Blue Origin Rocket Exploded Thursday Night During Hot-Fire Test (cbsnews.com)
- Reference: 0183447242
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/29/171202/blue-origin-rocket-exploded-thursday-night-during-hot-fire-test
- Source link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-explodes-launchpad-florida/
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos [3]said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk [4]posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")
It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," [5]reports CBS News , "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible."
> It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction [6]prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit ...
>
> The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]
Blue Origin [7]posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."
"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman [8]posted on X.com . "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [9]symbolset for sharing the news.
[1] https://x.com/SpaceflightNow/status/2060170680604168319
[2] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/05/28/watch-blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-explodes-on-cape-canaveral-launch-pad-during-test/
[3] https://x.com/JeffBezos/status/2060182822170902622
[4] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2060179096714563587
[5] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-explodes-launchpad-florida/
[6] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/blue-origin-new-glenn-rocket-satellite-wrong-orbit/
[7] https://x.com/blueorigin/status/2060341442006876204
[8] https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2060186268772835475
[9] https://www.slashdot.org/~symbolset
"To the MOON (Alice)"! (Score:3)
Kapow!
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously impressive explosion.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the twelve-year-old in me enjoyed the video very much! What a fireball!
Re: (Score:2)
People who quote Family Guy often tend to be fun. It's a show with very hit and miss comedy, but this was a particularly funny moment.
Re: (Score:2)
To get proper context, you need to know that this was from the '50s TV show [1]The Honeymooners [wikipedia.org] and was Ralph Kramden's (Jackie Gleason) regular reply to his wife's (Audrey Meadows) put downs or sarcastic remarks. And, the line always started with "One of these days, Alice, one of these days..." Yes, he'd generally make a fist as he said it, but he never threw a punch. Many of the episodes revolved around his get rich quick schemes, and he once told Alice that they were all to give her the better life that
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honeymooners
the stock is set to EXPLODE! (Score:2)
"Where are my engines Tory?!!"
"One's over in the swamp over there and one's over that-a-way on the beach."
Didn't they blow up a second stage during testing a few weeks ago? Two KABOOMS in such close succession?!!
Pad destroyed (Score:4, Informative)
Pic: [1]https://x.com/asherbphotos/sta... [x.com]
Word is a second booster at the site in the horizontal integration facility was also destroyed.
Impacts go beyond the rocket and pad. This was development for lunar landers to be launched this year, Leo internet satellites to be launched in the coming days, Blue Moon lunar landers for the Artemis lunar program, and on and on. An engine may have been the cause of the mishap and that casts shade on the Vulcan Centaur that also uses the same engine.
[1] https://x.com/asherbphotos/status/2060360281662857565
Big bada boom (Score:3)
Second biggest non nuke manmade explosion ever. Gonna take a long time to rebuild that launch site :( USGS also pegged it at a M2.5, which is impressive from an above ground explosion.
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This is how I envision the AI burst when it happens.
Second biggest (Score:2)
What was the biggest? Halifax?
Re:Second biggest (Score:5, Informative)
Estimates saying 5.5 GWh (roughly kilotons TNT) Soviet N1 rocket was somewhere around 8 GWh, Hiroshima was around 17, Beirut dock explosions estimated around 1.3 GWh, the Halifax 1917 explosion was around 2.9.
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Widely accepted estimate for the 1917 Halifax Explosion is ~2.9 kilotons of TNT.
Minor Scale (1985, New Mexico) — the largest non-nuclear manmade explosion ever.
It used 4,744 tons of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, equivalent to ~3.2 kilotons of TNT. It was a deliberate U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency test to simulate nuclear blast effects.
Re: Big bada boom (Score:2)
That doesn't seem right. It is an unmixed fuel and oxidiser. More a burn than a bomb.
I mean, there was that Denmark island is ww2...
Re: Big bada boom (Score:2)
Did not detonate. But it was an explosion.
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A MOAB is just a fuel air explosive too...
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> how fast does a fire have to be to become an explosion?
The speed of sound. It creates a supersonic shockwave.
This type of explosion is known as a deflagration (as opposed to a detonation).
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> how fast does a fire have to be to become an explosion?
When the coroner can't tell the difference, your question is only one lawyers care about.
(Ironically enough, if it's proven the victims burned slower instead of exploding faster, then the pain and suffering costs skyrocket higher than the rocket ever did.)
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Well, a baseball bat *is* a deadly weapon, if used as a weapon.
OTOH, when arguing about whether it's a bomb the definitions of the terms are less clear. And when arguing about whether it's an explosion, high energy chemists/engineers will have a different definition than folks who don't deal with the details.
To me, it's an explosion. If some professional wants to say "No, it's a deflagration." I'm not going to say he's wrong, but I'm not wrong either. We're just speaking different dialects of English.
Re: (Score:2)
> Second biggest non nuke manmade explosion ever.
(Site Investigator) "Wait, did you pack this thing with..tannerite?
(Bezos) * giggle-snort *
(Musk) "Duuude. I was joking."
video is powerful (Score:2)
The updraft right after the explosion - you could almost feel it looking at your laptop screen. hope nobody was killed or injured.
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The announcement kept saying "everyone is accounted for" which left it ominously open.
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> The announcement kept saying "everyone is accounted for" which left it ominously open.
In the land of gross unaccountability, all present and accounted for has somehow legally translated into technically we found every piece..
Wow! (Score:2)
Kudos to the Blue Origin folks. That was solid gold Hollywood level pyrotechnics!
Two thumbs way up!
The mushroom cloud was a nice touch too - nothing says high drama like a nice mushroom cloud.
My grandkids would both be yelling - "Ooh! Do it again!"
[what is everybody looking at me like that for? too soon?]
Alternate headline (Score:3)
Bezos suffers Projectile Dysfunction.
Congratulations! (Score:2)
Apparently the "hot fire" test was a great success!
Re-engineer it (Score:2)
They need to make the rocket out of the same material that those rocket towers are made out of. Yeah, that would do the trick.
I guess (Score:2)
...we can expect Prime to get more expensive then.
Space is still hard (Score:3)
Failures in early examples of every rocket are not especially unusual, and corrective actions will be taken (to avoid that specific failure mode next time). The investigation report should be interesting.
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This IS rocket science after all.
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True.
SpaceX's recent successes tend to make people forget that the company started out with three failures in their first three attempts to launch their first rocket, the Falcon-1. (And, for that matter, SpaceX also had it's share of [1]explosions on the pad [spacenews.com] during a static fire.)
Yeah: space is hard.
[1] https://spacenews.com/developing-explosion-rocks-spacex-falcon-9-pad-at-cape-canaveral/