Space Thread

[Dr Strangelove]

BEZOS HAS 3 OPTIONS LEFT AFTER NEW GLENN'S LAUNCHPAD EXPLOSION. ALL 3 ARE CATASTROPHIC.

This is the moment nobody wants to talk about.

After years of development, a $1B+ heavy-lift rocket program, and a final ground test before Amazon's Kuiper satellite mission → Blue Origin is now boxed into THREE choices. And every single one is a nightmare:

OPTION 1: REBUILD LC-36 FROM SCRATCH
– The only launchpad Blue Origin owns is now a debris field
– One 600-foot lightning tower toppled. Erector-gantry: gone. Ground equipment: destroyed.
– Pad rebuilds after a full vehicle explosion take 12–24 months minimum
– Amazon's Kuiper constellation — already years behind SpaceX Starlink — falls further behind
– Every month of delay costs Amazon market share it cannot get back

OPTION 2: BORROW OR BUY LAUNCH CAPACITY FROM A COMPETITOR
– The only competitor with available heavy-lift pads is SpaceX
– Asking your direct rival for a launchpad is not a business negotiation — it's a surrender
– SpaceX has every incentive to slow-walk, overcharge, or simply say no
– Amazon would be funding the company that is actively destroying Kuiper's market window
– Jeff Bezos built Blue Origin specifically to avoid this dependency

OPTION 3: ABSORB THE DELAY AND KEEP INVESTING
– New Glenn's first stage was enveloped in fire during a routine hotfire test — the final check before orbital flight
– The vehicle collapsed. The upper stage tilted and fell. Fires burned at multiple stories
– This wasn't a launch failure. This was a ground test. The hardest problems haven't even been attempted yet.
– Blue Origin has no second pad, no backup vehicle, and no timeline for the next attempt
– And Starlink already has 7,000+ satellites in orbit

Let that sink in.

There is no Option 4. There is no clean exit. There is no "we rebuild and catch up by Q4."

The media is showing you "rocket science is hard" and "no injuries reported."

They're NOT showing you that Blue Origin just destroyed its only launchpad — the single piece of infrastructure that connects years of development to an actual orbital mission — three hours before midnight on May 28, 2026.

This is the most consequential single test failure any American space company has faced since SpaceX's Pad 40 explosion in 2016.

[al_keda]

Blowed up real good.

[Dr Strangelove]

Bezo's is boned and NASA will be sold for parts. Winner spacex

[al_keda]

SpaceX IPO in 10 days. $$$$

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire

[Dr Strangelove]

German aerospace company signs 10-year deal to use Nova Scotia space launch pad

[Dr Strangelove]

The largest nuclear bomb in outer space exploded 64 yrs ago today.
Starfish Prime was a 1.4 megaton thermonuclear warhead, detonated at the altitude the Space Station now orbits. It created man-made radiation belts that wrecked many satellites & lasted 5+ years.
A year after the test the USA & USSR signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, leading to the global 1967 Outer Space Treaty.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

[Dr Strangelove]

BREAKING: For 10 years the world believed there was one way to reuse a rocket: land it upright on its engines, the way SpaceX does. Today China refused to copy it, and pulled off something SpaceX never managed on a first flight. It caught the rocket instead.

The Long March 10B lifted off from Hainan, China this morning, and about 6 minutes later its first stage came back down toward a 25,000-ton ship at sea. It did not land.

Hooks on the falling booster snagged a net of tensioned steel wires strung across the deck, the wires riding robotic rails that slid into place to meet it. No landing legs. No touchdown. A rocket plucked out of its own descent by a moving net, on the maiden flight of a brand-new vehicle.

No one handed China this. SpaceX guards its rocket tech as “trade secrets”, not “patents”, precisely so it cannot be read and copied.

China watched a decade of public flights and then built an entirely different machine to reach the same prize, catching instead of landing, which sheds the heavy legs and spares the fuel a soft touchdown burns to hover.

And this was never about cheaper satellites, though it delivers those too, feeding the thousands of birds in China's Starlink rival.

Its deeper purpose is the Moon. That booster shares its core with the rocket meant to land Chinese astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030. In the same season, America's own Moon rocket, Starship, has flown 12 times and still has not shown the single maneuver its lunar plan depends on.

One flight does not dethrone SpaceX. It has landed hundreds. What ended today is not SpaceX's lead. It is Uncle Sam’s belief that it owns the only road to the Moon.

The piece works out which way of coming home actually wins.