LC 40: Blue Moon After the New Glenn Explosion

MaxOkay, so get this. Every Artemis conversation I've had this year ends with someone saying, "Well, there's always Blue Origin."

BlakeAnd then Blue Origin's rocket catches fire.

MaxPlot twist, the spare tire is also on fire.

BlakeIt's a little more nuanced than a flaming tire.

MaxIs it, though? Because I've seen the video. Fair.

BlakeWelcome to Landing the Moon. I'm Blake, and that's Max, who will now make a fire joke every four minutes.

MaxI'll try for every three. So the date is May 28th. New Glenn, the Blue Origin heavy rocket, blows up during a hot fire test.

BlakeHold on. Before we pile on, two questions are driving this episode, and they're different fights.

MaxMine is engineering. Blue Origin says it will fly again by the end of 2026 from a rebuilt pad. Is that credible work or just optimism with a nice font?

BlakeMine is about the backup itself. Does Congress, does NASA have a real alternative to SpaceX or only a hedge that looks great on a slide?

MaxOh, you're gonna love arguing that one.

BlakeI already do. Start with the facts, though, because the jokes only work if the facts are straight.

MaxRight. First, what actually happened on May 28th? Okay, so get this. The cause wasn't some exotic, never seen before failure. It was a valve, a BE-4 valve inside the engines that Blue Origin builds.

BlakeA valve on a rocket that size?

MaxBillions of dollars of hardware, and the villain is plumbing.

BlakeMy rule of plumbing, it's always the plumbing. But I want the setting right, Max. This wasn't a launch, correct?

MaxCorrect, and that matters. It went during a hotfire test, which is when the engines fire with the vehicle held down on the pad. Nobody was off the ground yet.

BlakeSo the rocket never had a chance to fail in flight.

MaxRight. It failed while bolted to the ground, which is the worst place for the ground.

BlakeBecause the ground is the problem.

MaxWhich is sort of the point of a hotfire. You light the engines while the vehicle is held down, so you learn things before you trust it with a real flight.

BlakeSo a hotfire is the test that's supposed to catch a problem where it's cheapest to catch it, and this time it caught it the expensive way.

MaxExactly. NASASpaceFlight's description was, "Damaging loss of New Glenn during hotfire testing at Launch Complex 36." Damaging to the site, not just to the booster. Damaging to the site, not just to the booster.

BlakeHold on. Damaging how? Do we know the extent?

MaxNot from that piece. It says damaging, and I'm not going to invent a repair estimate for you.

BlakeFair. Because here's what bugs me. A rocket you lose is a cost. A pad you lose is a schedule.

MaxOh, you're gonna love this part. LC-36 is Blue Origin's only launch pad.

BlakeOnly, as in one.

MaxOne. Spacecom's reporting makes exactly that point. With a single pad, every day it's down is another day Blue Origin can't prove New Glenn is reliable.

BlakeWhich is the thing the whole backup argument rests on. Reliability you haven't demonstrated is a brochure.

MaxA brochure with a very expensive valve.

BlakeSpaceX can lose a vehicle and keep flying from somewhere else. Blue Origin loses the one address it has, and the flight count just stops.

MaxAnd notice the asymmetry. Everything you'd want to see, more launches and a track record, needs that pad standing. Every test, every flight, every bit of proof runs through one address.

BlakeSo the question isn't whether the rocket can be fixed. A valve is fixable. And to be careful, I'm only saying that because the cause is described as a valve. I'm not saying the whole investigation is finished.

MaxRight. The pad is the real question. Can it be rebuilt by year-end with the clock now running down?

BlakeBecause every calendar page that flips makes that promise a little heavier.

MaxOkay, so get this. Blue Origin didn't wait around. SpaceNews reported they started rebuilding the pad less than two weeks after the explosion.

BlakeThree weeks. That's fast for a crater or for a paperwork trail.

MaxRight? And the target is launches resuming by the end of 2026.

BlakeFine, but when did they say that, and how much of it was already done?

MaxThe Spaceflight Now piece is dated June 30th. It says the company was still analyzing the explosion a little more than a month on, but CEO Dave Limp had shared a plan for resuming pad operations later this year.

BlakeSo the plan arrived while the investigation was still open.

MaxYep.

BlakeThen the schedule was drafted before anyone finished reading the cause.

MaxBlake, they had a valve suspect. That's a head start.

BlakeA suspect isn't a verdict, Max.

MaxFair. Now, the brief calls it a hybrid horizontal and vertical pad rebuild and says roughly seven months, except that's the whole span from May 28th to New Year's. The rebuild started mid-June, and our reporting is from June and July.

BlakeHold on. So the seven months is the wall clock, not the work remaining.

MaxExactly. Today, roughly three months are left on that clock, not seven. The seven only tells you how big the window was on day one.

BlakeOh, man, that changes the feel of it. Three months to finish, and we haven't seen an update since summer, and clocks keep running whether or not anyone is reading.

MaxWhich is my case for engineering over optimism. They started early, and a company that starts in week three is not stalling.

BlakeOkay. Name the assumptions. What has to be true for that to hold?

MaxWell, well, the damage has to be the kind you can rebuild in one season, and the new design has to go together without surprises.

BlakeAnd neither of those is in anything we've read. I want a vent task list, and neither should you.

MaxAgreed. I'm not claiming a Gantt chart. I'm saying starting early buys margin.

BlakeMargin against what? Concrete doesn't get rushed by enthusiasm.

MaxNo. But look, a hybrid pad means they're doing something new, not patching the old one, and new hardware is where dates go to die.

BlakeSo you argued my side.

MaxI contain multitudes. Cheap ones.

BlakeLet me push once more on the word credible. Credible to whom? An announcement is credible if the company believes it. Engineering is credible if someone outside can check it and we can't.

MaxRight, and that's the honest limit. We have a start date and a target, not the middle.

BlakeThen here's what nags me. Suppose the pad lands on time, December, ribbons, the works.

MaxThen a rocket has to fly first, and after that, the lander has to actually ride on it. What happens to Blue Moon then?

BlakeThat's the part nobody's putting in the press release.

MaxOkay, so get this. The lander has a name, Endurance, and it's the MK1 pathfinder. Where does its calendar stand?

BlakeThe creator brief for this episode has MK1 now reported as no earlier than early 2027. And SpaceNews adds that Limp laid out a sequence with MK1 going first early in 2027.

MaxEarly '27. Dude, that's a slide from last year with the year crossed out.

BlakeFair, but what was the original target?

MaxNASASpaceFlight's late July update says Endurance was first expected no earlier than fall 2026.

BlakeSo fall becomes early next year.

MaxYep, and the reason is what matters.

BlakeGo on.

MaxThat same update says the flight now depends on New Glenn returning to flight. Not a lander test slipping, a dependency on the rocket.

BlakeHold on. That's a sourced line, but it's also the one nobody can check from outside. Dependent how? On any flight or on a specific one?

MaxThe update doesn't say. It gives the dependency and stops.

BlakeThen I'll hold my tongue on the detail, but NET is heavyweight in that phrase, no earlier than. That's a floor, not a promise.

MaxFloor with a trapdoor. Every Artemis date I've ever seen has one.

BlakeOkay, so what is Endurance even supposed to prove? Because if it's just a ride and a hello, slipping is cheap.

MaxOh, it's not a hello. The NASASpaceFlight piece says it's meant to attempt a landing near the Shackleton Connecting Ridge.

BlakeAt the South Pole, where the terrain is rude.

MaxVery rude, and it carries a precision landing system with a one hundred meter requirement.

BlakeA hundred meters. Picture a football field and a little more. You touch down inside that, near ridges and shadows.

MaxAnd those results feed the crewed MK2, so this little one flight is the data pipe for the big lander.

BlakeWhich means every month Endurance waits, MK2 learning waits too.

MaxExactly. And notice it's a requirement, not a result. One hundred meters is what the system has to hit, and nobody has flown it yet.

BlakeRight. So the number is a promise about the future. I like that it's specific because specific promises fail visibly and vague ones can't.

MaxHa. That's the most Blake sentence ever. Specific promises fail visibly.

BlakeIt's true of schedules too. A date you can miss is more honest than a vibe. So the lander team is sitting on a finished question and no rocket to ask it with?

MaxWait for it, because here's the twist. The lander itself isn't the thing that's stuck. Okay, so get this. While the pad is a construction site, the lander just walked out of a NASA vacuum chamber.

BlakeWalked out having passed?

MaxNASA's release says MK1 Endurance finished thermal vacuum testing in Chamber A at Johnson Space Center. That's under a reimbursable Space Act agreement.

BlakeReimbursable meaning Blue Origin pays NASA for the chamber time.

MaxRight, which fits because NASA describes MK1 as Blue Origin funded. Their money, NASA's chamber.

BlakeAnd what is it supposed to demonstrate? I want the list, not the vibes.

MaxNASA lists three things: precision landing, cryogenic propulsion, and autonomous guidance, navigation, and control, all uncrewed.

BlakeAutonomous meaning nobody is steering it from the ground during the descent.

MaxThat's how I read it, yes, though the nobody steering part is my gloss, not NASA's wording. And NASA ties all of it to risk reduction for the crewed MK1.

BlakeSo MK1 is a rehearsal for a lander with people on it.

MaxA very expensive dress rehearsal with no stage to perform on yet.

BlakeHold on. Finishing a vacuum test doesn't mean it flies. What does the chamber prove, and what doesn't it?

MaxFair. The release, as summarized, says it finished testing. It doesn't hand us a list of results, so I'll say the hardware is progressing and stop before I say it's ready.

BlakeGood. Now the schedule. Limp has a sequence, doesn't he?

MaxHe does. SpaceNews reported it. MK1 in early 2027, then MK2 in mid-2027 for Artemis III.

BlakeMid-2027 for a crewed lander. Dude.

MaxWait for it. Then a second MK1 carrying VIPER later that same year.

BlakeVIPER being the NASA lunar rover. So that's three launches stacked in one year from a company that currently has a pad under reconstruction.

MaxAnd here's the wrinkle. SpaceNews says NASA considered decoupling Blue Moon from New Glenn.

BlakeAnd Limp's answer?

MaxHe suggested it wouldn't be necessary.

BlakeOf course he did. The man running the rocket says keep the lander on the rocket.

MaxShocking. But look at what that tells us. The hardware track is moving on its own. Vacuum tests don't care about concrete.

BlakeYet the calendar is chained together. Every date in that sequence rides on one rocket returning to flight.

MaxSo the lander can be perfect and still sit in the hangar.

BlakeAnd that's the difference between progress and schedule. Progress is what's happening in the chamber. Schedule is whether there's a rocket and a pad waiting at the other end.

MaxDecoupled in progress, coupled in schedule. Put that on a mug.

BlakeWhich means the thing I wanted to argue about as a backup question turns into your question. Does the pad finish on time?

MaxYep. We're both staring at the same pad now.

BlakeThen the only thing left open is whether anyone can lean on this company at all. But first, the lander that actually carries people. What does MK2 still have to prove, and who's counting on it?

Speaker 3Okay, so MK2, the one with people inside. Blake, you've been sitting on the Congress angle all episode, so go.

BlakeGladly. SpaceNews quoted NASA Administrator Isaacman's April 27 testimony to House appropriators. He said both SpaceX and Blue Origin told him they could support a rendezvous and docking test in late 2027.

Speaker 3Late 2027. Docking, not landing.

BlakeRight. The landing attempt comes after that in 2028. So even the optimistic baseline had a rehearsal before the real thing.

Speaker 3And keep the date on that testimony in mind because it predates the explosion. Oh, man. So that's the baseline Congress was handed.

BlakeA baseline from before the pad went up. But the same Spacecom piece lists what MK2 still has to clear, and it's a real list. Life support is on it.

Speaker 3Life support on the crew lander.

BlakeI know. You can have the prettiest descent stage in the world, and if the cabin can't keep four people breathing, it's a very expensive sculpture.

Speaker 3Hold on. Don't write it off. NASASpaceFlight's late July update mentions a full-scale MK2 cabin mock-up at Johnson Space Center.

BlakeA mock-up.

Speaker 3A full-scale one. People can walk through it, poke at the layout, figure out where the crew actually goes.

BlakeSure. A mock-up tells you about ergonomics. It doesn't tell you whether the life support works.

Speaker 3Fair. It's a cardboard cutout of progress, but it's a big cardboard cutout.

BlakeThe same list also names New Glenn plus an MK1 landing. We've walked that chain already, so I'll just flag it and stay with MK2 itself.

Speaker 3So on its own side, MK2's homework is life support and a crew cabin that has to work for real.

BlakeRight. And in what we've read, the cabin mock-up is the only visible piece of that. I haven't seen a life support result anywhere.

Speaker 3Which leaves us with the question you keep circling.

BlakeThe program has two providers. So is this a backup or a hedge that looks good on paper?

Speaker 3Okay, so the backup question. SpaceNews reported that NASA considered decoupling Blue Moon from New Glenn. Pull the lander off Blue Origin's own rocket.

BlakeWait, ride on somebody else's rocket? That's a wild fix.

Speaker 3It was considered, and the same report says Limp suggested it wouldn't be necessary.

BlakeOf course he did. The guy who runs the lander says the lander doesn't need a new ride.

Speaker 3Right, and that's my problem. Nobody in that line shows me the evidence. It's a reassurance.

BlakeBlake, it's one sentence in one article. Let the man be optimistic.

Speaker 3I'll let him. I won't plan a lunar landing around it. Space.com makes the stakes plain. Neither Starship nor Blue Moon is certified for astronauts yet.

BlakeNeither one. Zero for two.

Speaker 3And Space.com says a Blue Moon delay could narrow NASA's options, with NASA targeting 2027 for Artemis III.

BlakeNarrow to what, though? Narrow to one lander?

Speaker 3That's the honest read. A backup only counts if it can step in, and nothing we've read says it's ready. Two providers is a hedge, Max.

BlakeA hedge with a pulse, though. Hardware exists. Nobody's staring at a blank page.

Speaker 3Hardware that can't fly is a very different thing from a provider that can.

BlakeOh, you're gonna hate this. I think both can be true. Real hardware, shaky schedule, and the program still has two horses.

Speaker 3Having two horses doesn't make the second one run.

BlakeFine, but let me push. What would make it a backup in your eyes concretely?

Speaker 3Forget the calendar. We've spent enough time there. Think about what kind of finish line matters. Certified for astronauts isn't a launch you watch on a live stream. It's a sign-off, a judgment about whether people can ride it.

BlakeAnd neither provider has that yet, Starship included.

Speaker 3Right. So even the team that's ahead hasn't reached it, and the one behind has a rocket problem on top of it. Ahead and behind are both still short of the line.

BlakeSo the test for a real backup isn't a date, it's a status. Is it certified or not?

Speaker 3Yes. And as far as our sources show, nobody is. Until that changes, it's a hedge.

BlakeA hedge with a pulse, as I said. But I'll concede that the word backup is running ahead of the evidence.

Speaker 3Then that's where we land. Real hardware, an unproven ride, and a hedge that still has to earn the word backup. Let's close with what to watch. Verdicts, one line each. Mine, the pad is credible engineering, but I'll believe year-end when I see a vehicle on the stand.

BlakeMine is a hedge with homework due.

Speaker 3Ouch. Fair, though.

BlakePredictions, then. Skeptical ones, so you can yell at us later.

Speaker 3Oh, I'm counting on it. Mine, New Glenn does not fly by December 31st. It slips into early next year, and Blue Origin calls it a schedule refinement.

BlakeMine is about the lander. By the end of this year, no firm MK1 launch date gets announced. Only another no earlier then.

Speaker 3Wait for it. One more. Somebody in Congress asks NASA out loud whether the backup is real.

BlakeThat one I would take. Cheap bet.

Speaker 3We'll grade all three on a future episode, scorecard in hand.

BlakeAnd if a friend keeps asking why we're going back to the moon, send them this episode.

Speaker 3Yes, share it, and hit subscribe so you're here when we find out who blinked.

BlakeAlso, Max, bring a pen. I'm keeping score.

Speaker 3Of course you are. Thanks for listening, everybody.