On the morning of May 29, Blue Origin staff arrived at its launch pad in Florida to a scene of utter annihilation.
The night before, one of the company’s 98-metre-tall New Glenn rockets had exploded in a colossal fireball likened by observers to the detonation of a nuclear bomb. Crumpled engines and vehicle parts were scattered alongside a damaged hangar. The transporter erector, used to raise rockets into a vertical stance ahead of launch, was toppled and a lightning tower completely obliterated.
Nobody was harmed in the violent blast, but multiple staff members say they felt numbed by the incident and overwhelmed by the challenge that lay ahead. “All our hard work went up in flames,” a Blue Origin employee tells the FT. “So much effort was put into getting this rocket ready to fly and we lost it in seconds.”