Sound synchronized from @NASASpaceflight footage pic.twitter.com/EWr9t8iegP
— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) May 29, 2026
This, on a static fire, is a major setback for commercial space in general, and Blue Origin in particular. More anon.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Eric Berger has the latest.
It strikes me a that this may have been a demonstration of the recently discovered explosive potential of LOX/methane, which Dugway tests showed was equivalent to TNT.
Silver lining: The Space Force just got good data on methane exclusion zones.
— Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) May 29, 2026
[Friday-morning update]
Stephen Green has the latest at PJMedia.
We’ll see how fast they can recover, but it certainly puts more pressure on SpaceX to get through their mishap investigation and get back to testing.
[Update a while later]
WOW! Remarkable video from 5 miles from the launch pad in Jetty Park. Watch that fireball, and listen around 35 seconds into the video for the massive audible explosion.
— Noah Bergren (@NbergWX) May 29, 2026
📸: John Concilus pic.twitter.com/5Ow9Q6Dd3L
Blue Origin just vaporized a rocket, a launch pad, and Amazon's entire satellite deployment timeline in nine seconds.
— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) May 29, 2026
NG-4 was supposed to fly June 4 carrying 48 Amazon Leo satellites. That mission was the first of 24 contracted Blue Origin launches Amazon needs to build its… https://t.co/Pz2Su6925C
I clipped this from the old 1985 PBS documentary Space Flight. About four minutes. Worth the watch, not just for the footage of the rocket failures, but especially for German engineer Krafft Ehricke's explanation on why the first ballistic missile of the modern age was such a… pic.twitter.com/NlbVileszT
— Brad R. Torgersen (@BradRTorgersen) May 29, 2026
I knew Krafft when I was at Rockwell, because we had him on retainer as a consultant.
[Early-afternoon update]
Eric Berger: Why last night’s event was so catastrophic.
It’s sure a headache for Jared. At this point, Gwynne Shotwell is more important to American space activities than either the NASA administrator or General Saltzman.
[Update a few minutes later]
An aerial survey of the damage:
There's a lot to unpack with LC-36 since New Glenn's explosion last night, so here's a thread on everything I saw from the air this morning:
— Asher B. (@asherbphotos) May 29, 2026
📸 – @LaunchHeavenX https://t.co/gri5w4j3xg pic.twitter.com/ctWtNeVk8a
It’s a rough night for Jared Isaacman and NASA, too. More than one Artemis timeline was riding on New Glenn.
Yes. The biggest hit is probably to Artemis 3. This catastrophe all but assures Blue will be a no-show for that. There will also be delays of indeterminate magnitude to the delivery of the two just-contracted-for lunar rovers to the lunar South Pole base site – perhaps of sufficient extent so as to deprive the crew of Artemis 4 of any surface transport but shank’s mare when they arrive. Maybe this can be avoided by transporting one or both rovers to the lunar surface on the Artemis 4 HLS Starship lander instead.
It will be interesting to see what Blue does next. One hopes for balls-to-the-wall parallel efforts to both restore SLC-36A and complete the barely-begun build-out of SLC-36B. One also hopes to see an acceleration of development of the 9×4 version of New Glenn. This is where Blue gets to show what it’s made of.
One of the other knock-on effects of this major setback for Blue will be that even more weight for the success of Artemis will now fall on the shoulders of SpaceX. I think it is up to the task of handling that.
SpaceX will also certainly be called upon by Amazon for even more additional launches of LEO sats on Falcon 9 than the 10 already contracted for. Perhaps SpaceX will reconsider its intended less-than-record F9 launch pace for 2026.
I wonder if Falcon Heavy could be hacked to deliver MK-1?
Don’t think it would support the faring and maybe not the payload weight to the interface. Would also have to deal with hydrogen. At least to fuel the payload and maybe a make-up tank according to what I have read.
Would be nice if SpaceX could do a team-up and pull their chestnuts out of the fire for Artemis sake.
Maybe Starship to deliver MK-1?
Would be great but be prepared that the TDS/EDS/BDS crowd would just claim a collusion of billonaires to siphon off our hard-earned tax dollars.
They say that stuff anyway.
If any of that could be done appreciably more quickly than Blue getting back to New Glenn flight capability on its own then it would be good to pursue. But I’m not holding my breath. My suspicion is that Musk would be willing but Bezos would not.
They mith might be persuadable. Jared could twist their arm and if that fails, he can get his boss to twist their arms, I hear he knows a thing or two about making big deals.
And if that fails, jut give Rubio access to a Starship, Blue Origin, a welder, a set of tools and some 300 series stainless sheetmetal….
Heh.
It will be interesting to see what Blue does next. One hopes for balls-to-the-wall parallel efforts to both restore SLC-36A and complete the barely-begun build-out of SLC-36B.
I share the hope for all-out rebuild effort. But, I think we must keep our expectations reasonable, even if Dave Limp runs around the site 24/7 employing a horsewhip and Stakhanovite methods. Zack Golden of CSI Starbase fame made a trenchant observation in this regard a little while ago:
https://x.com/CSI_Starbase/status/2060784626273292313
–Richard M
May 30, 2026 at 12:17 PM
It will be interesting to see what Blue does next. One hopes for balls-to-the-wall parallel efforts to both restore SLC-36A and complete the barely-begun build-out of SLC-36B.
I share the hope for all-out rebuild effort. But, I think we must keep our expectations reasonable, even if Dave Limp runs around the site 24/7 employing a horsewhip and Stakhanovite methods…–
Blue could make a pipelauncher.
[“But, I think we must keep our expectations reasonable,”].
A pipelauncher is my term for something which is basically what is called a Spar buoy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_buoy
And rather than: “A spar buoy is a tall, thin buoy that floats upright in the water and is characterized by a small water plane area and a large mass. Because they tend to be stable ocean platforms, spar buoys are popular for making oceanographic measurements.”
So rather than making “oceanographic measurements” because it’s stable, you launch rockets from it, roughly because it’s stable.
So with a pipelauncher, one could use balloon tank type construction, to reduce it’s mass and make it taller and larger diameter than any spar buoy ever made.
“Spar buoys range in length from around one meter [5] to the 108-metre (354-foot) RP FLIP.” [above wiki].
I tend to think one would make them from marine aluminum alloys or strongest titanium alloys [ie, Ti6Al4V grade 5], but one could use weak cheap plastic [or bricks]. And one could launch rockets from bottom of ocean [ but who lives there].
Anyways, one launches rockets in deep enough ocean water, start near waterline and add air inside it, which lifts pipelauncher and rocket up, and then stop accelerating, let rocket leave the pipelauncher. This could be going up fairly slowly, like 40 to 50 mph- or faster.
So, it moving up, and releases rocket, and it then goes down while the rocket goes up. One way to make it go down is by have pipelauncher reaching a height where it starts lifting water above the waterline. So, it displaces water to go up [with air pressure] and holds on to the ocean water [by having less air pressure within the pipe].
Anyways, it’s easier for pipelauncher to launch a less massive rocket like New Glenn, but one could launch a Starship from one.
Sadly, I can’t see any significant holes in Zack’s thesis.
I think Jared should assume no capability for Blue to participate meaningfully in Artemis/Moon Base until at least the beginning of 2028. That means anything not to be done by SpaceX entirely on its own in the interim will have to be done by lander and launch providers other than Blue in whatever combinations prove doable. Lots of landers smaller than Blue Moon Mk-1 going to Luna on Falcon 9s or Falcon Heavies I should think. Terran-R could be a dark horse for launching larger sub-Blue Moon Mk-1 landers. I think Nova, Eclipse and Neutron will be too small.
It’s going to be a scrambly time at the NASA directorates for awhile.
When they stuck the landing, people were saying BO’s design/testing methods were better than SpaceX but this shows that some flaws wont be found until you try and fly something.
We aren’t conditioned to expect, or accept, a failure like this from BO but they have more launchers in their pipeline and a decent production rate.
May they find the problem and a solution and get back to flying as soon as the regulators allow.
The regulators are going to be the least of Blue’s problems for quite awhile. And Blue’s pipeline and production rate will matter naught absent a place from which to launch. Blue will be doing exceedingly well to have that back in-hand again sooner than a year hence.
In this case, the two (regulators and reconstruction) go hand in hand. Let’s hope neither slows down the other.
It’s also a lesson you should always have at least two launch pads.
…and at some distance from each other.
If there’s a pool on what caused it, put me in for the concentrated hydrogen peroxide system that powers the four APUs that run the hydraulic system, which drives the landing legs and thrust vector control system. But that’s just a blind guess, based on the use of concentrated H2O2 and the bad history of H2O2, and that a static fire will include gimbaling tests.
I figure most people would instead lean towards an uncontained engine explosion. If that’s the case, this could also impact ULA’s Vulcan to some extent.
If you’re right, that’s bad news. If the engine explosion hypothesis proves true, that would be worse news for exactly the reason you cited. And that worse news would carry on beyond ULA to Amazon.
Woods170 claims that there were a couple of experimental prototype BE-4’s installed on the booster, temporarily, for this WDR/hotfire. If true, it would be interesting to know if the anomaly occurred with one of those engines. Because if it did, that would reduce the concern.
It might reduce concern that Blue can produce a reliable rocket once it again has someplace to launch it from, but it would not reduce concern about Blue’s engineering judgement. Blue does, after all, have engine test stands. Those are the appropriate places for experiments – and possible explosions – as SpaceX demonstrates with some frequency at McGregor.
That doesn’t look like water that initially is ejected out the trench, but a fuel/air mixture that then ignites. I first thought it might have hit an ignition source from GSE, but now I see the fire begin closer to below the pad.
Alex, I’ll take “This testing video depicts a hard start of a methalox engine damaging plumbing” for $500 please…
That’s how I’m leaning. From far away, we wouldn’t see the moment engine ignition because it’s dim blue flame down below the field of view, and the bright orange flames haven’t filled the exhaust trench and come back up.
So a hard start and engine explosion that ripped open fuel lines would instead dump propellant into the hot exhaust of the other engines just as an abort shut them all down. But the propellant would keep on pouring out of the bottom of the rocket, and that’s probably what we first see in the video.
There also appears to be some up pressure that bursts the tank further up the stack just before maximal mixing and the big shebang.
Low start, high finish, why I suggest it.
Eric Berger is the cynical sort that would fit in well as a commentator here.
Well, in all fairness to Eric, and directly to his point: “Data is data…”
Artemis III mission planning just got a lot simpler.
Rumor is BO is going straight for the 9X4 NG.
BO should take whatever the shortest path to Return to Flight looks to be. If that does not happen to be NG 9×4, Blue should still push as hard on that beast as it can.
Dave Limp says no, they will stick to 7×2 for now.
First pad damage photo I’ve seen so far…
One heck of a tax write off.
This is one common expression that sticks in my craw. A tax write off is paying less taxes because you made less profit. This is a bad thing and the ignorant hype on it endlessly.
Obviously, the New Glenn exploding and ruining the launch pad is a bad thing. May BO have the business to benefit from carrying their loses forward.
The Blue Moon Mark 1 missions were going to carry rover(s) to be onsite when the Artemis IV crew arrives. This morning, I imagine those rovers have been downgraded from “must have” to “oh well, would have been nice. Let’s move ‘em to Artemis V.”
Or put both of them on the cargo manifest for Artemis 4’s HLS Starship.
Could happen, but I wonder if NASA could be convinced to do something that radical!
Soliciting your opinion: Why are the Moon Base payloads so low? Even out to phase 3. It almost seems NASA is discounting SpaceX projected Starship capabilities.
I wish I knew as it makes no sense unless Elon had quietly passed the word that his own lunar base build-out was to have first call on Starship-based lunar assets except for those NASA has already contracted for. In light of very recent developments, of course, everyone’s plans could change. At this point, I think Elon would be willing to haul more freight for NASA early-on, especially if it would make the Administration happy.
Wish reporters would ask these questions.
Also world peace and a personal powerball win, all equally probable.
Or a weekend of erotic abandon in a Vegas penthouse suite with Carmen Electra.
Hey, if you’re wishing for the thoroughly improbable, why mess around?
On further consideration this seems like the only viable option. One of the rovers at least.
I have a question.
Imagine a manned launch vehicle on top of New Glenn.
Could fault detection activate a powerful enough LES quickly enough to successfully out-run that detonation shockwave?
I think so. Such a system would have detected and acted on the initial fire, with a couple seconds to spare before the final detonation. Talk about an exciting ride though…
Someone on X synced up video of the Dragon pad abort test with the New Glenn explosion to look at just that possibility. The result was, the Dragon zipped out well ahead of the flame envelope. That’s not exactly a rigorous modeling exercise, and it would only apply to a Super Draco based LES, but….
It would be sticker if exploding SRB’s were involved, but they’re not, fortunately.
I watched space flight when it first aired. Even today 40 years after it aired, 80 years after it actually took place, there is something primal about watching that V-2 riding a pillar of flame and realizing that it was the first.
For all the infrastructure BO has built out over the years, there is only one pad (and the beginnings of a second).
A lot of people were getting all excited about BO catching up to SpaceX, at least as far as Artemis missions.
Now we have SpaceX approaching 3 operational Starship pads (with 2 more underway), Starfactory spooling up, multiple Gigabays… barring another major setback, Starship progress from here won’t be a linear continuation of the last few years.
We aren’t in tent-city any more, Dorothy.
No, decidedly not. And with the IPO proceeds, plus the $60 billion coming in from Anthropic over the next four years, Elon is going to be able to afford both a much larger gas pedal and a much larger boot to put on it.
The explosion was large enough to cause a mushroom cloud. Which supposedly requires “several hundred tons of TNT”. Alternatively a fuel-air explosion with good mixing before ignition.
I suppose that’s not completely surprising since the tanks would have been ruptured almost immediately. Mixing with air I guess is pretty easy if it’s a gas at normal temperature/pressure.
If the second stage was also fueled there’s hydrogen in that mix too.
Not too much fire left on the ground after the mushroom cloud, so I suppose it might be easier to clean up than say kerosene or hydrazine would be. Though that might just be an artifact of looking at it from far away.
Scott Manley offhand estimated it to be a roughly 1 kiloton explosion, based on the full propellant and oxidizer load of a New Glenn.
If true, it would be comparable to the July 1969 N1 explosion, but somewhat short of the 1917 Halifax disaster and the 1944 Port Chicago explosion.
But 1kt is probably more a measure here of the thermal yield than the blast yield. A 1kt blast would have leveled the main tower, I think. The fireball made it look more impressive than it actually was — though even so it was enough to trash the launch pad!
What about the Beirut Explosion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
Paul, see below…
Dave Limp says the damage to the bad isn’t as bad as it could have been and they will be flying by the end of the year
Let’s hope!
To my eye, untrained in explosion damage, it doesn’t look bad at all. Fix the tower and built a new transporter. But I’m probably not seeing important details.
A little closer to home… Paul do you remember this?
Better photos here.
There is nothing of existing construct in the town center of Crescent City IL that is older than 1970. There is also a commemorative plaque at the site.
Much was changed in the construction of propane tank cars for rail transport after this one.
The detonation induced a seismic wave of M2.5, equivalent to 85 km TNT. Even with 5% coupling from a fuel air blast (calibrated by many weapons tests) that’s about 2 tons yield. Everything else was a Hollywood-style fireball, spectacular but only providing a brief heat pulse.
No earth shattering kaboom, I’m sorry.
85kg, damn autocannon.