Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp says the company will fly again before the end of this year.

Last week’s explosion of a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket on the pad at Cape Canaveral prompted dire predictions that the company might not be able to launch again until late 2027 at the earliest. CEO Dave Limp, though, said that’s not the case. “Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility, we can share a bit of good news,” he said in an update on X. “We will fly again before the end of this year.” He said the propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and liquefied natural gas tanks were all in decent shape. “This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced,” he said. The pad was engulfed in a fireball from a static fire test last Thursday. A New Glenn rocket had been preparing for what would have been the fourth launch of its kind for Jeff Bezos’ rocket company when it burst into a mushroom cloud. The nighttime explosion could be seen as far away as Orlando and measured 2.5 on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The rocket and the transporter erector tower that was holding it in place for the test were destroyed while one of the two lightning towers on the pad crumbled to the ground. Limp said the company had already been working on eliminating the need for the transporter-erector in favor of an alternative concept. “We’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector,” he said. He also said rocket parts that had been within a neighboring building fared well. That includes what for now is the lone remaining New Glenn first stage, “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which was flown and recovered on the rocket’s second and third missions. Limp also noted that while the company had been working at an adjacent launch pad at Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 to support a planned larger version of the New Glenn rocket in the future, the company would not simply shift efforts to that, and would keep its efforts going for the current rocket design. The first and second stages for New Glenn continue to be manufactured at the company’s massive site on neighboring Merritt Island. Limp said that work has been going well. “We’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use,” he said. SpaceX suffered a similar launch pad explosion a decade ago at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40, and was not able to fly again from that pad for another 15 months. Limp, though, said he expects a much more optimistic timeline. Before the explosion, Blue Origin had been looking to fly the first of 24 contracted missions for the Amazon Leo satellite constellation. The 48 satellites were not installed on the rocket when it exploded, but those will have to wait. Blue Origin had also planned on launching its first moon mission with its uncrewed Blue Moon MK1 lander as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission as early as this fall. Earlier this year, Limp stated he hoped New Glenn would launch at least eight times.

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