Recommended Posts

Good stuff with their testing, but I will never ever call Methane LNG. EVER. I refuse to do it out of principle and because my education won't allow me to.

 

"Natural Gas."

 

"Which 'natural gas' are you referring to? There are SO many. ALL things could be a gas, and in one form or another all of them are 'natural'. Be specific?" will be the FIRST response I give someone who comes at me with that.

  • 3 weeks later...

 

 

They clearly hit a wall with the BE-4 Vac for the second stage and are switchibg to BE-3U. Now New Glenn is no earlier than Q4-2020, not 2019. A slip into 2021 is likely, and one has to wonder if this will impact Vulcan-Centaur V.

 

Edit: with an LH2 upper stage, New Glenn will exceed Vulcan-Centaur V.  All blur needs to do now is make a long-cruise version of NG's upper stage and Vulcan-ACES takes a dagger to the neck as well.

 

http://spacenews.com/blue-origin-switches-engines-for-new-glenn-second-stage/

 

Quote

Blue Origin switches engines for New Glenn second stage

 

Although the company’s website still shows New Glenn with a second stage powered by a reignitable version of the BE-4 it is developing to power the main stage of both New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, that configuration is now out of date.

A Blue Origin executive told SpaceNews the company is shelving development of a vacuum-optimized version of BE-4 and will instead use vacuum-optimized versions of flight-proven BE-3 engines for New Glenn’s second stage and optional third stage.

“We’ve already flown BE-3s, and we were already in the development program for BE-3U as the third stage for New Glenn,” said Clay Mowry, Blue Origin’s vice president of sales, marketing and customer experience. “It made a lot of sense for us to switch to an architecture where we get there faster for first flight.”

The BE-3U is the upper stage variant of the liquid hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine that has powered Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard spacecraft on seven suborbital test flights since its 2015 debut.

Mowry said switching to the BE-3U for New Glenn’s second stage will allow Blue Origin to conduct the rocket’s first launch in the fourth quarter of 2020. He declined to say how much time the engine change saves compared to the original configuration.
>
>

 

Edited by DocM

Wow. This one is catching me by surprise.

 

That's gonna keep additional production lines open at Blue, sure, but good grief this was not what they'd planned on. Are the technical problems really that insurmountable with the BE-4VAC that they couldn't be solved? I'm calling BS here -- SpaceX got their [snip] together with relighting CH4/LOX in a near-vacuum (because space isn't a complete vacuum), and they didn't have any problems to speak of.

 

C'mon, Blue. You people are smarter and way more talented than having to revert to LH2 burners. That's 1960's technology.

OTOH:

 

with an LH2 upper stage, New Glenn will exceed Vulcan-Centaur V.  All Blue needs to do now is make a long-cruise version of NG's BE-3U upper stage and Vulcan-ACES takes a dagger to the neck as well.

 

Tory Bruno can't be very happy.

 

And Ariane 6 isn't any better off.

  • Like 1
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I guess it is also a safe bet to state that this is the reason by ULA keeps saying 'soon' when asked about a decision on engine selection for the Vulcan. They will not make a call until they have seen BE-4 do a 100% power or more burn at full duration (or longer). Until then... no bueno!

  • Like 2

My educational-ish guess (because that's not my field of Engineering) is there's some telemetry they're seeing that's at redline that they have to work through still. Until then they'll be stuck at that level of output. Likely the problem part they had trouble with before.

 

If they are still dealing with that, and haven't made any progress on it in the year and a half since? Consider the BE-4 EOL'd in that scenario. That'd be a showstopper. There are several showstopper scenarios that'll kill an engine programme dead during R&D, and a component failure that limits power which cannot be worked around is the main killer of good engine ideas.

 

Kinda like the EM Drive, I'm just seeing that it has been killed off.

 

Oooh, this'd destroy Blue Origin if something like that were to happen ...

I hope so too. Competition is good for everyone. It gets me thinking, though, that Aerojet's tweet might be a thinly-veiled "hey fellas, you aren't gonna get that issue sorted" kind of thing. Maybe poking them with a stick somewhat.

Awesome. Possible takeaways can include: 

 

a.) In it for the long haul,

b.) sees what is in the best interests of all the players involved, but isn't doing the "groupthink" either (is for the Lunar Village but not necessarily the Cislunar Station),

c.) is also thinking "don't change what is clearly working (ala SpaceX and reuse)" but also putting their own spin on "what works" to differentiate themselves and advance the overall "what works" because "competition is what drives innovation" (and I also believe this)

d.) is taking the smart approach IMO overall and won't regret doing so.

 

Yep. They'll be fine. Out of everyone that OldSpace should be listening to, it's Mr. Bezos that has the best chance of actually making them listen. Maybe they will once Blue's hardware is flying circles around their yet-to-be-launched platforms (SLS/Orion, I'm looking at you) ...

 

 

  • 4 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • GitHub removes manual model selection from Copilot free and student plans by Karthik Mudaliar GitHub is removing the ability to manually select an AI model from its Copilot Free and Student plans, making its automatic routing system the default and only way to choose a model. This means users on these tiers will no longer be able to deliberately select a particular OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Microsoft model for a task. In its announcement, GitHub said Copilot Auto will dynamically choose what it considers the best model for each request. Free and Student accounts will retain access to models from multiple families, although the available selection will continue to depend on the restrictions attached to each plan. GitHub did not identify a fixed pool of models that Auto will always use, and its documentation warns that model availability can change over time. GitHub describes Auto as more than a random fallback system. On supported surfaces, its task-optimization technology evaluates the complexity of a request alongside real-time information about model health and availability. Straightforward prompts can be routed to faster and less expensive models, while more demanding coding tasks may be sent to higher-cost reasoning models. The company says this approach should reduce rate limiting, latency, and failed requests. Auto generally selects one model along natural prompt-caching boundaries rather than repeatedly switching models during a session, as GitHub found that mid-session changes increased costs without producing sufficient improvements in output quality. Users can still check which model generated a response. In Copilot Chat, the information appears when hovering over an answer, while Copilot CLI and the Copilot cloud agent display the selected model alongside their output. Auto is available in Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, and the cloud agent, with the exact implementation and release status varying between supported development environments. The latest restriction follows several months of adjustments to Copilot’s individual plans. GitHub temporarily halted new Pro, Pro+, and Student subscriptions in April as it sought to manage demand and service reliability. It later introduced token-based billing and began gradually reopening individual-plan registrations on June 17. Alongside the picker change, GitHub is retiring the “Preview” label from Microsoft-developed models. It argues that the label is no longer necessary because Auto handles model routing and models are continuously updated behind the scenes.
    • Look up 'inflation' kid. Ask an AI for the numbers between both games.
    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
    • This article makes my head hurt. Lots of confusing words
    • Google adds built-in computer control to Gemini 3.5 flash by Karthik Mudaliar Google has added Computer Use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, giving developers a single model that can reason about a task and operate graphical interfaces across browsers, mobile devices, and desktop environments. The feature is available through the Gemini API and Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, although it remains a preview feature for now. Computer Use enables an AI agent to examine screenshots and return actions such as mouse clicks, scrolling, and keyboard input. A developer’s application must execute those actions, capture the resulting screen, and send it back to Gemini, creating a continuous loop until the task is completed. Google says the integration can be used for activities including repetitive form filling, application testing, research across multiple websites, and longer enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.5 Flash can work with browser, mobile, and desktop environments, whereas Google’s earlier standalone Computer Use model was primarily positioned around browser interaction. The main change is consolidation. Computer control was previously offered through the separate Gemini 2.5 Computer Use preview model. As Neowin reported when that model was introduced, it was designed to interpret a visual interface and generate actions without requiring a website-specific API. Google later brought Computer Use to preview versions of Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash in January 2026. The latest release now incorporates the tool into the stable Gemini 3.5 Flash model rather than requiring developers to select a specialized model solely for interface automation. Gemini 3.5 Flash itself was announced in May as Google’s latest fast model for coding and multi-step agent workflows. It supports a one-million-token input context window and up to 65,000 output tokens, along with adjustable thinking levels that let developers trade additional reasoning for lower latency and cost. Google also added that Gemini 3.5 Flash received targeted adversarial training for computer-use scenarios. The company is also offering safeguards that can require user confirmation before sensitive or irreversible actions and automatically stop a workflow when suspected prompt injection is detected. Its developer documentation describes configurable protections for areas such as financial transactions and changes to sensitive records. Google isn't the first to bring Computer Use to its platform. Anthropic has made computer control available through Claude, while OpenAI has continued improving computer-use performance in its recent models. Microsoft has also applied the concept to business workflows, including a Computer Use capability for the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      463
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!