The explosion of a Blue Origin rocket on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral on Thursday could have ripple effects throughout the U.S. space program and carry long-term implications for the race against China to put astronauts back on the moon.
Already, U.S. officials were wary of private rocket makers’ ability to carry out the intricate steps needed to return humans to the lunar surface. Now, one of the leading potential options has gone up in flames, with no timeline for its restoration.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was seen as a viable alternative for SpaceX’s still-unproven Starship program — and a pillar of the country’s ability to carry out plans to return to the moon prior to the end of President Donald Trump’s second term.
“It gave us optimism that we had multiple choices,” said Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who serves as professor of astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California.
“Now with this accident we might not be back into a place where we have multiple choices for a while.”
Meanwhile, New Glenn’s explosion sets back Amazon’s ambitions to compete with SpaceX in the competitive satellite internet space. The rocket had been expected to soon carry 48 satellites into low Earth orbit for Amazon, enhancing the retailer’s broadband constellation.
In short, the catastrophic explosion sets the stage for Elon Musk’s dominance of space, leaving the U.S. government and many consumers more reliant on SpaceX’s services ahead of its massive IPO that is expected to be the largest in history.
“That leaves NASA only with [SpaceX’s] Starship,” Reisman said.
The New Glenn rocket exploded on its launchpad around 9 p.m. Thursday, erupting in a voluminous fireball that quickly enveloped its launch complex and turned the night sky orange and white. Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos said all its personnel were safe, adding “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying.” [Bezos, the Amazon executive chairman, owns The Washington Post.]
The rocket company said it “experienced an anomaly during [Thursday’s] hotfire test” and said it would issue updates as it had them.
On Friday, it said that debris from the explosion could wash ashore and warned people not to touch or approach it, but rather to report its location.
The size of the explosion drew comparisons to the 1969 failure of the Soviet N1, one of the largest ever nonmilitary explosions. Because the New Glenn was loaded with propellant, Reisman said, it stored enormous energy.
“The rockets that have exploded mid-flight typically make a much smaller explosion because they’ve consumed propellant,” he said. “The only other rocket explosion on the pad that would have been bigger was the Soviet N1 explosion. This is probably the biggest one we’ve ever had.”
The massive fireball “shows just the amount of fuel that’s in these larger rockets,” said Lori Garver, a former deputy NASA administrator.
The setback endangers the already ambitious Artemis timeline to land humans on the moon during Trump’s term — which raises the potential that he could lose interest and support for NASA, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow focused on space policy at American Enterprise Institute.
Blue Origin and SpaceX have been building competing lunar landers, the necessary component for an eventual human landing on the moon that was planned for 2028, in the Artemis IV mission.
Even before the explosion, that timeline looked audacious to some outside observers.
“Both of them have been behind schedule for different reasons,” said Harrison. “It looked like … Blue Origin was poised to maybe catch up and overtake SpaceX and have a lunar lander ready first. That is no longer the case.”
Having the lander ready for 2027, when Artemis III was scheduled to test maneuvers between a crewed capsule and one or both of the commercial landers in low Earth orbit now seems increasingly like a “pipe dream” for Blue Origin, Harrison said.
SpaceX’s most recent test of Starship, “flight 12,” also was not a perfect success because of some engine failures during flight, Harrison said. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship pending an investigation led by SpaceX.
Central to the question of New Glenn’s viability is how quickly it can recover its only launchpad and bring it back to operation, experts said.
“They’re going to have to do not only a root cause investigation to figure out what happened with the rocket, they’re going to actually have to rebuild that launchpad, which could take months maybe more than a year, depending on how bad the damage is,” Harrison said.
Garver said that it was hard to know how long rebuilding the launchpad would take, but that the damage appeared extensive and it could be a year or more.
She noted that Blue Origin is building a second launchpad, but that it is not close to operational and there could now be a question about whether the fastest way to get at least one launchpad online would be to accelerate construction of the new one versus repairing the existing one.
Blue Origin had been planning to launch its Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar cargo lander this fall, a prototype designed to bring payloads to the lunar surface. The company was also recently awarded a contract from NASA to transport rovers to the moon.
But Garver pointed out that if SpaceX can meet its deadlines, it could still keep the future Artemis missions on track.
Reisman, the former astronaut who served as director of space operations at SpaceX, expressed cautious optimism. He said the damage to the launchpad did not appear as bad as he initially feared, noting the key areas of damage are the obliteration of a lightning tower and mangling of another component called the transporter erector.
“Seeing that massive explosion, I expected worse,” he added.
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