Blue Origin's rocket reuse achievement marred by upper stage failure

4/19/2026 at 10:01:58 PM

Once Elon showed how to do it, and how cost-efficient it was, a rocket company that doesn't do it is not viable.

by WalterBright

4/19/2026 at 10:11:11 PM

Spacex first landed an orbital booster just over 10 years ago and have now landed 600 times.

The entire rest of the world combined has done it twice.

For a long time people would scoff when it was said they had a 10 year lead, and that others would catch up quickly. Proof meets pudding.

by testing22321

4/19/2026 at 10:22:40 PM

FTA: "SpaceX suffered upper stage failures on three test flights of the massive Starship rocket last year. "

SpaceX has also had numerous failures with the larger generation of second stages and currently doesn't have a lead there. Nobody does.

by gamblor956

4/19/2026 at 11:14:59 PM

Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more.

Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)

by decimalenough

4/20/2026 at 5:42:24 AM

> If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will,

I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes?

For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.

by ActorNightly

4/20/2026 at 5:52:53 AM

Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part.

There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.

by peyton

4/20/2026 at 7:17:15 AM

Its not a video game where you put enough resources into "science" and stuff just works.

There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand, and its ridiculous to think that he would be smart enough to account for them.

by ActorNightly

4/20/2026 at 7:47:46 AM

> There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand

Examples?

by WalterBright

4/19/2026 at 10:43:02 PM

It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.

by boznz

4/19/2026 at 11:18:19 PM

There's a saying in the racing business. If you're not walking back to the pit now and then carrying the steering wheel, you're not trying hard enough. If you're walking back to the pit too often, you're incompetent.

by WalterBright

4/19/2026 at 11:52:24 PM

There's another aspect. If you're launching men in rockets, you cannot tolerate failures, so the development cost is way, way higher. The cost effective method is to launch unmanned ones, tolerating a lot of failures, and when the bugs are worked out then launch men.

by WalterBright

4/19/2026 at 11:24:54 PM

If you always fail, you aren’t trying.

If you never fail, you aren’t trying.

by bombcar

4/20/2026 at 12:13:35 AM

If you always fail, you aren’t learning

Isn't that better?

by mandeepj

4/20/2026 at 12:30:37 AM

True, but then you have to differentiate trying and failing vs not doing anything and failing by default.

by bombcar

4/20/2026 at 12:42:06 AM

It's the 4-minute mile except it's taking everyone else too long to copy it. Really shows how far ahead Musk is.

by sourcegrift

4/19/2026 at 9:59:14 PM

I know insurance for a launch is typical, but seems really tough to do that for this still “rather experimental” launch. I got to imagine it has costs something like 50% on a project like this.

by eagerpace

4/19/2026 at 9:50:25 PM

The failure of the upper stage is a bummer. If it triggers a months-long review, that will almost certainly bump back the schedule for the prototype Blue Moon lander launch.

by staplung

4/20/2026 at 2:18:32 AM

I wonder how a company would be able to catch up with SpaceX, and make this no longer a monopoly.

by imoonkey

4/20/2026 at 2:23:07 AM

I think we will see many soon. India and China alone have something like ten promising space launch startups.

by SilverElfin

4/19/2026 at 11:15:45 PM

What I was not aware of is how many satellites Amazon already has in LEO for it's own Internet service.

They've been flying under the radar there it would seen.

by dwd

4/19/2026 at 11:35:46 PM

I will be good to have competition for space Internet. It’s unclear though if the market will really support two players. Satellite radio and data quickly ended up consolidating down to one.

Amazon is trying to become more vertically integrated but they seem at a structural disadvantage here competing against SpaceX.

by cmiles8

4/20/2026 at 12:18:18 AM

You might be counting out the value of government and military contracts that might not want to do business with a wild card.

SpaceX is killing it because the US government gives them a bunch of contracts, but if stability is slightly more important than cost or speed, amazon has a contender.

by jethro_tell

4/20/2026 at 12:14:05 AM

They "only" have about 250 but they're authorized for 3000. They just bought a satellite company this week though that might boost the numbers a bit.

by sanex

4/20/2026 at 12:56:22 AM

As late as 2010 there were "only" around 1000 satellites in orbit.

by dwd

4/20/2026 at 1:56:26 PM

Apparently they lose authorization if they don't get to 1500 hence the ""

by sanex

4/20/2026 at 12:25:25 AM

It came to my attention recently how many TOTAL objects currently exist in LEO. And that a study said that due to light deflection of these objects, that the earth’s night sky is an average of 10% brighter than it was in 1980s… although I generally am excited by technological advancement, that fact (if true) made me feel somewhat melancholy.

by sota_pop

4/19/2026 at 8:18:36 PM

Video of the booster landing: https://xcancel.com/JeffBezos/status/2045874068763632017

by cryptoz

4/19/2026 at 11:26:05 PM

Stupid question I know, but are there people on that boat?

by Mistletoe

4/20/2026 at 4:38:16 AM

IIRC people standby on a boat at a safe distance, then come onboard to secure the booster when it's safe enough

by hgoel

4/19/2026 at 11:28:30 PM

It's a drone boat, so no.

by XorNot

4/20/2026 at 1:02:41 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

4/19/2026 at 11:32:21 PM

Space is hard.

Losing payloads hurts though, especially for a new platform.

by cmiles8