Blue Origin has set a very aggressive return-to-flight timeline | “The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen, and LNG tanks are all in good shape.”

>The chief executive of Blue Origin, whose large New Glenn rocket exploded spectacularly less than a week ago at the company’s launch site in Florida, vowed Monday night that the company would launch again before the end of 2026.

>Writing on the social media site X, Blue Origin’s Dave Limp said the company had been able to complete a preliminary survey of the LC-36A launch site.

>“Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility, we can share a bit of good news,” Limp said. “The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good.”

>No need for new transporter

>Limp also confirmed that the company would press ahead with a rebuild of the LC-36A site, which is designed for the 7×2 variant of the New Glenn rocket. One option had been to focus on building a larger pad next door, at LC-36B, capable of supporting the larger 9×4 variant of the rocket (the nine and four, respectively, refer to the number of engines in the first and second stage of the rocket).

>Notably, Limp also said Blue Origin had a plan to replace the massive transporter-erector that moves the New Glenn rocket from its nearby integration hangar out to the launch pad. This was damaged beyond repair during the test failure on Thursday, May 28.

>“We had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector,” Limp wrote. “We will fly again before the end of this year.”

Odd that the root cause of failure is a little side note at the end of the article.

Correctly fixing what actually went wrong (and the process that allowed this to occur) seems a lot harder than rebuilding a launch pad.

Given Bezos’s investment in BO, building only a single launch pad was a mistake. They probably thought that by going slow enough, they could avoid needing a second pad.

Still a major setback, especially since there is no way of launching the Blue Moon pathfinder. Vulcan centaur might be able to get it to orbit.

Didn’t SpaceX take 18 months to get everything working again? And with a notoriously more aggressive culture, no less.

I said it when the news first broke. Methane explosions are not as bad as people think. Methane doesn’t pool on the ground and leave ground equipment burning for hours as the fuel slowly burns itself out. It’s not very dense so its more likely to spread out as a burning cloud instead of detonating like a pipe bomb. A fireball looks dramatic but all it does is ensure that the vast majority of still burning fuel is thrown into the air where it doesn’t harm ground equipment.

Even most of the grass around the pad hasn’t caught fire. Dried out sure, but only small pockets show signs of fire

Same reporter who said their booster was damaged and they would move onto NG 9×4. Both statements were incorrect

Interesting that BO wants to move to a “vertical conop.” Does that mean they intend to stack the New Glenn rocket vertically at the launch pad to eliminate the need for a T/E? If that’s the case, are they going to build a mobile service tower like what ULA had for Delta IV at LC-37?

Its concerning how much more emphasis is being placed on increasing launch cadence than on determining and fixing root cause

These coked out executives are going to get people killed