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Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test

• weare138 5mo ago
  Blew Origin
  • HerbManic 5mo ago
    B.O.N.G goes up in smoke. As an aside, that acronym is something you would expect out of Musk and yet Blue Origin sort of accidentally got it themselves.
• formvoltron 5mo ago
  The timing of this so close to SpaceX IPO is seriously sus.
• SilverElfin 5mo ago
  Shame. I would love to see a competitor rein in SpaceX.
  • Computer0 5mo ago
    SpaceX had to blow up plenty to get to where they are.
    • 0xbadcafebee 5mo ago
      It looks like SpaceX blew up ~20 times while Blue Origin has blown up ~4
      • Rover222 5mo ago
        blowing up on the pad is a whole different level of disaster (which yeah spacex has done a couple times)
    • Ancapistani 5mo ago
      Yeah, but the vast majority of those were planned, and at least most exceeded expectations. Was this an expected outcome? It doesn’t sound like it, but I’ve not really investigated it deeply.
      • Rover222 5mo ago
        SpaceX has had several unplanned explosions on the launchpad.
      • hgoel 5mo ago
        Only their most recent explosions have been planned. Anyone who followed early Starship, and even before then, remembers how much unexpected exploding, bursting and burning it, and previous SpaceX projects, have done to get to their current level of reliability.
      • mempko 5mo ago
        What are you talking about exceeded expectations? Starship is very far behind schedule.
  • pylotlight 5mo ago
    > rein in? You don't like going to space? What do you have against progress?
    • kortilla 5mo ago
      Rein in their margins is probably a better term. I’m a spacex fan but I’m reminded of what happens to every darling leader that crushes competition. It gets complacent, uses shitty tricks to cut out competitors, and raises prices. I saw this at Google and it’s what will happen to SpaceX (already starting with Starlink pricing) if there isn’t someone to keep the competitive pressure on.
    • SilverElfin 5mo ago
      I have a lot against its owner, who has been enabling a corrupt administration and boosting outright supremacists on social media. Not to the corrupt action of the fast track listing and the voting structure of SpaceX. And the fraudulent acquisition of xai and x that is basically taking from SpaceX to pay off other investors
  • thot_experiment 5mo ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but while New Glenn is likely a more economical rocket, it doesn't even have the same payload capacity that Falcon Heavy had eight years ago. They are nowhere near a meaningful competitor yet, and if Starship actually gets up and running the mass to LEO gap between the two systems is like 5x+ with Starship aiming for full reusability while NG expends the second stage. Ofc even whimpy competition is still competition, and BO does have deep pockets.
    • panick21_ 4mo ago
      That New Glenn is more economical then Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy is a huge assumption and I will only believe it when I see it. New Glenn is an incredibly large incredibly complex rocket with very, very complex and expensive engines. And both things are produced at rates much, much lower then Falcon Heavy. Not to mention how optimized they are for reused and the fixed cost being split between launches.
• ceejayoz 5mo ago
  Yikes. That's a big bang.
• d_silin 5mo ago
  Very unfortunate, but strategically this changes nothing for US spaceflight. If anything, SpaceX will continue to increase its dominance.
  • ezfe 5mo ago
    Blue Origin is challenging SpaceX - they are not the incumbent. I'm not sure how you can say that SpaceX will increase dominance despite this.
    • d_silin 5mo ago
      SpaceX will increase the lead from all potential competitors even further.
      • bigyabai 5mo ago
        It's a static fire test. There weren't any payloads inside, this isn't very bad PR.
        • anonymousiam 5mo ago
          Not very bad, except that they lost the whole rocket, and damaged the launch complex. No big deal. What's a few hundred mil and a one year delay...
    • Rover222 5mo ago
      Please look at total mass launched to space by SpaceX vs the rest of the world combined. They are the most incumbent launcher in history. Unless you're talking about moon landers specifically. Anyway, competition is good and this is a bummer.
      • ezfe 5mo ago
        What are you trying to accomplish with this comment? SpaceX is the incumbent that's what I said...
• RattlesnakeJake 5mo ago
  NSF is also reporting that it took out one of the lightning rod towers. It'll be interesting to see how much damage the pad and ground equipment sustained.
  • MPSimmons 5mo ago
    It was very likely the largest explosion in Florida spaceflight history. Considerably larger than when SpaceX blew up AMOS-6 in 2016, and that required a full rebuild of the pad infrastructure over 18 months.
    • m4rtink 5mo ago
      I'm wondering about how it compares to AMOS-6. New glen is bigger than Falcon 9 & uses fully cryogenic propellant, so there would be definitively more energy involved. On the other hand a lot of the damage on the Falcon pad was IIRC due to burning kerosene getting everywhere on the pad & melting everything. In this case I would expect all the liquid oxygen and methane to either be involved in the explosion or quickly vaporize, possibly resulting in a different damage pattern on the pad.
      • NetMageSCW 5mo ago
        I don’t believe they were using cryogenic propellant in the first stage yet. They were preparing for it just before this.
        • m4rtink 4mo ago
          You might be confusing cryogenic with subcooling - it is still cryogenic (or it would not fit into the tanks at any reasonable pressure), just colder and more dense (you can fit it a bit more than if its at a higher, still cryogenic temperature).
• ChrisArchitect 5mo ago
  NSF live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm8wRjD3xVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm8wRjD3xVA
• boredatoms 5mo ago
  Thats a very impressive bang
• jleyank 5mo ago
  This shows the importance of choosing the correct jargon and terminology, and then employing clear and unambiguous communication. They asked engineers for a static fire test. Got one hell of a fire, so that’s good, but it wasn’t very static…
• ebiederm 5mo ago
  Hooray! A static test fire caught a problem. Crap! There was a serious latent problem for the test fire to find.
• 7e 5mo ago
  IPO must be in the works!
• generuso 5mo ago
  It is not clear what "full duration static fire" means, but if the stage was fully fueled, the fuel tank would have contained 1000 tons of methane. The heat of combustion of methane is 55 MJ/kg. TNT equivalent is defined as 4.2 MJ/kg. In terms of heat output (not blast or other effects) this would have been equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT. The first atomic bomb had yield of 20 kt TNT, of which about half was in heat, and the rest in the blast and radiation. Depending on how full the rocket tank actually was, the fireball from the rocket explosion was in the same ballpark, or possibly even larger in the size and duration of afterglow compared to that from the Trinity nuclear test.
  • Rover222 5mo ago
    the video is available, it's a large explosion, but nowhere near a trinity mushroom cloud
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • pantalaimon 5mo ago
    The methane is not mixed with oxygen when it's still in the rocket tank, so it can't all explode - most of it will just burn off. It's still a big boom, but not anywhere close to what world occur with optional mixing.
    • NetMageSCW 5mo ago
      The side of the rocket failing appears to have allowed a lot of that mixing to occur after the initial fire.
  • gjrq 5mo ago
    Counting frames on YouTube, I get about 0.3s for the blast front to reach the top of the 600ft towers. That gives an estimate of around 600 tons TNT so definitely nowhere near all the fuel exploding.
    • debatem1 5mo ago
• kortilla 5mo ago
  Does anyone know what the fuel level was for the static test fire vs the upcoming mission profile? I want to know how big the explosion for new Glenn would be fully loaded.
• mattas 5mo ago
  Would be really curious to learn more about how rocket scientists are using (or not using) LLMs.
  • khazhoux 5mo ago
    The suggestion being that some software here was vibe coded??
    • decimalenough 5mo ago
      That's how rocket science works right? Just vibe code the control systems over the weekend and YOLO the launches.
  • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    This is a fair question on its own. It comes across as pretty disrespectful within the context of the thread.
    • riffic 5mo ago
      no one died, relax OP, one must show respect to the scattered remnants of rocket debris.
      • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
        > no one died, relax Sorry, hadn’t seen that confirmed yet.
  • 0xffff2 5mo ago
    Honestly, why? I can't speak for BO, but at NASA, we're all learning what the technology can and can't do just like everyone else. You can bet your ass that no one is vibe-coding any part of the rocket without thorough review of every line of code and thorough testing at multiple levels though.
    • 5mo ago
• arjie 5mo ago
  Tragic. But spaceflight isn't easy. Easy to have your expectations shifted as a watching fan after so many successful launches in recent times.
  • avmich 5mo ago
    Expectations are shifted with experience in all areas of human activities.
• busymom0 5mo ago
  Looks even crazier in this angle: https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696/video/1?s=42 https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696/video...
  • lorenzohess 5mo ago
    https://xcancel.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696/ https://xcancel.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696...
• decimalenough 5mo ago
  On the upside (or maybe that's tightly bolted down side), at least the rocket stayed static, unlike this one in China: https://youtu.be/IlQkeKa4IKg?si=nu-0D73-7hNg6jW3 https://youtu.be/IlQkeKa4IKg?si=nu-0D73-7hNg6jW3
  • dylan604 5mo ago
    I think my mom could have taken better footage of that, and I swear she was the worst. I realize that the person holding the camera was looking at the thing directly and getting lost in the moment rather than looking at the camera, but for someone whose job it's been to operate a camera that is incredibly irritating to watch. It's right up there with the Artemis II launch (okay that's a bit harsh, but they were meant to be "pros")
  • 866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago
    Or the Long March destroying an entire rural village which was covered up by the CCP.
    • mrcwinn 5mo ago
      That rocket appears to have crashed into an open plain. It was a village?
      • 866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago
        I'm referring to a different Chinese launch failure in 1996. There is some VHS footage on YouTube surreptitiously shot by Americans on-site supporting the payload which became a guerrilla documentary. The village was annihilated but the official number from the CCP was 6 dead. 6.
        • audunw 5mo ago
          It’s not the only time the CCP has reported an unbelievably low number of casualties in a large catastrophe. Seems like the number of dead is always around 6-7 (sorry) no matter how big the incident is. Like the flooding of that tunnel a few years ago where the authorities tried to hide how many flowers were put up by the tunnel
• dgrin91 5mo ago
  I would guess this puts a big dent in NASA's moon plans. I think Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission. Now they are going to be grounded _again_. They just got off grounded status last week! And this is not even going to mention the significant ground equipment damage they have to deal with. Very unfortunate all around. I hope BO finds a way to keep the timelines.
  • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
    > Blue origin was _just_ selected to be the first moon lander mission Just a rover [1]. Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. Does Blue Origin not have another pad? (Did they blow up a pad or a test stand?) [1] https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-to-deliver-viper-rover-to-moons-south-pole/ https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-t...
    • hgoel 5mo ago
      >Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust. That isn't my impression of NASA/government opinion. Starship HLS is seen as the eventual option, as is obvious from the testing campaign. It'll get there eventually and offer unprecedented capability, but it's very clearly several years out. Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having a less risky critical path. The rocket was already orbital, fewer refueling flights were needed, the engines weren't pushing the limits of materials technology, no reusable heat shield to worry about. Though, ultimately it's worth keeping in mind that the landers aren't actually the current bottleneck in the program. The space suits are in total development hell.
      • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
        > Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having a less risky critical path Source? (Not doubting, and it sounds vaguely familiar.) > the landers aren't actually the current bottleneck in the program. The space suits are in total development hell The neat thing about Artemis is it’s pushing so many boundaries that it’s reasonable to debate the actual bottlenecks. I still think launch is it, since even without spacesuits you can do robotic construction. (Hell, even without HLS you can ship nuclear power stations and solar panels and rovers.)
• hgoel 5mo ago
  Ouch, losing the rocket is unfortunate, but the damage to the launch infrastructure is going to easily mean over a year of repairs. I hope they're going to take this as an opportunity to update the infrastructure from lessons learned from the flights so far, and to be able to support some of their future ambitions (e.g. Jarvis).
  • frakkingcylons 5mo ago
    Eric Berger of Ars Technica: > I'm hearing that it is possible that Blue Origin decides to go directly to the larger 9x4 variant of New Glenn after this failure. Obviously no decisions like that will be made without more data review. https://xcancel.com/SciGuySpace/status/2060190522539401631#m https://xcancel.com/SciGuySpace/status/2060190522539401631#m
    • justinhj 5mo ago
      https://x.com/sawyermerritt/status/2060174287563116696?s=46&t=Ba2dAtOVZf2p2m_enoKJAA https://x.com/sawyermerritt/status/2060174287563116696?s=46&...
    • bombcar 5mo ago
      I know it's not, but darned if that doesn't sound like "it exploded real big, so build a bigger one!"
      • locknitpicker 5mo ago
        > I know it's not, but darned if that doesn't sound like "it exploded real big, so build a bigger one!" To me it sounds like "alright, it's silly to waste time and energy on duplicate effort. Let's focus on getting this one right instead."
      • laughing_man 5mo ago
        It makes some sense. If they're not going to be able to launch for a year because the pad is being rebuilt anyway, projects that were going to take a year may as well go to the front burner.
• JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  Did they blow up a pad? Or just a test stand? EDIT: Oh crap, they took out a launch complex.
  • SAI_Peregrinus 5mo ago
    Pad. And one of the lightning protection towers. And the transporter-erector.
• brcmthrowaway 5mo ago
  There's got to be better way than burning a shittonne of fuel. Anyone else know?
  • GolfPopper 5mo ago
    Nukes.[1] Lasers. [2] (Doesn't work, yet.) Balloons.[3] (Floating megastructures in the upper atmosphere is hard.) Giant cannon. [4] (Downside - huge g-forces on payload.) Extra fun with angular momentum.[5] (Even higher g-forces.) Exotic materials[6], with novel failure modes.[7] Humanity has not been idle when it comes to imagining alternate ways to get to orbit. But so far, the only one that works in practice is rockets. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP_Aerospace#Airship_to_Orbit_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP_Aerospace#Airship_to_Orbit_... 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinLaunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinLaunch 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator 7. https://www.gassend.net/publications/FateOfABrokenSpaceElevator.pdf https://www.gassend.net/publications/FateOfABrokenSpaceEleva...
    • perilunar 5mo ago
      Big magnets. [8] 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver
• cboyardee 5mo ago
  [dead]
• lorenzohess 5mo ago
  https://xcancel.com/nasaspaceflight/status/2060164928472854821 https://xcancel.com/nasaspaceflight/status/20601649284728548...
• lorenzohess 5mo ago
  Video: https://xcancel.com/nasaspaceflight/status/2060164928472854821 https://xcancel.com/nasaspaceflight/status/20601649284728548... Another angle: https://xcancel.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696/ https://xcancel.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2060174287563116696...
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    • 866-RON-0-FEZ 5mo ago
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  • jdnier 5mo ago
    That "Another angle" truly is spectacular.
    • thrdbndndn 5mo ago
      In the video, some debris seemed to fly away from the explosion in a wavy path (top left). I thought things only moved like that in video games. What causes that kind of movement?
      • SAI_Peregrinus 5mo ago
• JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  Have we confirmed nobody was hurt? EDIT: Everyone is fine [1]. Go ahead and make jokes. [1] https://x.com/blueorigin/status/2060172114796204539?s=20 https://x.com/blueorigin/status/2060172114796204539?s=20
  • rdtsc 5mo ago
    Not sure why you were downvoted. That’s the first thing I thought of, too. They got all the people out of the area, standard procedure but still, this was a huge boom.
• heohk 5mo ago
  Static fire more like dynamic fire
• a1371 5mo ago
  It looks like the explosion starts from the second stage
  • hathym 5mo ago
    Air balloon
• Markoff 5mo ago
  I will remember this when someone tells me how my little fireworks once a year is bad for environment.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
    • deleted 5mo ago
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  • onionisafruit 5mo ago
    sweep up after yourself and we’re good, but if you leave your firework trash out for a week we have problems. You’ll have to watch me passive aggressively clean up after you.
    • Markoff 5mo ago
      I always clean up after myself, often even just to be sure water it, I became fan of fireworks just recently after Czech gov basically banned them because "think of the animals", yeah, big cities are natural animal habitat as everyone knows, especially dogs barking and shitting everywhere every single day 365 days a year, but God forbid we have once a year firework, think of the poor dogs. Now they came up with maps where fireworks are allowed and apparently 90% of Prague is covered with beehives (you can't have firework within like 250m from beehive), it doesn't matter bees don't really care about them at all in freezing 1st January, but let's protect them and ruin fun for everyone!
  • bamboozled 5mo ago
    You need to understand that this money is well spent, rather than going to feeding starving children or buying medicine to help solve the Ebola crisis in Africa, this is actually "better for mankind".
    • Markoff 5mo ago
      and wait till you see US national defense budget :-)) imagine if they stopped financing it for one year and used all those finances to finance for instance cancer research or maybe for starters they could just stop supporting genocidal regimes killing thousands of children, that would be pretty cheap
• anotherevan 5mo ago
  Also known as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly in engineer speak.
  • bombcar 5mo ago
    Technically I think this was a Rapid Tank Emptying. RUD implies launch.
    • avmich 5mo ago
      I don't think RUD implies launch. It can happen with an engine alone, without rocket.
• brcmthrowaway 5mo ago
  There's got to be better way than burning a shittonne of fuel. Anyone else know?
  • esseph 5mo ago
    > There's got to be better way than burning a shittonne of fuel. We would be doing it
  • jeffrallen 5mo ago
    Space elevators!
  • gosub100 5mo ago
    It's a zero sum game. It all comes from the earth
• mholt 5mo ago
  Is it normal to load ALL the propellant when doing a static fire? (I presume that's the case, anyway, given the sheer magnitude of the kaboom.) I know a WDR typically would, but I don't think they perform an ignition for those.
  • trollbridge 5mo ago
    Isn’t that the point of the test fire? To find out if there’s a problem that will make it go boom
    • hvb2 5mo ago
      You don't need to fill it all the way up for that. If in flight your engines burn for 2 minutes, but your static fire is only a few seconds you can see why.
  • mandevil 5mo ago
    In September 2016 almost exactly the same thing happened to a Falcon 9 at the Cape, also on a static fire. New Glenn is bigger, so bigger bang, but pretty much exactly the same thing. Off the top of my head, I recall in SpaceX's case it was a helium tank failure- a helium tank weld failed and the helium tank itself shot through the cryogenic oxygen, hit the far wall, and gave off a spark. But that sort of failure is only apparent when everything is pressurized correctly, which means tanks have to be full. The goal of the test is that you detect that sort of failure before it goes boom and then can fix it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ is a video of SpaceX's failure.
    • appplication 5mo ago
      I think this makes sense, but then what’s the learning - dont make bad welds? I imagine they were already trying to do as best they could. Or perhaps “however stringent you think your checks are, they need to be more stringent”. And then learning that repeatedly is somewhat spectacular.
      • 5mo ago
• HardCodedBias 5mo ago
  There are massive machines filled with reactants under high pressure and cryogenic temperatures. It is amazing that this doesn't happen more often.
  • anonymars 5mo ago
    I won't forget that a bold trio went out to the pad during the Artemis I countdown to tighten some bolts for the launch: https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis-red-crew-team-helps-enable-successful-launch/ https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis-red-crew-team-h...
• alexissantos 5mo ago
  I might have seen the explosion light up some clouds in Orlando. I was driving East when I saw a patch of clouds glow orange for a few seconds and then go dark. I wondered what that was... then found out this happened at the same time I was driving!
• userbinator 5mo ago
  Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg
  • xeonmc 5mo ago
    aerospace is operating at the absolute limit of what can be asked of known materials science
    • HerbManic 5mo ago
      Exactly this. It is relatively easy to make something mechanical more safe provided you have have a significant material buffer. Rocket abhors additional material weight so everything has to run with a limited buffer space for safety.
    • bolangi 5mo ago
      And an unexpected transient load or heat flux can easily exceed material limits, or materials can have flaws. The ability to qualify the materials, components and processes for aerospace use is an achievement in itself.
  • l1tany11 5mo ago
    Simplest explanation comes from Tory Bruno: they design with a factor of safety just above 1. 1.1 to 1.25. This is one of the reasons they wait for good weather to launch… they are trying to maximize payload. Also until recently, it’s been sort of a vicious cycle: rocket is very exquisite and expensive, so spacecraft needs to last longer and thus gets more exquisite and expensive, etc. Have you seen how many issues race cars have? Same shit. It goes on and on.
    • gorgoiler 5mo ago
      One might make the same observations about software “bugginess” and complexity. The pace of improvement is such that everyone is riding the bleeding edge and, as such, the carpet inevitably gets a few spots of blood on it.
• GMoromisato 5mo ago
  This is a crushing setback for Blue Origin. I feel for the engineers. They have been the underdogs for so long, but with the recent successful recovery of the New Glenn booster, it finally seemed like they had some bragging rights. Now they're looking at a year minimum before they get back to a regular launch rhythm. The question now is: What went wrong? If they're lucky, it's just a stupid mistake. Maybe an incorrect procedure while loading fuel, or maybe a manufacturing error got past QC. If they are unlucky, the cause will be a mystery, and it will take them months to nail down the root cause. Early in Falcon 9's history, the Amos 6 satellite was stacked on the rocket during a routine static fire and the whole thing blew up. It happened so fast that there were only a few bits of telemetry between "everything normal" and "no signal". For a brief moment SpaceX suspected sabotage by rival ULA. They even requested access to a ULA building to see if a sniper could have taken a shot at the rocket. It turned out to be an exotic failure: liquid oxygen had gotten caught inside a buckled liner in the carbon composite pressure vessels. Friction ignited it, and the entire second stage blew up, destroying the rocket.
  • domlebo70 5mo ago
    How does one even go about finding a root cause so exotic?
    • elzbardico 5mo ago
      I'd bet lots of telemetry, comprehensive design and change documentation, along with engineers tacit knowledge. Something like: telemetry shows dramatic drop of temperature on this, that given the location of the sensor could only be caused by a specific LOX line leak, and vibration sensors show data compatible with friction as the ignition event and not a short circuit because the relevant telemetry doesn't show any electrical abnormality, so, by exclusion, given no other anomalies, give that computer simulations show it is a feasible scenario, followed by lab work with a physical model, this must be the cause of the accident.
      • domlebo70 5mo ago
        Yeah, but at the end of the day you can't be sure right? That doubt would eat away at me
• galkk 5mo ago
  Reminds me words, attributed to one of first soviets astronauts: "You're sitting on top of 9 story building, completely filled with fuel and they say to you: don't worry, we calculated everything". The exploded one was about 15-story building.
  • AustinDev 5mo ago
    Don't worry we've solved this problem. It's called a LES.
• protocolture 5mo ago
  So uh those Artemis commitments huh.
  • AustinDev 5mo ago
    There is always Starship.
    • protocolture 5mo ago
      Starship already holds the other half of those commitments. I saw some speculation that they couldnt suddenly double their number of Artemis launches. The timelines blasted either way.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• baq 5mo ago
  On the scale of bad 1-10 where 10 is the absolutely worst case this is a 12 easily. (Elon’s strategy of blowing up smaller versions of their rockets more or less deliberately doesn’t sound so insane in the light of this.)
  • perlgeek 5mo ago
    I'd say on a scale of bad 1-10, 9 and 10 are reserved for incidents that cause loss of human life. YMMV.
    • AustinDev 5mo ago
      Loss of human life in a static fire is criminal. Why would anyone be that close? There was no loss of life in this static fire failure.
      • kqr 5mo ago
        I can think of a few reasons: - Test commences prematurely when people are still around - Test is aborted partway through but then spontaneously resumes when people have started coming back - Error in design or failure of hold-down structure turns static fire into dynamic fire, moving fire to where people are These are unlikely, of course, but they are the things we have to seriously think about and try to design out of the system in order to create safe systems.
      • tmtvl 5mo ago
        No one should ever be that close, but it's a worst case scenario within the realm of possibility (people do get themselves into danger sometimes, for example by wandering onto a railroad track when there's a train approaching). I don't think it's unreasonable to reserve the 10 on the 1-10 scale for 'loss of human life'.
        • robocat 5mo ago
          The train driver saw a man on the track ahead holding a cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear to block the noise. https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-24.html https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-24.html
• panick21_ 5mo ago
  Man they spent a huge amount on the launch infrastructure and it was ready long before the rocket. It was waiting for a long time. And now it reversed.
• raverbashing 5mo ago
  And if anyone is curious what is N1? > It is possibly the most dramatic and powerful rocket explosion since the Soviet Union’s N1 rocket was destroyed during a launch attempt in 1969.
  • adrian_b 5mo ago
    The failed competitor for Saturn V: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
• mahirsaid 5mo ago
  excessive fuel delivery failure probable IMO. The direction and source of explosion seemed localized at first.
• tristanj 5mo ago
  SpaceX Starship also exploded during a static fire test on June 18, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-starship-upper-stage-explosion-expected-engine-test-firing/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-starship-upper-stage-exp...
  • infotainment 5mo ago
    The major difference is that this is currently the only New Glenn launchpad, which is likely to cause major launch delays.
  • Throwawayhahzoh 5mo ago
    That was at the separate upper stage test stand. SpaceX built and mounted a temporary replacement on the main test and launch stand.
• trhway 5mo ago
  It looks to me like the initial explosion was at the upper part of the rocket. Reminded the Starship explosion https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1935548909805601020 https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1935548909805601020 where on 0.25 speed also visible what the start of the catastrophe was at the upper part. Interesting that just 2 days ago NASA picked Blue Origin instead of SpaceX for this year Moon flights. On a sidenote, one can wonder how much, giving coming SpaceX IPO, it costs for Bezos to hire a Starship engineer :)
  • Laremere 5mo ago
    Analysis video by Scott Manley notes that other comparable tests did not have visible fire at all, so it seems it started lower on the rocket and that the upper fire ball was either a secondary explosion or something coming up the transporter stand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaR6yEE-Myo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaR6yEE-Myo
• WalterBright 5mo ago
  > A source indicated that one of the lightning towers may not be salvageable, and that the transporter-erector may also be damaged beyond repair. My first thought is why wasn't the t-e moved away before launch?
  • regnerba 5mo ago
    It was a static fire, not a launch. Also means that payload was not lost as out wasn’t yet integrated
    • gregoriol 5mo ago
      Katy Perry was not lost, the world can go on
  • ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Blue’s TEL is part of the launch pad. You can see it retract in some of the explosion videos. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C87e9x0tLix/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/C87e9x0tLix/
    • NetMageSCW 5mo ago
      I don’t see how it can do much transporting if it is part of launchpad.
      • ceejayoz 5mo ago
        It transports the (horizontal) rocket to the pad, erects it, and provides umbilical connections for power and fuel to the rocket during launch; TEL. You can see them disconnect in the video I linked. SpaceX does similar; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_erector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_erector / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_erector_launcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_erector_launcher > SpaceX uses the central spine of the transporter erector as a strongback, restraining the rocket, providing stability until the tanks are pressurized with fuels, and contain the fluid hoses along with power and telemetry cables. Consequently, it remains at the launch pad through the launch and is typically tilted away 1.5° from the rocket just a few minutes prior to launch and 45° away from the rocket at the moment of liftoff. The Shuttle's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_launcher_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_launcher_platform played a similar dual role.
• lejalv 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• tristanj 5mo ago
  I asked Claude Opus 4.8 to estimate the size of the explosion in kilotons of TNT, and it estimated the explosion at 0.18 kilotons of TNT (with an ~0.13–0.26 error range). For comparison, the N-1 rocket explosion was around 0.5 kilotons of TNT.
  • NetMageSCW 5mo ago
    From the video, about 1kT is estimated.
    • tristanj 5mo ago
      Impossible. The N1 rocket was far larger than New Glenn, and when it exploded, the explosion yield was below 1kT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions#N1_launch_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear... If you want to see an actual 1kT explosion, look at the 2020 Beirut disaster. That explosion was approximately 1.1kT and the damage / shockwave is clearly far greater than the New Glenn explosion.
• RivieraKid 5mo ago
  Blue Origin's tortoise slow-and-steady approach to development ia increasingly looking stupid.
  • Aboutplants 5mo ago
    There does seem to be a certain amount of failure that is necessary to be able to get it right. One would expect that number to decrease over time with each new rocket company but I don’t believe it decreases as much as each company would like to believe. Move fast and blow things up early rather than slowly. The minimum number of explosions must be met!
  • panick21_ 4mo ago
    It has been stupid from the beginning. They literally have been getting billion of $ in free no strings attached money without any market reality to back it up. Their 'approach' is basically only even possible because they literally have a basically infinite money glitch. That they make a big deal out of this is just embarrassing, they act like they are competing, but they really don't. They are hobby project for the richest man on the planet and they don't compete for investment $ with other companies like RocketLab. No sane investor would put their money into Blue Origin and their 'slow and steady' approach.
• 100ms 5mo ago
  The video angle published by the BBC is better, it appears to show one side of the rocket disintegrating and sliding down non-explosively before the large explosion really kicked in. Would hate for this all to be described by a few missing bolts https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cvgz0pdg32mo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cvgz0pdg32mo edit: the failure appears to start at the bottom, this seems to have damaged the structure enough to cause the sliding to start, then the huge fireball seems to begin with a small flash closer to the top of the rocket
  • teraflop 5mo ago
    That clip is fairly low-res (at least for me). Here's the higher-quality source from Spaceflight Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O90WZJALYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O90WZJALYc
    • krunck 5mo ago
      The fish loved it: 0:29
    • superxpro12 5mo ago
      the clip is wild. There's definitely anomalies originating from the bottom. Then the spacecraft structure starts falling and tilting. Then the explosion ripples up through the core and pops out the top. Then the massive explosion occurs due to the complete loss of fuel integrity. It looks like the bottom fell out, and then caused the pressure to ripple up through the structure causing complete structural failure. Wild.
  • 51Cards 5mo ago
    What you're seeing is not a 'side' of the rocket sliding down, it's the rocket itself. The other part on the right is the erector stand it was mounted to. Looks like the bottom of the rocket blows out first and begins to collapse. The rocket begins to slide vertically before it all becomes one large fireball. The erector stand didn't survive the explosion either in the end.
    • 5mo ago
• K0balt 5mo ago
  Blowing up on the launch pad is like a rite of passage for every serious rocket program. The engineering margins are thin out of necessity, and lots of things conspire to eat through them. Rocket science is hard, and rocket physics are unforgiving. If the planet was just a little bit heavier, we would not be able to leave it with chemical rockets at all.
• 3738384848 5mo ago
  [dead]
• cmiles8 5mo ago
  An unfortunate setback but rockets are hard. The fact that the US has multiple extremely active commercial ventures plus a vibrant government programs with launches every few days just highlights har far ahead the US has become in this area of tech. Many people have never seen a rocket launch ever and yet for a big part of the US looking up in the sky and watching the amazing sight of a rocket going through staging is just a normal Tuesday evening. That sort of expertise and base of scientists and engineers is not something other countries can just quickly replicate. For a while it looked like the US had put space on the back burner but now it’s back and bigger than ever before. The occasional test going boom is just part of the fun in the end.
  • ponector 5mo ago
    Achievements of SpaceX are enormous. But is US actually far ahead? Both China and EU have pretty much the same capabilities for space exploration.
    • philipwhiuk 5mo ago
      > Both China and EU have pretty much the same capabilities for space exploration. China maybe soon, but the EU is not close. Ariane 6 is in no way comparable to either SLS or Starship or New Glenn. It does 10t to low-earth orbit, 4t to lunar-transfer orbit.
      • perilunar 5mo ago
        For comparison, the Saturn 5 was 140 tonnes to LEO and 43.5 tonnes to TLI.
    • cmiles8 5mo ago
      China is behind and making progress, but still hasn’t hit key milestone the US hit decades ago. The EU isn’t even close.
      • ponector 5mo ago
        You can say the same about US: still hasn't hit key milestone US hit decades ago.
• javiramos 5mo ago
  Space launch is hard
• Yizahi 5mo ago
  Hypothetical scenario - if the entire New Glenn rocket exploded up to highest point in under 4 seconds and if there was a passenger capsule on top with a SLS/Saturn size escape rocket, would it manage to escape in those 2-3 seconds? Would humans survive acceleration?
  • ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Neither Starship nor New Glenn has such a system, nor plans to add one.
    • NetMageSCW 5mo ago
      Starship itself could potentially hot launch from the booster in the ground to get away. Hopefully the latching system is controlled by the Starship side.
      • enragedcacti 5mo ago
        It almost definitely cannot. It already has a far lower thrust-to-weight ratio than real launch escape systems (1.x at best versus 6-10+)[1][2], and it would only be able to light its three sea-level engines since the vacuum-optimized engines would be unstable and likely rip themselves apart at 1 ATM.* *correction: Vac raptors can run at sea level in a test stand. Still doubtful that its safe/reliable and in either case it would still be far too slow. [1] Note that the first G of acceleration is combating gravity, so Starship at e.g. 1.25Gs would accelerate away from the explosion at 1/20th the rate of Dragon v2. [2]https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9067/how-do-the-g-loads-from-various-abort-systems-compare https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9067/how-do-the-g-...
    • mr_toad 5mo ago
      If New Glenn ever launched people they’d build the escape system into the crew module, much as SpaceX does with Crew Dragon.
      • ceejayoz 5mo ago
• eggplantemoji69 5mo ago
  Roman Roy looking at phone meme but Bezos face instead
• giancarlostoro 5mo ago
  The explosion was seen even by some in Orlando (mainly East Orlando) in such a way, that a coworker noted their son saw it while on the highway and thought the worst (a giant mushroom cloud is kind of horrifying) at first.
• drob518 5mo ago
  Omelets and eggs and all that.
• stevefan1999 5mo ago
  Let me quote a portion of lyrics from Still Alive: > But there's no sense crying over every mistake > You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake
• dmccarty2829 4mo ago
  They sent me a rejection notice for my application on the same day. I'm sure that was the reason.