Blue Origin's New Glenn Explodes on Pad, and I've Seen This Movie Before

What we know so far:

• The explosion occurred during a test on the launchpad, not during an actual launch attempt
• No injuries have been reported (which is the only good news here)
• The cause remains under investigation, per Bezos
• This was a static fire test or similar ground operation, though exact details remain unclear
• Bloomberg reports this deals a major blow to Blue Origin's commercial ambitions

What we don't know is more important: was this a manufacturing defect, a design flaw, or an operational error? The answer matters enormously for how long the setback lasts. A one-off quality control issue is fixable in months. A fundamental design problem could set the program back years.

I reached out to Blue Origin for additional comment but haven't heard back yet. Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer when companies respond to email instead of just posting to social media.

The deeper issue here is that Blue Origin has always had a culture problem disguised as a patience problem. "Gradatim Ferociter" (step by step, ferociously) is their motto, and it sounds great until you realize that SpaceX's unofficial motto is "move fast and blow things up on purpose so you can learn faster." Both companies blow up rockets. Only one of them has turned that into a functioning business model.

Bezos can afford to keep funding Blue Origin essentially forever, he's got the money and space is clearly a passion project for him. But money doesn't buy schedule, and it definitely doesn't buy the institutional knowledge that comes from actually flying rockets regularly. SpaceX has launched, what, over 300 Falcon 9 missions? That's 300 opportunities to learn things you can't learn in simulation. Blue Origin has... well, they've got a suborbital tourism rocket that works pretty well, and now they've got a very expensive debris field in Florida.

This is the self-driving car hype cycle all over again, in a way. Remember when every major automaker was going to have fully autonomous vehicles by 2020? The technology was always harder than the optimists claimed, and the companies that moved methodically got lapped by the ones that were willing to put imperfect systems on the road and iterate. Tesla's Autopilot isn't perfect (it's killed people, let's be honest), but Tesla learned more from a million miles of real-world driving than GM learned from a decade of careful testing.

I'm not saying Blue Origin should have been reckless. I'm saying that at some point, caution becomes its own form of risk. You can't learn to fly rockets by not flying rockets.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matt Bloxham suggested this explosion has serious implications for Blue Origin's competitive position, and that's probably underselling it. Every month of delay is another month where SpaceX signs contracts, builds relationships, and accumulates flight heritage that Blue Origin can't match.

The young founders in this industry, the kids building small satellite launchers and lunar landers, they all grew up watching SpaceX prove that private spaceflight was possible. Blue Origin was supposed to be the proof that you could do it differently, more carefully, with deeper pockets and longer time horizons. Instead they're becoming a cautionary tale about what happens when you optimize for not failing instead of optimizing for learning.

But what do I know. Maybe New Glenn will be flying by next year and I'll look like an idiot for writing this. That's the thing about rockets, they either work or they don't, and eventually Blue Origin will either figure it out or they won't. Thursday's explosion suggests they haven't figured it out yet.

Bezos is right about one thing: it was a very rough day. The question is whether Blue Origin can turn rough days into lessons fast enough to matter. Based on the last twenty years, I wouldn't bet on it. But I've been wrong before, and I'll probably be wrong again.

If you want to argue about it, my email's on the about page.

Sarah Williams · 19 Jun · 3 min