“Space is hard, but worth it.” — Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic Founder
Most people have seen footage of rocket failures on television and while these events often become headline news, they also provide valuable data for engineers that design launch facilities. That is the case for Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, which recently saw its New Glenn launch vehicle experience rapid unplanned disassembly (RUD) during a routine static fire test. The vehicle was slated for the NG-4 mission and planned to launch just a few days later from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This event has been described as one of the largest nondefense-related explosions ever associated with a commercial launch vehicle. The incident involved approximately 25,000 cubic feet of liquefied natural gas and 30,000 cubic feet of liquid oxygen, creating a mushroom cloud visible across the region as it lit up the sky.
The destruction caused by the shock wave and explosion at the launch site was immediately visible through post-launch video, with one of the two 300-plus-foot-tall lightning towers no longer standing. However, the full extent of the damage to the multibillion-dollar launch site was not known until daybreak, when the site could be fully viewed from the air. Early images from the launch site show the transport erector, hydraulic cylinders that erect the vehicle and the launch table were completely destroyed and blasted from their launch positions. Additionally, the environmental control system (ECS) building and remaining lighting protection tower suffered significant damage.
Beyond what is visible via aerial surveillance, the explosion raises the possibility that the overpressure blast wave caused damage to nearby cross-country cryogenic and commodity piping, including control skids, control valves and other critical flow components. According to Blue Origin officials, all assessments and repair work will be completed so that flying resumes by the end of the year. But no matter how quickly repairs are finished, this incident created a significant operational setback.
During the incident, the vehicle’s extensive instrumentation recorded gigabytes of data, providing engineers with critical information to help determine what occurred and how similar failures can be prevented in the future. Access to actual launch failure data will be immensely useful for long-term launch facility design and safety as more launch facilities are developed across the country. While it is still too early to determine the exact root cause of what happened, the incident raises several important questions whose answers can tribute significantly to the future safety of spaceflight.
Launch Pads Sustain Launch Loads, but Why Aren’t They Designed for Launch Failures?
Spaceflight is inherently risky, but every failure provides valuable engineering and construction lessons that make future launch systems safer, more resilient and more effective. Rocket launches are extremely intense, but in a very specific way. Under normal circumstances, the pressure from exhaust can be enormous, reaching hundreds or even thousands of pounds per square inch (psi). However, those forces do not last long and are mostly directed in predictable ways, such as downward or slightly sideways. The sideways forces from exhaust bouncing around are much weaker than the main force, ranging from 2 to 10 psi. Even so, those forces are several times stronger than what buildings are designed to withstand during extreme events such as hurricanes.
Engineers already design for conditions well beyond ordinary operating environments. Explosions take those conditions to a different level. They create much higher pressure than a normal launch, spreading in all directions rather than along a defined path. This pressure travels farther, affecting areas well beyond the launch pad, and the pressure strikes suddenly and violently as a shock wave rather than a sustained force. Because of this, an explosion can damage structures hundreds of yards away, whereas normal launch forces are generally confined close to the rocket.
In the aerospace industry, risk assessment is not about eliminating every possible failure. If systems were designed to withstand all conceivable scenarios, especially those with extremely low probabilities, nothing would get built. High-consequence events matter, of course, but when their probability is exceptionally low and mitigation requires disproportionate resources, accepting the residual risk is often the responsible choice. Such is the case when considering designs that could withstand launch failures.
The probability of a launch accident is extremely low, and a basic cost-benefit analysis often makes it impractical to design for a launch failure. The cost of designing for a launch failure could be several multiples of the initial construction cost of a launch pad. For example, a $1 billion launch complex could cost $3 billion to $5 billion if designed properly for a disaster. Given that cost differential, it may be more economical to build a second, mirrored launch pad to provide backup operations, similar to what NASA did during the Apollo era and what launch companies have historically done.
What Can the Aerospace Industry Learn From This Incident?
Liquid oxygen and methane launch vehicles represent a newer generation of rocket technology. For decades, launch vehicles primarily relied on combinations of rocket propellant-1 (RP-1), liquid oxygen or hydrogen, and the explosion characteristics of those propellants are well understood. By comparison, liquid oxygen and methane systems have less operational history at scale, making real-world data from incidents such as the New Glenn explosion especially valuable.
One advantage of the liquid oxygen and methane fuel mixture is that it is not expected to leave behind the hazardous fuel residue associated with some solid rocket motors or hypergolic propellants used in previous generations of launch vehicles. As a result, recovery and damage assessment efforts can focus more quickly on evaluating infrastructure impacts and determining the cause of the failure.
A quantity-distance analysis establishes the minimum safety setback between a potential explosive hazard and nearby people and structures. These distances are calculated using government guidelines, including Defense Explosives Safety Regulation 6055.09. Venturing into new fuel combinations such as liquid oxygen and methane require explosive safety and design standards to rely on equivalent TNT values because previously full-scale testing data for new fuel combinations did not exist.
The Blue Origin launch accident could provide valuable real-world information on blast pressure and impacts through visual assessments and data collected from launch pad sensors. This new data may influence long-term planning and siting decisions for methane-fueled launch vehicles across the country moving forward. It could result in increasing the distance distance between operational exclusion zones and adjacent structures. It also could affect planned but not yet operational vehicles such as SpaceX’s Starship, Rocket Lab’s Neutron and future iterations of Blue Origin’s New Glenn vehicle.
What’s Next?
Throughout the history of spaceflight, the aerospace industry has learned from failures and continued moving forward. That resilience and persistence is shared by today’s space enthusiasts like Bezos, who is committed to his vision of a space-based economy with millions of people living and working in space.
Following the New Glenn launch pad explosion, once a full damage assessment is completed, the next step will be determining the structural stability of nearby structures. Temporary shoring may be required for facilities with questionable integrity to allow subsystem inspections and evaluations. Once those evaluations are completed, crews can begin removing large debris and damaged structural elements. After debris removal, teams can inspect and test key subsystems, including commodity, electrical, mechanical and support infrastructure, to assess the full extent of the damage. This process provides an initial pass/fail evaluation and identifies systems requiring more detailed testing. From there, teams can develop a high-level understanding of repair and replacement requirements, create a strategic repair plan and prepare preliminary construction cost estimates to guide the facility’s return to operation.
Because the launch pad design already exists, the assessment will also help determine whether systems should be replaced or upgraded based on operational lessons learned. While the incident presents significant rebuilding challenges, it also creates an opportunity to improve systems that were in place before the accident. Those improvements may lead to long-term cost savings and more efficient processes for Blue Origin’s overall space program and our nation’s.
New Glenn’s booster was named “No, It’s Necessary,” a reference to an iconic scene from the movie Interstellar. There is a certain poetry in that choice as the phrase speaks to the firm resolve that has driven space exploration since its beginning. Every launch, every test and every failure reminds us that progress is hard earned and requires persistence. Setbacks are not signals to stop. They are the launch pad for whatever comes next.
