After the New Glenn disaster: what’s next for the space industry? | ars live
This week Ars hosted a live discussion with two space industry experts about the aftermath of the New Glenn rocket’s disastrous explosion in late May.
with Ars Technica Space Editor Eric Berger; Director of Research at Quilty Space, Caleb Henry; and Anthony Colangelo, host of the Main Engine Cut Off podcast, spoke on a variety of topics. Chief among them was the implications of this failure for NASA’s effort to land humans on the Moon for the Artemis IV mission. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX are building landers and rockets to deliver them to the Moon to support this goal.
During the conversation, Berger explained that the current Blue Origin “architecture” for manned missions would require four launches of a new version of the New Glenn rocket, known as a 9×4 because it has nine first stage engines and four upper stage engines. This is a more powerful version than the “7×2” version that exploded a little more than a month earlier. Blue Origin has not set a target date for the debut of the 9×4 rocket, but some sources have indicated that the company is aiming for late 2027 or early 2028.
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