This is why the failure of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is so alarming

Rebuilding the company’s facility, or completing a new one, would take a year, even with Blue Origin’s best efforts, and based on Jeff Bezos’s unlimited resources. A source familiar with pad reconstructions stated that 15 months was a “best case scenario”.

Rigid design

You might be wondering what the big deal is. SpaceX has been blasting Starship rockets left and right, and astronauts seem to be enjoying them.

The reality is that Blue Origin took a traditional design approach with New Glenn, unlike SpaceX’s iterative design, which requires testing, flying, failing, and repairing equipment. The first part of the New Glenn was successful on its first three missions. It is a mature design.

Because of this, Blue Origin was about to start driving almost every month during the second half of the year, serving different customers, from NASA to Amazon, AST SpaceMobile, and its internal payload.

With the Vulcan rocket also offline due to problems, it also puts all of the US’s medium and heavy launch capabilities into the basket of SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

As for the Vulcan, if it has a problem with the BE-4 engine—and the first indications are that the problems that caused Thursday’s failure came from the central booster engine—it could complicate the United Launch Alliance’s recovery of the big rocket.

Blue Moon Mark 1

The Blue Origin cargo carrier has emerged as the biggest workhorse in the early stages of NASA’s Artemis and Moon Base programs. It has the capacity to deliver 3 tons to the surface of the moon and could serve as a means of access to a larger type of manned mission to the Moon.

This week, NASA announced that its Moon Base I mission will fly on the Blue Moon Mark 1, and gave Blue Origin $280.4 million to provide two trips to the moon in 2028. Many other missions are planned for the lander, which was designed to be sent to the Moon on a single New Glenn vehicle.