Blue Origin explosion could put Artemis in danger

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Again, a SpaceX launch this morning after a devastating explosion last night of New Glenn on launch complex 36A.

[00:00:12]And uh so now the question is what happens next? What does this mean? What is the fallout here from some of the other major missions, moon missions uh and other things? So here to help us sort all of this out, we've got Dr. Don Platt who's the director of the Spaceport Education Center uh the Florida Institute of Technology. Dr. Platt, we always enjoy talking with you.

[00:00:34]Thanks for joining us today.

[00:00:35]>> Sure, my pleasure.

[00:00:37]>> Uh so, first just give us your reaction when you heard saw what happened last night. What did you uh make of that?

[00:00:48]>> Well, it's certainly astonishing. You don't anticipate something like that happening when they're just simply doing what they call a hot fire or basically keeping the rocket strapped to the the launch pad and just testing the engines.

[00:00:59]Uh but uh you know unfortunately uh things went wrong almost from the very beginning of this test uh last night and this explosion was certainly devastating uh to the rocket to the launchpad to all of the infrastructure around that area uh that uh supports the Blue Origin New Glenn program. And uh so it uh was certainly something that was unanticipated and one of the biggest explosions really with all the rockets that have ever uh been tested here on the space coast.

[00:01:29]>> So how big of a deal is this Dr. Platt?

[00:01:33]Well, it certainly is a major setback for the Blue Origin program, uh, New Glenn, but, uh, Blue Origin is also highly involved in the Aremis program in terms of providing a lunar lander, uh, for the new lunar base that was, uh, uh, talked about by NASA this week. And, uh, they are also a major participant in the Artemis 3 test mission that's supposed to take place toward the end of 2027.

[00:01:59]And uh the new Glenn vehicle is needed to uh get their lunar lander version up into uh Earth orbit where the Orion Aremis capsule could dock with it. Uh certainly now it looks like that uh may have a major delay.

[00:02:14]>> Yeah. Does this does this push everything back when it comes to those Aremis missions and and the next moon landing?

[00:02:22]Well, Jared Isaacman, the director of NASA, has said that he would really like to have both the Blue Origin lunar lander and the uh SpaceX lander that is based on a Starship in low Earth orbit for the Orion capsule to dock to uh for a demonstration mission for the next Artemis 3 mission. And uh basically they want to do that in lower earth orbit because it's a lot easier to uh test out a new system that way uh than go all the way to the moon and wait until they're there for uh testing it for the first time. Uh I suppose they could go ahead assuming the Starship gets through the problems it's had lately too and uh becomes an operational orbital vehicle here within the next year uh with a uh an Artemis 3 mission with just the Starship. But definitely NASA would much prefer to have both of them and be able to compare them and and really have two uh versions of the lander to enable a true lunar base in the near future.

[00:03:18]>> There have been some operational issues like you talked about with you know on the SpaceX side and on the the Blue Origin side and these are two companies that are expected to take major roles in these uh these upcoming missions and in the future as we you know see more of the the privatization of of all of this.

[00:03:35]Does does this you think make the NASA administrator uh and others a little nervous knowing the the goals and the uh the the objectives here when it we keep hearing about the the new space race and and trying to beat China and all of this? Does is this cause for concern?

[00:03:54]>> Sure. And that's why Isaacman apparently came to the space coast early this morning to see really what was going on here and uh what happened with the Blue Origin incident. Uh yeah, this is definitely a cause for concern. Uh we were already tracking that the lunar lander programs were behind schedule.

[00:04:12]Some of our previous discussions, we've talked about that a bit and uh now uh we're seeing that two of the biggest space companies in the world. Blue Origin and SpaceX are having difficulties with getting these lunar lander systems operational and be able to have them even tested in Earth orbit, let alone getting them to the moon. uh so that makes it uh much more difficult to really envision a lunar landing by 2028.

[00:04:38]>> So what's the path forward here specifically for uh Blue Origin because I know they are working on some additional uh launch pads and and locations but that is something that takes time. This is this was their only launchpad, correct? And now it's essentially destroyed, >> right? Yeah, it is. And so the a key priority almost from now really, you know, once they sort through the wreckage and the damage and and and really if there's anything there that can help them figure out what went wrong with the vehicle itself, they've really got to start rebuilding this pad. It really doesn't make sense to try to build another pad somewhere else because some of this infrastructure will probably be salvageable. And so, uh, they'll have to just start from where they can and, uh, rebuild this pad. To give us an idea, uh, the Falcon 9 had a similar explosion on their pad about 10 years ago, and it took them a year, uh, to get that pad back up and running. And so, I'm sure that SpaceX or sorry, Blue Origin is going to try to do everything possible to uh, to make this delay a lot less than a year, but that's going to be a major undertaking for them. And and if you're NASA and you're looking at these, you know, we just had the the announcement this week of some of these contracts that were going to to Blue Origin, do they revisit some of these things at this point, potentially look at at at making some new determinations?

[00:06:02]>> Well, unfortunately, there's not a lot of other people that can provide something as large and as complex as a lunar lander. uh they've gone through the process and have designs already in place and uh what I think they're just going to have to do is uh look at ways to uh uh try to speed things up as much as possible. Obviously, you can't go too fast or you do have even more potential of problems like this. But is there an opportunity to uh to fly the Blue Origin lander on another vehicle? Maybe even a SpaceX vehicle. Uh that would be an interesting uh thing to see. But uh not totally unprecedented. The uh the Signis program uh lost its launch vehicle when the Entures rocket blew up a few years ago and of course that was a Northrup Grumman uh system that resupplies the International Space Station. So they went off to SpaceX and NASA had SpaceX launch the uh the Northre Grumman resupply vehicles to the station. So NASA has done something like that before. So maybe there's something there. But of course, first Blue Origin has to get an operational lunar lander up and ready to go before they can launch it on anything.

[00:07:11]>> So Dr. Platt, just what's your take on kind of the landscape uh at this point after this and how how this really kind of seismically changes things?

[00:07:21]>> Well, it's a very interesting time. We were sort of building high momentum uh with the Aremis 2 mission uh back in April and it appeared that things were on track to really speed up the lunar program. Uh of course the last Starship mission the FAA uh told uh SpaceX that uh there was an issue that they would have to investigate and they labeled it a mishap. Uh so SpaceX is now dealing with that issue which of course is a a much more minor issue compared to then the explosion that we saw last night with Blue Origin. But these two programs are are kind of struggling to uh to get things up and going and operational here as we're moving all the all the way already into the uh uh halfway point of 2026.

[00:08:06]>> And that's that's tough to see. That's tough to have to, you know, kind of deal with. Like you said, it seems like we the the space industry is certainly having some momentum. All that excitement coming off the Aremis 2 mission uh and everything like that. So this uh this does seem to be a setback.

[00:08:23]>> Yeah, it is absolutely a setback. Now, of course, uh the space industry has uh uh recovered from major setbacks before and moved forward and uh the engineers involved and the technicians and everybody uh does a great job to get things going again and they really pitch in, put in extra effort, extra time, whatever is needed. And time and again, we've seen that and I'm sure that'll happen again here now uh with Blue Origin. I'm sure that NASA will reiterate their confidence in Blue Origin. They'll offer whatever help they can and uh you know it's a they have the vested interest in seeing Blue Origin be a success uh to uh enable their Artemis program to be a success and to also enable another viable uh American company to uh compete in the space race.

[00:09:13]>> Well uh Dr. Don Platt, Florida Institute of Technology Spaceport Education Center. Uh we always appreciate you.

[00:09:20]Thank you so much for joining us today here on Fox 35 News Plus and helping us uh make sense of all this.