Blue Origin provides update on its investigation into the New Glenn launchpad explosion
Blue Origin’s CEO David Limp today finally posted an update on the results of the company’s investigation into the cause of the New Glenn launchpad explosion on May 28, 2026.
The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections. Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We’re making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. We’re manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month. In parallel, we’re working through the remaining fault tree analysis.
This is truly excellent news, and strongly suggests Blue Origin will be able to resume launches before the end of the year, as Limp has been promising since shortly after the May explosion.
Note that the first person to comment at the link is Elon Musk: “Hope you get back to flight soon.”
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Will ULA also be able to resume Vulcan launches by year’s end? It also uses the BE-4.
As Jeff notes below, Vulcan has problems unrelated to the BE-4 and the timetable for fixing those is unknown at present.
The NorGrum solids are also a problem.
The should have kept Delta IV
ULA couldn’t afford to keep Delta IV. It needed to convert the Delta IV line to make Vulcans. In any case, it had already yielded the Delta IV pads well before this Vulcan SRB problem came along. No going back.
And there’s also the matter of the Delta IV being the 2nd most expensive heavy lifter in the US inventory, after SLS. I mention that just because you are always Mr. “Money is no object” on these matters.
I meet many of the “money is no object”** people in person. More house and car(s) than they can afford leaving them paycheck to paycheck, until the paychecks get interrupted.
**Actually, it’s that they don’t understand that money is the game counter that describes the limits to lifestyle. Do you choose a smaller house and used cars with steak, investments, and vacations, or larger house and new car(s) worried about the price of hamburger???
“Money is no object” people fall into two general classes:
1. Money is no object when it’s other people’s money. Our friend Mr. Wright is one of those.
2. Money is no object when it’s my money. Many examples come to mind – MC Hammer, notoriously, for example.
The Venn Diagram does show some non-trivial overlap between these two classes.
Delta IV was a good, reliable expendable rocket, but it was insanely expensive to build and operate. That’s why ULA retired it as quickly as it could.
All together now – “it’s always the bloody valves!”
So many people keep hoping Blue Origin will ramp up, speed up….. something. Part of a recent SpaceX video showed the heavily automated SpaceX Star Factory. The goal is producing completed Starships on an almost daily schedule. They may not actually do it that quickly. Or, maybe they will.
Blue Origin doesn’t need to compete on that level. I just hope they get going.
The Starfactory isn’t really all that automated yet. It will eventually be so, but Elon has said that one lesson he learned at Tesla was not to automate a process until one is certain that the process is actually needed and also not to do so until the process has been through a few rounds of modification and improvement.
I remain skeptical that Blue Origin will be able to launch again before year’s end, even if they have an impeccable fault tree. It’s just a ton of work they have to do, and schedules always slide to the right. Almost all of the Blue employees who frequent the Reddit and Discord channels I follow on BO seem to think first half of 2027 is the realistic timeframe. (Both have run polls in the last week or two, in fact.)
But hey, I’m pulling for them. The American world where New Glenn is in operation is better than the world where it isn’t.
In related news, Tory Bruno (who has been unusually talkative this week) tweeted yesterday that Blue Ring is in “final build” and will be ready for launch late this year. Take it for what it’s worth.
https://x.com/i/status/2085037264925540543
I read somewhere that SpaceX hopes to be doing daily Starship launches by mid-2027. Even allowing for adding in a generous dollop of Elon-time, that’s a torrid pace!
If BO launches by end of 2026, that’s great, but I hope they have also invested in a large enough telescope to see SpaceX accelerating away by that time!
As I’ve said before, it’s obvious that SpaceX is the actual U.S. space program!
“Note that the first person to comment at the link is Elon Musk: ‘Hope you get back to flight soon.’”
This could be a relief to him, because otherwise the Falcons could have been pressed into service to make up for some of the lost New Glenn launches. At a time when the Falcons seem to already be near their maximum cadence, a delay of New Glenn coming back online could reduce the number of Starlink launches, which still need to happen until Starship can do that job,
In addition, Musk clearly already understands Richard M‘s point: “The American world where New Glenn is in operation is better than the world where it isn’t.” I go a step further than Ray Van Dune‘s comment: America’s commercial space companies are the actual U.S. space program.
Commercial space isn’t just launches, anymore. It is, among other things: space manufacturing, hypersonic testing and development, space stations, lunar probes, major portions of Artemis with aspirations of similar independent commercial lunar bases, worldwide communications, orbital data centers, earth observation, and Mars colonies. The U.S. government space program (NASA, Air Force, NOAA, etc.) was similarly aspirational but not nearly as fast at development.