Posted on 05/29/2026 7:04:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
Via the Associated Press, a familiar (if dispiriting) incident in space exploration:
A rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin exploded during a test at the launch pad Thursday night, shaking nearby homes and briefly painting the sky orange.
Blue Origin said its New Glenn rocket exploded during an engine-firing test being conducted ahead of a satellite launch planned for next week. No one was hurt, according to officials at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Watching this footage, it's kind of incredible that "no one was hurt!"
VIDEO AT LINK.............
The blowup from other angles is just as unbelievable:
VIDEOS AT LINK............
As the AP reports, Blue Origin "had been on track to launch a prototype lunar lander to the moon on a flight test this fall," though I think we can safely say that's probably been pushed back a bit.
Rocket explosions are part of the learning process with any new launch vehicle. You expect them to happen.
But in this case, not only was it a complete surprise given how far along the New Glenn program is in development, but it also took Blue Origin's only launch pad out of commission.
From Eric Berger at ARS Technica:
No one was injured during the failure, which sources said caused extensive damage to the company's large and complex launch site. During a pad failure in 2016, with the smaller Falcon 9 rocket, it took SpaceX more than a year to rebuild its seriously damaged Space Launch Complex-40 pad.
...
This is the worst disaster in the history of Blue Origin, founded in 2000.
The issue is that Blue Origin had already been selected as an integral part of NASA's moon base plan. Now their only launch pad was shredded by the largest rocket explosion since a Soviet explosion half a century ago.
It takes time to rebuild such things.
Early reports from sources suggest that the launch infrastructure at LC-36A is severely damaged. A source indicated that one of the lightning towers may not be salvageable, and that the transporter-erector may also be damaged beyond repair.
Another launch pad was already under construction nearby, but the company will be unlikely to launch another New Glenn rocket until late 2027.
The failure of New Glenn also has major implications for NASA and its surging efforts to return humans to the Moon before the end of this decade, and to establish a lunar base on the surface.
On Tuesday NASA announced that it had selected the New Glenn rocket to deliver the first two rovers, built by Lunar Outpost and Astrolab, to the lunar surface in 2028. Blue Origin has developed its own cargo lunar lander, Blue Moon Mark 1, designed to fly on top of New Glenn. It was due to launch this fall to the Moon for the first time, and again next year carrying the VIPER rover to the Moon for NASA.
Yes, two days after NASA announced it had selected New Glenn to deliver its lunar rovers, a New Glenn rocket blew the company's launchpad to smithereens.
Because of the success of New Glenn, Blue Origin was set to "break into a monthly launch cadence." Not anymore.
The company may pivot now, abandoning the smaller version of the rocket that exploded on the launch pad in favor of its larger one.
One thing is for sure: If this had been a SpaceX rocket that exploded, the media would have been mocking the company and its owner, Elon Musk, for days!
The unfortunate incident got a nod of sympathy from the Mars Man himself:
The final frontier is a risky business!
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
LOL! Are you afraid it's going to tip into the ocean?!?
Celestial mechanics...don’t ask me more than that lol
It's drifting away, not coming closer. Belittle the impact all you want but it will occur.
It's not just tides, plants, and animals that are affected but also people. We have enough lunatics as it is.
Very bad news for the Artemis timelines, particularly the manned landing components. (I still think Gateway is still in the planning) jmo
The AI assessment:
This is a major structural setback for one of NASA’s two lander providers.
SpaceX’s Flight 12 booster mishap was a setback.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn pad explosion is a program‑level disruption.
NASA now has:
A delayed Axiom suit program
A delayed Blue Moon lander
A destroyed New Glenn pad
A grounded New Glenn fleet
A SpaceX architecture still missing propellant transfer
A SpaceX booster recovery requirement still unmet
A shrinking Artemis timeline window
This will absolutely ripple into Artemis planning.
Yes, but the drift is happening regardless.
Blue Origin’s lander was supposed to be delivering cargo to the Moon next year. Whoops, that schedule is now in shreds.
As it naturally would. Accelerating it is the unnatural event.
Yup. No round trip tickets yet.
You’re beating a dead horse :)
Hopefully it burns up as it enters the atmosphere. :)
> Celestial mechanics...don’t ask me more than that lol
The primary factor is the oceans on Earth. The Moon (and to a lesser degree the Sun) pulls the ocean water into what we call "tides". Similarly, the tidal "bulges" pull the Moon, and due to the friction of the water moving on the Earth surface, as the Earth rotates (much faster than the Moon revolves around the Earth), the bulges lead the Moon and actually speed it up a little bit.
Speeding up a satellite (like the Moon) does affect its orbit, specifically it raises the orbital altitude, thus the Moon moves farther from the Earth. It's only an inch and a half per year, but it means in about 600 million years the Moon will no longer completely cover the Sun during a Solar eclipse, so no more total eclipses.
But also, the same friction of the oceans is slowing Earth's rotation (that's where the energy to speed up the Moon comes from), and in around 200 million years, an Earth day will be 25 hours long, and eventually (billions of years, assuming the Sun doesn't give up first), Earth and Moon will become tidally locked at the same rotational rate, meaning the Moon will stand still in the sky.
Don't hold your breath. :-)
I’ve been watching these scientific vids on YouTube where they use AI generated video to create physicist Richard Feynman giving lectures based on books, articles and real lectures he gave. He has an incredible ability to make complex things understandable to a layman. These vids have given me a glimpse of understanding what special relativity, general relativity, space time, quantum physics, wave v. Particle physics, etc. are. Before these were just terms I had heard and was familiar with but now I have a very basic idea of what they mean. He lectures on the virtual physical impossibility of meaningful interstellar spaces travel. He gives his reasons as a Nobel winning physicist, who ranks up there with Einstein, why he thinks we never been and never will be visited by alien beings from outer space. This has changed my opinion on UFOs substantially.
Or melt since it's made of cheese...
SpaceX > NASA >> Blue Origin
Public-Private partnerships are great - as long as the private partner is selected for the right reason.
Blue Horizon isn’t even playing in the same league with SpaceX.
Yummmm! Melty cheese. 😂👍
Check the gaskets. It’s always the gaskets.
It’s not the ocean tides, it’s the tidal transfer of momentum — a body in prograde motion around a parent body loses rotational momentum as it pushes away, and vice versa. If the Earth had no oceans this would all still be going on.
The Earth has roughly 100 times the mass of the Moon, and the Moon has given up rotation first. The Moon obviously rotates of course, otherwise we wouldn’t see the same face all the time.
The Sun and Earth are similarly pushing away from each other.
Also the Earth’s tides are one third the product of the Sun’s gravity, despite the greater distance compared with the Moon.
Conspiracy theorists were already posting on X before the smoke cleared.............
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.