Blue Origin officials have been assessing the damage caused after its New Glenn rocket dramatically exploded in Florida. The fireball occurred when Jeff Bezos’ company prepared to use the rocket to launch a batch of satellites into low-Earth orbit for Amazon. Space scientist and author, David Whitehouse, has been telling Chris Smith about it…
David – We’re not quite sure what happened. I mean, we know there was an explosion after the main engines were firing in a test, so they’d already ignited the main engines, but what happened subsequently to cause this enormous fireball, we’re not quite sure. But the thing which struck me is that the energy in this fireball was equivalent to about one-tenth of a Hiroshima nuclear detonation. It was an enormous explosion, and it shows you how much energy you have to use to get something into space, because that explosion released the energy in a few seconds, and it completely wrecked the launch pad.
Chris – Yeah, I was going to say, focusses your mind when you think about that amount of energy being unleashed, all in a fairly small space. So yes, there was fallout for the launch pad then.
David – Oh, the launch pad has been completely wrecked. Launch pads aren’t just pads of concrete. They are highly complex pieces of infrastructure. They have lots of tubing, lots of pipes going in, bringing in fuel, different types of fuel, bringing in water, taking water away, the electrical components, damage beyond repair. The blast radius of damage extended more than a mile, so this is a major problem with getting this launch pad back together again. And the only comparison we’ve got is what happened to SpaceX 10 years ago when a Falcon rocket exploded, and that was a different type of explosion in the sense that it occurred at the top of the bottom, but it took them a year to get the pad back straight. Some people have said there is a golden lining in this in the sense that the pad which was destroyed was a fairly old-fashioned pad, and it was modified to deal with New Glenn. Now they’ve got a chance to really upgrade the pad so that in the future, once they get over this, they could perhaps have easier, swifter launch rates. But no doubt at all, it is a major disaster for Jeff Bezos and for the American space effort to get back to the Moon.
Chris – Was there anything on that rocket? Because you said it was a test firing, were they just lighting the engines or was this a rocket that was going to go somewhere and going to do something?
David – It was going to go somewhere the following week. It was a test; it was a test of the engines. Nobody expected a problem obviously. Fortunately, the satellites, the communication satellites that were to have been launched the following week were not installed, so that would have been an additional disaster if they had been destroyed. Now those satellites have to find another route into space, but at least they weren’t completely obliterated, which is what would have happened.
Chris – Didn’t the Russians have a problem with one of theirs for a similar sort of situation? We spoke about it earlier in the year.
David – The Russian launch pads are simpler and they seem to have a reasonably straightforward time, although it took them many, many months to get the thing back together again. But what Jeff Bezos got is a very complicated task, because his new Glenn rocket is central to getting America back to the Moon. And the delay in that of at least a year gives timetable problems, but also Bezos political problems. Because what he said was when he wanted to get the pad back working later this year, when I think people believe it’s going to be middle of next year, is that he doesn’t want talk of the satellites and the lunar craft that New Glenn was to have launched. He doesn’t want anybody to say, well let’s give them to SpaceX, modify them and launch them on SpaceX. He doesn’t want people to go down that avenue.
Chris – What role does this play in NASA’s Moon ambitions?
David – A central role. I think people realised a few years ago, when they were giving so much to SpaceX for the lunar return, that they did so because they said Elon Musk delivers. But then I think they realised that it might not be as straightforward as that. So, they split it between SpaceX and Blue Origin. And what the New Glenn was going to launch was the Blue Moon Lander, which is the central template for landing cargo on the Moon. And that was to have its first flight later this year, where it was to put down a prototype Blue Moon Lander at the South Pole. Now this Blue Moon Lander is an important bit of kit. It’s much smaller than the starship, which SpaceX wants to land on the Moon. It’s much more like an upgraded, much larger Apollo lander. And it’s a start of a series of Blue Moon Landers of various degrees of increasing complexity, leading up to something that could carry people to the Moon. So, it’s vital to start the Blue Moon Lander production line and landing on the Moon, in order to get equipment to the Moon that people have already paid for, in order to develop the technology to put people on the Moon in the next few years. And the timetable for that was pretty tight, because NASA wants to upgrade its cadence to get to the Moon, starting very intensively towards the end of this year. And of course, now the Blue Moon Lander cannot go for at least another year. That, in the short term, has a major effect. It had, in a couple of years, a contract to launch two rovers to the Moon. And Blue Origin has said, well, actually, in a couple of years, we’ll be back and running, and that should be all right. It’s the next 18 months that is the problem, in terms of the fact that New Glenn is delayed, the Blue Moon Lander is delayed. SpaceX is having problems with its Starship, because that’s not coming on as quickly as people thought. So, this is a major setback, just at the time when NASA wanted to say, OK, we’re going faster now, we’re sending more stuff to the Moon, we really have to build up to the landing.