"I hope that it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage."
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See full article...
Here’s why the failure of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is so catastrophic
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Could it be quicker to build LC-36B rather than repair LC-36A? Or is to too early to say?
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I seem to remember that SpaceX is (was) scaling down production of Falcon 9 and hence Falcon Heavy as well. So if now all the medium-heavy traffic suddenly depends on those two, it means that they will have to scale up production again as well as launch cadence. Which in turn might (perhaps I'm completely wrong) mean slightly less company resources for Starship development leading to further delays to Artemis etc. A whole domino chain.
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Thanks for burning the midnight oil to produce this article, I've been curious to see the knock on effects spelled out...
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Wondered about many of these questions! As always thanks for providing the answers and keepin us updated on the space industry!
That explosion was crazy...
That explosion was crazy...
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Is there anything of note at this supposed second site?
All I could find was a reported application to build another pad.
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7x2 was struggling to hit its 45-tonne payload goal. With a forced >15 month pause, Blue Origin might as well retire 7x2 and focus on 9x4. That way when they come back they'll at least have a more capable rocket. I know it sounds cold but some big decisions are going to be contemplated in the next few days.
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I’ll be interested in hearing the assessment of the HIF. There was clear external damage to the structure and rumors were flying about direct damage to the hardware inside. Seems like that would make a bad situation worse.
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It's not like they're going to launch any of the flight hardware any time soon. So that's just another line item, and probably not the long pole, timing-wise.
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If the Blue Moon lander needs a "top off" from the booster, that makes for some mighty interesting plumbing at the PAF 
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How critical is this really though? Mark 1 is supposed to have a payload of 3 tonnes to the surface, is boiloff so bad that it can't do 1 tonne down without top off? I get that the boiloff is going to hit hydrogen disproportionately, you may want to short load the LOX to compensate, but again when you only need a fraction of the performance seems possible. It may not be ideal, but if the goal is to keep Artemis moving and none of the payloads require its full capabilities, there ought to be some workaround possible.
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It makes the SpaceX separate test facility look like a very good idea. They blew that test site up once and had to risk testing at the launch pad, but they only do that in an emergency (at least for the second stage). I would think separate testing and launching facilities will become a best practice for all launch companies soon.
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The child in me: rocket went boom 
The adult in me: rocket went boom
Looking at rockets explode is always exciting and sad. Besides the evil billionaires, there's the work of so many people going up in flames. BO workers will be massively disappointed by what happened, and humanity is one step further from colonizing outer space. Let's hope they recover quickly - monopolies are never good, and SpaceX badly needs a competitor.
The adult in me: rocket went boom
Looking at rockets explode is always exciting and sad. Besides the evil billionaires, there's the work of so many people going up in flames. BO workers will be massively disappointed by what happened, and humanity is one step further from colonizing outer space. Let's hope they recover quickly - monopolies are never good, and SpaceX badly needs a competitor.
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The usable payload to the Lunar surface is literally all in the margins. It goes from whatever you're happy with on full tanks to negative in no seconds flat.
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"Aspirational goals" as we dub things in our business post-modernist slang, for things we know will never happen on time or as imagined.
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There is construction going on about 500m north of the active pad. On Google Earth, the last imagery date is 29/12/2025 and looks like earthworks are still underway. Major concrete works don't look like they have started yet, that is probably a showstopper for getting the second pad up and running instead of repairing the first one.
Interestingly, the second pad is being built on LC-11 and not on the original LC-36B pad which is now under the Blue Origin assembly building.
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whatever happened to the idea of using chicken feathers to minimize H2 pressures & boil-off?
Hydrogen storage on pyrolyzed chicken feather fibers
could such a technique be used in the fuel cell to prevent the need for top off?
Hydrogen storage on pyrolyzed chicken feather fibers
could such a technique be used in the fuel cell to prevent the need for top off?
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I assume this also has a knock on effect on Amazon's constellation? With this rocket grounded and a slower cadence on Falcon 9, that leaves them with just Ariane 6 and Atlas 5 doesn't it? Ariane 5 is very much an artisanal rocket and I think the Atlas is now out of production.
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About Artemis III. The problem is that NASA now doesn't has a PR stick with which to hit SpaceX to encourage them to move faster with HLS. If Artemis III launched in Dec 2027 and it docked with a BO lander, that would be a PR win for BO, and a lost for SpaceX. And it would probably push NASA to change the plan for Artemis IV.
Right now, no human rated lander from BO is needed for Artemis IV. Only the infrastructure that the MK1 landers were going to deploy on the surface.
Right now, no human rated lander from BO is needed for Artemis IV. Only the infrastructure that the MK1 landers were going to deploy on the surface.
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Even as of last night there was strong indication that everything inside is fine.
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As it is, Blue Moon mk.1 is at the limit of TLI for Falcon Heavy. One wonders if there's enough height in the fairing to include a Blue Ring behind the BM1. In which case, you might save some of the departure prop for landing and have enough left after boiloff.
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They have at least 2 more NG1 already built. You would only drop them, if the cost of having a tower that supports only 9x4 is way cheaper than having a tower that supports both. Also, you need to take into account how fast you can finish the 9x4 design and built it.
With 7x2 you could do a launch the week after the tower is ready. Even if you are only launching 30t.
I think that further in the future it would be better for BO to have a 9x2 option instead of the 7x2 (BE-3U engines aren't cheap). But I don't see 9x4 being ready in the next 18 months.
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SpaceX also executes static fires at their launch pads. That's literally how they lost the AMOS-6 rocket.
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One also has to factor in the time and cost of design changes to New Glenn to mitigate this failure.
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In the article, it was mentioned that for these very large rockets, the facilities are much more expensive. $100 million here, $100 million there, you know, and pretty soon it's real money even to Bezos.
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Well, there was a debate over how big the danger space is when a methane-fueled rocket explodes (mostly in terms of how the Starship launch pad at the Cape would interfere with other activities there). I guess we have some real-world data now.
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And given that a Falcon 9 launched today, it can't be all that bad.
Of course, Starship is massively larger than New Glenn - like 4x as much propellant someone mentioned yesterday.
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That was one of my first thoughts when I saw the size of the mushroom cloud in Scott Manley's review. This seemed to be an explosion rather than a deflagration. It's a shame to test it this way, though.
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Mark 1 doesn't go to TLI, it starts from LEO and does its own TLI.
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While this might not be a "bright side" for others, and with full understanding of the implications this has for US space programs, I did have the errant thought that mushroom clouds over Florida looked kind of cool in a Dr. Strangelove sort of way. Especially seeing those lightning towers wiggling around as they were enveloped in flame.
This article, though, does point out the realities very clearly, and they're not good if one expects the US to land humans on the moon in THIS decade. TBF, I don't see the point to it, other than a "beat the Chinese to the moon!" mentality that's just an echo of "Beat the Soviets to the moon!" battle-cry from 60 years ago.
Given SpaceX's IPO and the plans for "Data Centers In Spaaaaaaaaace!", and their throttling back on launches for anything else (so far), I don't see a US human moon landing happening this decade. But that was what I was seeing in the trends BEFORE BO had a New Glenn RUD, too, so overall in THAT game at least, if boots on the moon by 2030 is supposed to have been the goal, honestly never saw that happening. There's too many plates not spinning for it to happen. And this just blew a crater in the middle of the ring where the spinning plates show was going on.
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