Experts Discuss New Glenn Rocket Failure's Impact on NASA's Moon Missions

This week Ars hosted a live discussion with two space industry experts about the aftermath of the catastrophic explosion of the New Glenn rocket in late May.

Along with Ars Technica Space Editor Eric Berger; the director of research at Quilty Space, Caleb Henry; and the host of the Main Engine Cut Off podcast, Anthony Colangelo, spoke about various topics. Chief among them was the implications of this failure for NASA’s attempt to land humans on the Moon for the Artemis IV mission. Blue Origin and SpaceX are both building landers to support this goal and the rockets to deliver them to the Moon.

During the conversation, Berger reported that the current Blue Origin “architecture” for a human mission would require four launches of new variant of the New Glenn rocket, known as 9×4, because it has nine first stage engines, and four upper stage engines. This is a more powerful version than the “7×2″ variant that exploded a little more than a month ago. Blue Origin has not set a target date for the 9×4 rocket’s debut, but some sources have indicated the company is targeting late 2027 or early 2028.

How realistic is this, especially after the destruction of Launch Complex 36A? Caleb Henry said he was not optimistic.

I have not seen anyone put out a date for a new rocket, and actually hit it. Going back in the archives, when Blue Origin shifted New Glenn from a three-stage vehicle to a two-stage vehicle, and made a couple other changes in mid-2018 time period, those were stated as being needed to accelerate the path to launch. They had yet to make a first flight, and they were doing these architectural changes so that they could speed up that timeline. I think the 9×4 is really to enable them to do new missions. I think adding engines makes it more complicated, not less. I don’t have a sense of exactly where they’ll land relative to what they’ve put out there, but I think 1.5 is usually a good rule, so a year and a half at least.

Colangelo said it would not surprise him if the development of the 9×4 variant of New Glenn slipped into the 2030s. So if that’s the case, how is NASA going to get its astronauts to the Moon this decade, if that’s to happen at all?