The first two lunar landings were awarded two years earlier to SpaceX, which is adapting its giant Starship spacecraft.

https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ is showing LA-08 as the next launch, NET July. Probably not a surprise that the current Vulcan activity is intended to bring the "new" VIF online.

There are more details than the tweet previously posted:

> The final mishap report identified the direct cause of the mishap as a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line and led to a thrust anomaly during the second-stage engine burn,” the agency stated.

> “Blue Origin identified nine corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence of the event,” the FAA added, but did not disclose the corrective actions. “The FAA will verify that Blue Origin implements corrective actions prior to the launch of the next New Glenn mission.”

Quotes:

> Under the agreement, JAXA will provide solar arrays and a thermal infrared imager instrument for Ramses. It will also launch the mission on an H3 rocket in April 2028.

> ESA and JAXA announced in November 2024 their intent to collaborate on Ramses, working first to identify potential Japanese contributions to the mission. The agreement came after both agencies secured funding for the mission, including formal adoption of Ramses at ESA’s November 2025 ministerial council meeting.

A recent post on r/nasa has an intriguing comment:

> And it’s unclear if the BE4 power fade issue is/will be solved enough for this plan to work. (Current real payload is 75% of advertised; that’s after the “upgrades” on the most recent flight)

I also note that Tory said a while ago that Vulcan would carry 45 Kuipers (now called Amazon Leo), but the Vulcan manifest on Wikipedia says 40.

Now, most of Vulcan's takeoff thrust for the VC6 is the SRBs, but then the BE4s are used as a sustainer, firing for 299 seconds as compared to New Glenn, with no SRBs, firing BE4 for 190 seconds.

Is this a 10% reduction in performance (for now)? If it's real, I'm kinda surprised I haven't already seen an article about this in the space press.

A large increase in flights for Blorigin, ULA, and SX.