Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin suffers fiery setback building new rocket

By Eric Johnson, Loren Grush and Rainier Harris
 

Blue Origin LLC sustained failures in recent weeks of testing including a factory mishap that damaged a portion of a future New Glenn rocket, the long-awaited centerpiece of the Jeff Bezos-backed startup’s push to take on SpaceX.
 

The upper portion of one rocket crumpled into itself, in part due to worker error, while it was being moved to a storage hangar, according to people familiar with the situation. In a separate incident, another upper rocket portion failed during stress testing and exploded, the people said. Repairs are underway, another person said, noting there were no injuries during either episode.

 

The previously unreported incidents illustrate the hurdles Blue Origin is grappling with while ramping up production of New Glenn, which is four years overdue. At the same time, new Chief Executive Officer Dave Limp has hired a slate of executives to shake the company out of a years-long R&D slump.

Blue Origin is rushing to meet a tight deadline to debut the rocket in October for a NASA mission called Escapade. New Glenn’s launch is set for roughly two months from now because at that time Mars will be close enough to Earth. After October, the planets won’t align like that again for roughly another two years.

It’s not clear whether the recent incidents would impact the launch schedule. The two mishaps involved hardware slated for the second and third flights of the New Glenn rocket, which are supposed to happen after the October debut. A Blue Origin spokesperson said it’s on track to launch New Glenn this year and is working hard to make that happen. 

The company has a lot of hardware in production for upcoming flights, the spokesperson said, adding that Blue Origin is constantly testing its future hardware. 

New Glenn is designed to take satellites — and eventually people — into Earth’s orbit. It’s key to Blue Origin’s ability to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp’s United Launch Alliance for lucrative US national security missions. It’s also central to clearing a backlog of commercial launches for satellite operators, including Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an initiative to expand global broadband access.

But first, the company is on deck to launch Escapade, an ambitious inaugural mission for NASA that will send twin spacecraft to Mars to study the planet’s magnetic field.

The two spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, were recently completed and shipped to Florida for the launch. But the window when Earth and Mars are closest to each other on their orbits around the Sun closes this fall, and some within the company are questioning if the deadline can be met even with round-the-clock work.

All flight hardware is complete and the company is working on assembly and engine integrations, the Blue Origin spokesperson said.

Even the most successful companies often face setbacks trying to inaugurate new rockets. Bezos, the world’s second-richest person and Amazon founder, has been trying to get Blue Origin to orbit for years.

Founded in 2000, about a year before Musk’s now-dominant SpaceX, Bezos has bankrolled rocket and engine factories, sprawling launch pads in Texas and Florida and hiring sprees that have pushed its workforce north of 10,000 employees. 

“A lot of rocketry was figured out in the ‘60s,” Bezos told Everyday Astronaut during a tour of the New Glenn facility on May 30. “The thing that’s not solved is making it low cost. That’s about reusability, manufacturing techniques and other things.”

Blue Origin has grappled with development delays, a sluggish corporate culture and explosive setbacks, including the recent episodes at its Florida rocket factory described to Bloomberg. 

In the first of the recent cases, factory workers moved a huge section of New Glenn, destined for the rocket’s second flight, out of the Florida humidity and into an air-conditioned storage hangar. But they didn’t properly monitor the hardware or have pressure-release valves and it chilled down to the point where it crumpled into itself, like a crushed Coke can.

In the second instance, a portion of rocket meant for New Glenn’s third flight failed during stress testing and exploded in the building it was in.

Many employees have been working hard to try to meet the deadline for Escapade, with employees being recruited from other units to help support the New Glenn teams reach the launch window, one of the people said.

As part of efforts to kick Blue Origin into a higher gear, in December Bezos gave the top job to Limp, an Amazon veteran known for speedy execution and solving customer problems. Limp moved quickly to shake up the company, prioritizing core projects — New Glenn, the BE-4 engine that powers it, and a moon lander for NASA. The CEO also brought on executives across supply chain, finance and human resources.

Limp’s not done: As of Aug. 21, the company’s website listed open positions for vice president of business operations and program management and vice president of manufacturing automation — suggesting Blue Origin is looking ahead to a time when it’s flying to space more frequently. 

The CEO didn’t have to start from scratch. Shortly after he started, Blue Origin finally resumed flights with its space tourism rocket. In June, the Department of Defense selected the company to compete for as much $5.6 billion in contracts to launch future national security satellites into orbit. Blue Origin has touted a launch backlog worth $10 billion. 

Additionally, over the last several months, Blue Origin has been able to overcome earlier hurdles to boost production and deliveries of its BE-4 engine, which also powers United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket.

“I’m feeling much better about BE-4s,” ULA’s Chief Executive Officer Tory Bruno told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “Their factory is up and running and engines are coming out. I’m much more comfortable now.” 

Bezos has said Blue Origin “is the most important work I’m doing.” The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates that in 2021 he doubled the amount of money he was pumping into the company annually to $2 billion.

“Our job today is not to do better than they did at spaceflight,” Bezos said during May 30 the plant tour, referring to space travel of the past. “It’s to make it more affordable.”