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Blue Origin Downplays The Explosion As An ‘Anomaly’
According to reporting on the matter by The Independent, the incident took place at around 9:00 PM local time last night. As seen below, video footage of the explosion shows that the rocket did not leave the ground at any point. However, rather than being a fault, this was planned, as the New Glenn rocket was only on the launchpad to perform a static engine testing procedure known as a ‘hotfire test.’
This procedure, The Independent notes, involves igniting all seven of the vessel’s booster engines in a secure static environment. However, something clearly went badly wrong during the ignition, although Blue Origin stated on X (formerly known as Twitter) that it had merely “experienced an anomaly.” The launchpad was also badly damaged, with repairs expected to take months. Bezos added on X that:
“All personnel are accounted for and safe. 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.”
The Race For Space
In the 1960s, the world was captivated by the ‘race for space’ between the US and the USSR as the two technological superpowers battled with one another to make further leaps in space research. The climax of this tussle came in July 1969, when NASA’s Apollo 11 mission successfully saw humans land on the moon for the first time, as immortalized in the music of British band Public Service Broadcasting.
Now, six decades later, a different kind of race for space is happening: one between tech billionaires whose intentions are perhaps driven more by ego than by exciting scientific research for the good of humanity. The zenith of this phenomenon has been the rivalry between Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with critics of space tourism questioning its financial and environmental implications.
Of course, Bezos and Musk are not the only billionaires to have dipped their toes into the pool of private space exploration. Indeed, most notably, Virgin Atlantic founder Sir Richard Branson has also done more than his fair share of dabbling on this front with the establishment and development of Virgin Galactic. As detailed in our coverage below, Virgin Galactic made its first private space flight back in 2023.
History Made: Virgin Galactic Performs 1st Private Astronaut Space Flight
On Thursday, Virgin Galactic operated its first private space flight for tourists.
Not Blue Origin’s First Major Explosion
Due to the experimental nature of space travel even in the 2020s, incidents like these are sadly all part and parcel of the testing process. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising to see that this is not the first time that a Blue Origin rocket has been involved in a major explosion. Indeed, as reported at the time by Simple Flying, a similarly dramatic and catastrophic failure occurred during a test back in July of 2023.
That particular incident involved a BE-4 engine. The liquid-fueled design had been in development since 2011, with its thrust provided by a combination of liquid oxygen and natural gas. Its development was expedited in the mid-2010s amid fracturing relationships between the US and Russia (the former relied on the latter’s RD-180 engines for the Atlas V rocket), which meant the US needed its own engine.
