Blue Origin CEO: New Glenn WILL Fly Again This Year! (Plus, I had a baby) [16:28]

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

iSpace -- "Japanese venture company".
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The Launch Pad | 4,351 views | July 2, 2026

Transcript [part 1]

Well, I didn’t think that I would make a video postpartum, but I saw something on my ex feed today, a Blue Origin update, and I felt compelled to try and make a video. I’m sorry that I’ve been so MIA, but I just had a baby. I just had a C-section, and postpartum hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park.

But let’s first talk about Blue Origin and a news release they shared on X. We’re committed to returning New Glenn to flight this year.

How are they going to do that after that crazy anomaly and/or explosion that they suffered earlier this year? So, let’s talk about their path forward. This is a note from CEO Dave Limp. It’s dated June 30th, and he says, “On May 28th, 2026, we experienced a significant anomaly during a New Glenn integrated launch vehicle hotfire test at launch complex 36 in Florida. Here’s some of that video. I want to provide you with an update on the remarkable recovery and rebuild efforts since that day and our path forward to return to flight this year.”

Quote, “We continue to actively investigate the cause of the anomaly. The vehicle is highly instrumented with extensive data from multiple camera angles and sensors, giving us confidence in our ability to identify and correct the root cause. Early analysis points to the aft section of the first stage. Now that we have more visibility into the impact, we know that we lost the lightning tower, the transporter erector, and the hydraulic cylinders. But we caught a lot of breaks, too, and intend to make the most of them. The tank farm, integration facility, vehicle access tower, and water tower are in good shape. As part of our pad cleanup and rebuild efforts, we’ve relocated Never Tell Me the Odds and three GS2 vehicles from the IF hardware recovery and debris removal operations are complete and reconstruction of the pad has started to return to flight this year. We’re not rebuilding the same pad. We’re going straight to a horizontal vertical hybrid conops we had already been developing for our 9x4 New Glenn launch vehicle using existing infrastructure, skipping a new transporter erector and creating a common con ops across two paths.”

The response from our industry partners and customers has been extraordinary. This support reinforces what we already know: what we’re doing matters. From our national security and civil partners protecting our nation and returning humanity to the moon to commercial customers expanding global connectivity, reliable access to space has never been more critical. We take our responsibility as a launch provider very seriously, and we are committed to returning to flight with the reliability our mission demands. All of it for the benefit of Earth. We’re continuing to build vehicles at rate in our world-class manufacturing facilities, maintaining flight readiness and preparing to come back stronger than before. Our road to space doesn’t pause here. We will return to flight by the end of this year. It’s worth it, Dave.

Which I don’t know if y’all have looked, but we’re basically halfway done with the year. So, I am very hopeful that they’ll be able to do that. And boy, do they have a tough road ahead. But I appreciate seeing this transparency from Blue Origin.

[Maternity Leave Update omitted, maybe later]

Transcript [part 2]

Starfall Demo

And I also wanted to touch on one other SpaceX-related story. Um, I’m several days late on this, but you know, it’s pretty significant. On June 23rd, a Falcon 9 launched the Starfall demo mission to orbit from Florida. And this was a unique mission. It included a demo of a new vehicle that will enable affordable routine access to the microgravity environment for scientific research and in-space manufacturing. After demonstrating controlled flight, the spacecraft will splash down in the Pacific Ocean, and the deployment of Starfall was confirmed. Look at these wonderful photos. And so at this point, SpaceX only confirmed the deployment.

Uh, we don’t know much about the return, but we know from previous FAA filings that SpaceX says that Starfall could offer access to microgravity and vacuum for companies interested in space manufacturing, plus on-point delivery of critical cargo through space on rapid timelines. SpaceX also hopes that Starfall could take the International Space Station’s quote successful manufacturing experiments and scale them to a self-sustaining manufacturing economy in space. So each Starfall capsule is about 2.5 ft tall, 10 ft across, and able to carry 2,200 pounds of payload. It has two sections, one for the payload and another for the heat shield. And according to an article from Axios, they’re able to control their attitude with inert gases, but can’t de-orbit themselves. Instead, they fly a preset path or get de-orbited by another spacecraft. And so hopefully we’ll hear more of a follow-up on that soon. But that was a very interesting story to me that I’m sorry I’m late to the party on, but there’s just some brief space news updates.

[brief Maternity Redux omitted]

A Little More Blue Origin

Actually, as I was just about to publish this, I remembered two other things that I wanted to share with you. Check out this video from Blue Origin from June 22nd. Continuous sunlight is scarce on the moon unless you know where to look. The lunar poles contain peaks of eternal light areas bathed in near-continuous sunlight. Power tower mounts on Blue Moon MK1’s top deck and extend solar arrays to 26 m total height to capture that energy and deliver sustained power for moon-based operations. Check out this video of Power Tower during a successful deployment in an analog lunar environment. The infrastructure era of lunar exploration starts now.

Transcript [part 3]

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Faces Scheduled Delays, Cost Increases, and Safety Challenges

And there’s an email that I want to share with you from NASA’s IG press office. It’s titled, “NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Faces Scheduled Delays, Cost Increases, and Safety Challenges.” Over the last 15 years, NASA and US private industry have joined forces to develop multiple spacecraft capable of safely flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Today, the Office of Inspector General, OIG, released a report examining the AY’s commercial crew program and its two providers, Boeing and SpaceX, as they pushed to certify and operate their spacecraft and continue to support crewed ISS flights through 2030. NASA established CCP after retiring the space shuttle in 2011, which left US and partner astronauts reliant on Russian spacecraft to reach the ISS. Under this new commercial model, providers own their vehicles while NASA purchases transportation services.

In 2014, NASA awarded fixed-price contracts to Boeing and SpaceX for $4.2 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively. The total value of these contracts has since increased to over $8 billion, not including the several billion dollars that NASA and the companies have invested in additional resources.

Since 2016, the OIG has issued three reports outlining the ongoing hurdles that SpaceX and Boeing have faced. SpaceX obtained the human rating certification for its Crew Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 launch vehicle in 2020, completing 12 crewed missions to date. However, Boeing has not yet obtained human rating certification for its Starliner capsule and Atlas 5 launch vehicle.

Since 2020, the company’s flight tests have uncovered numerous issues, including helium leaks, propulsion system failures, and parachute anomalies. These challenges precipitated six years of delays and culminated in a crewed flight test in June 2024 that experienced significant technical challenges. NASA ultimately classified the crewed flight test as a type A mishap, its most serious classification.

According to recent estimates, Starliner will likely not obtain human rating certification until 2027 at the earliest. The OIG determined that NASA was initially overconfident in Boeing because the company had extensive spaceflight experience and was utilizing previously flown spaceflight components. As a result, the agency accepted Boeing’s unrealistic launch and flight test schedules leading to performance shortfalls that affected hardware, software, and propulsion systems in flight simulator testing.

NASA did not exercise its limited contractual rights to access Boeing’s flight simulator training data and therefore it did not fully analyze the simulation failures. In addition, the agency faces workforce constraints that may further impede oversight, delay technical resolutions, and hinder flight certification schedules.

Today, NASA lacks sufficient contracted flights to fully crew the ISS through 2030, the planned end of the station’s operational life. So, it will either need to purchase additional flights from either Boeing or SpaceX. Before Starliner is certified, its next flight, Starliner 1, will transport cargo rather than astronauts to prioritize safety and validate the changes made since its 2024 crewed flight test.

NASA has already spent an extra $17 million to accelerate SpaceX flights originally planned for Starliner. Moving forward, the uncertainty of the Starliner certification timeline and the decision to fly Starliner 1 without a crew will likely increase costs even further. The agency has also prematurely authorized additional Boeing flights that are not yet certain to fly.

As a result, the IG questioned $127.9 million in payments to Boeing in addition to the $43 million it previously questioned in a 2019 report. Lastly, the OIG determined that NASA’s requirements for mishap reporting contained ambiguities that delayed key evaluation milestones after Boeing’s 2024 crewed flight test. It took the agency 21 months to categorize the event as a serious mishap, which created delays that persist to this day.

NASA has invested over a decade of time and resources into CCP with only about four years of crewed operations remaining before the ISS’s planned decommission. To maximize this limited time, the OIG made six recommendations that enhance CCP oversight, maintain crew safety, mitigate Starliner delays, ensure timely issue classification, and address workforce constraints.

So, there is a mouthful for you. Something to sit on. But, uh, I think that, you know, the transparency with NASA lately has been pretty good. I wonder why Mr. Isaacman is doing a great job as NASA administrator. And I just wanted to read you that report. And yeah, that is about it. So, thank you so much for watching this video. Hope you at least got some new information out of it. And thanks for bearing with me as I adjust to this new life.

This is so bush league. They have to have SPCX quaking in their boots. WTF

Have BO investigations not yet released the root cause of the explosion? With the systems sensor feedback loop that engine tests have I know damm well that they knew within minutes exactly the who/what/where/how/why of everything that caused it. Why is it that BO keeps news like this from the public where it seems SpaceX will even joke about R.U.D’s and stuff. My guess on the BOooom was something directly related to a turbo pump catastrophic failure on one of the BE-4 1st stage engines. LOX/LNG. 5000PSI. 270Gal/sec. 19,000RPM. What could possibly go wrong...

I hate to broken-record my way through this, but it continues to puzzle me that BO didn’t add either some more engines or some staging to convert their suborbital thrill ride into an orbital vehicle, first for payloads only, then get it man-rated.

Scaling up a successful engine design hasn’t been as easy as it may seem. Meanwhile the Raptor has gone through three versions, and the fourth one (perhaps in 2027) will probably prove to be a minor iteration.

The Spaceship One was a Rutan design and took home the X-Prize, long ago. Scaling that craft into a multi-occupant vehicle took years and cost a couple of lives I think, yet remained suborbital.

Y’know, Ellie’s headline makes it sound like Bezos had a baby. Just to be clear, that isn’t what happened. Here’s the previously redacted parts:

Transcript [part 1a]

Maternity Leave Update [the baby’s head is almost the same size as mom’s, no wonder it was c-section]

And again, I am on maternity leave. I know that I don’t necessarily have to make a video, but this felt very newsworthy and a story that I’ve been trying to continue to cover for you. Now, I don’t want to bury the lead too much. I did just have a child. Um, which was a pretty insane experience. Um, in fact, let me just share. I sometimes post updates on my TikTok account about my birth, and so this was my latest update which gives you a little bit more into my story and um he is very big and the birth was not so fun but I can make another video about that. Postpartum that first week not good either [laughter] but I’m feeling much more human. Uh, I was finally able to get some sleep and it’s just been a crazy whirlwind of a week. It feels like it’s been a month.

Um, they decided to induce me for gestational hypertension after my 38w week appointment because we did a membrane sweep and then he said, “I want to send you to the hospital for monitoring.” And it turned into, you know, full-blown being admitted. Um, pretty crazy. Uh, induction uh which that labor lasted 18 hours with six of it unmedicated. I tried I really tried um and pushed for an hour and a half which is a lot um and we just weren’t making much progress. So they said, “Uh we think your baby’s head is going to get stuck, so we want to do a C-section.” And oh my gosh, it was a I don’t know. I want to talk about it more in depth just because it was such an insane experience. And I did like 3 months of birthing classes, but I was not truly prepared. And I really wasn’t prepared for some of the symptoms during birth, but also many of the aftermath uh symptoms.

I had to be readmitted on day like four or five after being home for like only one or two nights because we had to stay extra in the hospital because of the C-section. And um I had to be readmitted because my blood pressure was super high and my liver enzymes were elevated. So they were kind of like trying to label it as a mild case of preeclampsia. Still not completely sure, but I think a lot of it was just I couldn’t sleep for like five or six days after the birth. And it wasn’t because I wasn’t given opportunities. It was like adrenaline. My brain would not shut off. So, um yeah, it was it was kind of nuts. It was so frustrating ‘cause you become a parent and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to be tired all the time.” But not necessarily when you have all these weird hormones raging through your body.

So, um, very happy to finally feel a little more human. I’ve had a little more sleep and I’m still just like processing it all. It’s been really crazy, too. Like, I feel like a different person already. Um, like I feel very kind of like direct and, you know, no more people pleasing. Um, and well, I guess that’s kind of a good thing, but yeah, it’s been it’s been crazy. And thank goodness I have such a great husband who has literally pulled so many all-nighters um already and has taken such good care of him. So yeah, um that’s my 38w week update. I have the baby. So yes, I’m feeling a lot better now. However, it was uh pretty tough going through the first week of postpartum and the birth was definitely not what I had planned and unfortunately traumatic in many ways. But I’m already feeling so much better. Getting some rest uh and you know just adjusting to this very very new lifestyle. You do not get time to adjust to be a parent. You are thrown into the trenches.

Transcript [part 2a]

Maternity Redux

Again, thank you for understanding this major, major life change that I just went through. Um, I’m still going to try to post what I deem very newsworthy, but if you’re a parent, you know, it’s a lot to adjust to, and I think that so far my husband and I are doing a really great job. But I didn’t expect to have some of the health issues, health concerns that I had afterwards. Again, I’m feeling much better, hence why I’m making the video today. But I really was not feeling good for those first few days. And then, like I said, the birth was a whole different animal that I still have yet to fully process. But my son is doing so well. He’s very healthy. Um, and he’s just a great baby. So, it’s definitely an interesting time in my life. But I appreciate all of the support, and I will hopefully make another video soon.

It’s possible that they’ve had difficulty isolating the fatal malfunction because it was some kind of cascade of problems. The other possibility is, they’ve figured it out, but want to make sure the rest of the machinery operated as designed, because they don’t want any more surprises, also, NASA and the FAA are both bound to ask.

Good luck to the BO team! Need them back...