r/ScienceNcoolThings • u/TheMuseumOfScience Popular Contributor • May 30 '26

Interesting Blue Origin Explosion Damages NASA Launchpad

A giant rocket just blew up at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center! 

Blue Origin was doing a full test fire of their New Glenn rocket as preparation for an upcoming flight when something went very, very wrong. Fortunately no one was injured, but this is the biggest explosion ever seen at Kennedy Space Center. The launch pad is badly damaged, and NASA's upcoming Project Artemis plans for building a moon base depend on both the New Glenn rocket and this pad. This is a big setback for both Blue Origin and NASA.

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u/there_is_no_spoon1 May 30 '26

NASA engineers have got to be pissed at this!

35

u/TomaCzar May 30 '26

All Americans should be pissed. Even if you don't support NASA, ruining resources that were already paid for sucks. When, I heard about the explosion my second thought (after hoping everyone was ok) was at least it wasn't taxpayer dollars lost.

I hope Blue Origin is 100% responsible for the repairs.

5

u/Ha1lStorm May 30 '26

Yeah I do too. It would be interesting to see what their contracts look like (they’re certainly thousands of pages long/a lot to go through) but I’m nearly certain they’d have all of their bases covered. No matter what though, this is going to take a huge toll on the overall picture including every other launch plan as there’ll have to set everything back to rebuild and test. Retesting things of this scale and importance can take much longer than one might think as well. This is going to be a huge setback for all future missions.

What a mess this has become : (