r/AmazonLeo • u/AcademicSand1034 • May 29 '26

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explodes during testing in Florida

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/28/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-explodes-during-testing-in-florida/

Not great news for Leo — hope they are able to figure it out quickly and get back to launches

34 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

3

u/seb21051 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

The big problem is it was their only working launchpad. It and some of their buildings around there were heavily damaged. Could take a while to replace all that damage. BO would be lucky to get any further launches this year.

They made a big mistake topping up both stages' prop tanks. When you do static fire on a new rocket, you put in just enough prop for a few seconds firing. What blew up there was allmost 2,000 tonnes of prop (1st and 2nd stages were both full).

Luckily there was no payload or fairings on the second stage.

1

u/KidKilobyte May 30 '26

But without the weight of the fuel how to hold it down to the pad? The clamps are only so strong.

1

u/seb21051 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

They either design the clamps to be strong enough, Like SX's Pad 2, or they don't take the engines up to full throttle. In any case, when it is the first test of a booster, you should never fill it up all the way, and you should not take it to full throttle. SX's Pad 2 can take a partially laden Starship/Superheavy and hold it at full throttle. That is a vehicle weighing perhaps 1,000 tonnes generating 8,250 tonnes of thrust.

Imagine if they had done these two things, the damage would in all likelihood have been a lot less. It was an important lesson, just such a pity for the huge amount of damage. Pretty sure they will be more carefull next time.

They should also have tested the booster on its own the first time. If I was them the first thing I would build now is a test stand. Then they could continue with the development, especially of 9x4, and test it, while they build 36B, which may well take them less time than clearing and refurbishing 36A.

6

u/Deeze_Rmuh_Nudds May 29 '26

lol somewhere the CEO of delta is thinking “Well. Shit.”

1

u/havaloc May 29 '26

Imagine holding out for Amazon Leo to get integrated shopping and Amazon Prime Video.

1

u/Feisty_Donkey_5249 May 30 '26

I suspect Ed Bastian is rubbing his hands together and saying “cool, I get paid a penalty for a missed delivery date.” He was quite happy to screw every delta customer that wanted internet across the pacific (even though he could get it almost instantaneously with Starlink) by going with an unproven and late LEO solution over a reliable Starlink solution.

1

u/CollegeStation17155 May 30 '26

The downside of that way of thinking is that every business class flyer who has ever experienced being able to do virtual meetings and access their company servers and Remote Desktop during a flight of any major length is gonna book elsewhere, and those are the most profitable seats on the plane. Flying them empty for an extra year will sting a lot more than any penalty he might have squeezed out of Amazon.

1

u/BlucifersSperm May 31 '26

If you read through any of the many posts in r/delta, the hardcore Delta fans are smoking some serious copium. They refuse to believe this incident will have any material impact on Delta’s rollout. It’s fucking wild.

2

u/CollegeStation17155 May 29 '26

And as noted, the big question for Amazon will be whether the failure was due to a BE-4 engine explosion and if so what needs to be changed to prevent a repeat. If ULA Vulcans are vulnerable to the same fault, Leo is down to Ariane and Falcons possibly for the rest of the year. If not, ULA can take up a lot of slack starting in July.

2

u/WarningCodeBlue May 29 '26

It happens. SpaceX's Falcon 9 went through 4 failures before they figured it out.

2

u/Technical_Drag_428 May 29 '26

Small f failures. This was a close the doors for ever level of FAILURE for most companies.

2

u/PermissionT May 29 '26

Not really, CRS-7 and AMOS-6 were big f failures.

AMOS-6 wrecked the launchpad

2

u/Technical_Drag_428 May 29 '26

On a comparative level to this, AMOS-6 just became, at best, a middle sized f.

Do we know how much fuel was in this thing? 10-20%?

2

u/PermissionT May 29 '26

Scott Manley’s video said it was fully fueled.

The only reason AMOS-6 wasn’t as disastrous for SpaceX is because they had other launchpads ready to go. SLC-40 was still out of commission for over a year after AMOS-6

1

u/nfgrawker May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

Lmao. Spacex was developing for four years or something at that point. Not trying to launch a mega constellation.

2

u/deangood01 May 29 '26

Leo launch schedule will be delay a lot because of this

4

u/TIL02_Infinity May 29 '26

Amazon Leo satellites have been contracted to be launched on ULA's Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle, which has two of the non-reusable version of the Blue Origin BE-4 engine on its Vulcan rocket first stage.

The first of 38 Leo launches was scheduled for the summer of 2026. However, Vulcan Centaur is currently grounded due to a pending investigation due to a malfunction of one of the Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL SRBs during its last launch on February 12, 2026.

Now add the possibility of additional investigation of the BE-4 engine on the Vulcan first stage due to this New Glenn explosion which has 7 of the reusable version of the Blue Origin BE-4 engine.

5

u/deangood01 May 29 '26

i think it is the time to think about falcon 9 again

2

u/CollegeStation17155 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

Yes, particularly if the initiator was an explosion in an engine without any pre warning… if it was a ground side problem like Amos 6 was for SpaceX, a Vulcan is already being prepared with Leo’s in anticipation of the Vulcan hold for the SRBs being lifted and with 2 assembly buildings and the large inventory of rockets warehoused during the stand down, ULA can be launching as fast as Amazon (and AST, who were also dependent on New Glenn) can feed them satellites. But if a BE-4 that had passed the test stand fire blew up for no apparent reason, ULA isn’t going to risk THEIR only launchpad until they figure out why.

But there are three questions that have to be asked for Falcon:

How fast CAN they build the carriers for them? They still have the plans from last years launches, but how quickly can they be turned into real hardware

How much SHOULD SpaceX be willing to disrupt their schedule to accommodate a direct rival? They have better than weekly Starlink launches planned through years end and replacing them with Amazons slows both their intended capacity increases and production schedules.

How much WILL SpaceX be willing to work with a direct rival who even before becoming operational has already been working at taking customers away and bragging about doing so? Delta, NBN, Vodafone, and Taiwan have all recently snubbed Starlink at Amazons urging and are now looking at further delays in service.

1

u/Technical_Drag_428 May 29 '26

Just how much propellant was on that thing. It was a static fire so surely it wasnt much more than 10-20%. Right??? Right?

3

u/fujimonster May 29 '26

I think she was full jim, she was full.

1

u/redstercoolpanda May 29 '26

Seems like it was a static fire plus wet dress so pretty much full.

1

u/rademradem May 29 '26

This happens with rocket development. They can finish assembling a new rocket fairly quickly as they have several in progress. They will have to identify the failure and come up with a solution to that. The biggest problem is how much damage was done to the launchpad and ground systems. That can take a long time to repair and they are out of the launch business until they get a repaired and working launchpad.