Blue Origin Suffers Fiery Setback
Was there actual fire involved?
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
Neither of these sound like an engine test, which is where the fire would be.
In any case, the chances of making that Mars transfer window are looking slimmer and slimmer… I hope they can pull it off.
I wonder what happens if they miss the window? Would EscaPADE go into storage for two years, or would it be transferred to another launch vehicle at the last minute?
These damaged stages were for flights 2 and 3, so they don’t necessarily push back 1.
The two mishaps involved hardware slated for the second and third flights of the New Glenn rocket
Ah, I missed that, thanks for pointing it out. Glad that the maiden flight is still (hopefully) on track.