How long will it take to rebuild Blue Origin's launch pad? We asked some SpaceX vets. - Ars Technica

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A former NASA engineer named John Muratore sat on console as launch director in early September 2016 as propellant flowed onto a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Ahead of a planned launch two days later, SpaceX was preparing for a static fire test of the vehicle.

Then, all of a sudden, the rocket exploded. “It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent,” Muratore said. This fireball resulted in the destruction of the rocket, much of its launch site, and the AMOS-6 satellite already attached to the vehicle.

Nearly a decade later, on May 28, Blue Origin conducted a static fire test of a new rocket, with its larger New Glenn vehicle a few miles down the Florida coast. The company had gotten further into its test, reaching engine ignition, before its rocket also exploded.

For longtime space coast observers, some of the parallels between these two spectacular explosions were uncanny. Both the Falcon 9 and New Glenn programs were on the cusp of taking off toward a higher launch cadence. At the time, NASA was counting on the Falcon 9 to return its capability to launch humans, and today, NASA is counting on New Glenn as a key element of its lunar ambitions. And both explosions catastrophically damaged their launch sites.

To better understand the challenges Blue Origin now faces, Ars spoke with several SpaceX veterans who experienced the AMOS-6 failure and worked the long days afterward to get the Falcon 9 rocket flying and rebuild the shattered facility at Space Launch Complex-40.

Difficult memories return

“My AMOS-6 scar started itching when I saw the video of New Glenn,” said Hans Koenigsmann, the SpaceX engineer who led the failure investigation in the fall of 2016. “It’s really terrible.”

Koenigsmann was SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability at the time, and his team faced the challenge of identifying the failure in the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that caused it to explode during a relatively benign part of the fueling process.

This involved a weekslong search of the wetlands surrounding the launch site at Cape Canaveral for pieces of the booster. The idea was that the components farthest from the pad were nearest the most energetic part of the explosion. Ultimately, the investigative team narrowed in on the complex failure of the lining of a pressure vessel in the upper stage.

For its investigation, Koenigsmann urges Blue Origin to be as transparent as possible with NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration and to study and take apart the physical evidence as soon as possible to identify the causes of failure. Every anomaly, he cautioned, is different.

Blue Origin has not publicly discussed the cause of the New Glenn failure, but speculation has focused on a possible anomaly in one of the seven main BE-4 engines. The Falcon 9 investigation was the primary obstacle to SpaceX returning to flight, but launch pad availability will be the bigger hurdle for Blue Origin.

Searching for wreckage

After the AMOS-6 failure, SpaceX was also without an active launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket. Nearest to readiness was an existing pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which was undergoing upgrades to support the “Full Thrust” variant of the Falcon 9 rocket, which used densified propellant. This is where the Falcon 9 returned to flight, less than five months later, in January 2017.

SpaceX then focused on completing modifications to Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, which it had leased from NASA. The Falcon 9 rocket launched from here in February 2017.

The closest analog to what Blue Origin is attempting to do, therefore, concerns the rebuild of Space Launch Complex-40, which was largely destroyed by the AMOS-6 failure.

According to Muratore, SpaceX was not allowed to begin reconstruction work at the launch pad until January 2017. The delay stemmed from the ongoing investigation, which included a grid-by-grid examination of debris, cataloging recovered materials, and launch site remediation. Muratore and other SpaceX engineers spent these four months redesigning the launch pad.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, seen here with the new launch tower and access arm at SLC-40.

Credit:<br>SpaceX

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon spacecraft, seen here with the new launch tower and access arm at SLC-40.

Credit:

SpaceX

Trip Harriss, who managed the Falcon 9 fleet operations in 2016, said everyone at the...