Boeing is pretty much out of the race at this point. Just too busy navel gazing and lobbying. There's a big risk that the next person on the moon might be from China. Blue Origin and SpaceX are the best things to happen to the rocket industry in decades. So, yes Blue Origin had a RUD with New Glenn. They should, learn and adapt and launch the next one. It would be good for SpaceX to have credible competition. And New Glenn seems like it could become that.
But if they only get their lessons every few years, they'll be competing against a fully reusable Starship rather than Falcon 9 & Falcon heavy by the time this thing becomes a serious launch vehicle. The goal posts are moving.
This was routine pre-launch testing, not a launch attempt.
In terms of application its the same amount of energy going into the rocket in either case.
Static fires put more stress on the rocket than an actual launch because the rocket is stuck on the ground, receiving all the shockwaves. They also cause more damage to the launch infrastructure.
Any human space exploration is good. If it's a usa or a China rocket, landing on the moon, with humans in it, and safely returning, it's good.
I guess I am just not that bothered, because I don't assume American intentions are inherently better.
The successful manned moon landings so far:
1. United States of America
2. United States of America
3. United States of America
4. United States of America
5. United States of America
6. United States of America
Now we're watching a riveting race for 7th place.
The Moon landing race was a new race.
Now the Back to the Moon race is a different one altogether.
> There's a big risk that the next person on the moon might be from China.
China seems to be focused more on pragmatic things and less on super expensive vanity projects.
There was no fatal launch failure for Apollo & pad explosion would be a problem with just 2 pads available.
There were a couple Saturn V stage explosions during testing but again - those damaged test stands, not the pad.
> I'm hearing that it is possible that Blue Origin decides to go directly to the larger 9x4 variant of New Glenn after this failure. Obviously no decisions like that will be made without more data review.
https://xcancel.com/SciGuySpace/status/2060190522539401631#m
To me it sounds like "alright, it's silly to waste time and energy on duplicate effort. Let's focus on getting this one right instead."
At this point is is looking like the winners will merely be those that have the least loses and launch pad loses can take a long time to recover from.
Credit to Space X, they have become very good and fixing launch pads with Starship. What used to be year(s) long pauses, now only take a few months.
The best outcome is we get two Moon bases. I say this as someone who remains a fairly patriotic American. But we need competition and, more darkly, we need a backup.
The Chinese will build a moon base, as a sign from the Chinese government to the Chinese people that China is capable of cutting-edge engineering and science (notably a demonstration to their own citizens - when was the last time you heard about the Chinese space stations outside China?).
America seems a bit shaky in their determination to actually build a moon base, though having Jared Isaacman as administrator gives hope. But regardless of whether America is currently on track, a successful Chinese moon base won't stay without answer
Last year, when negative news of delayed astronaut return was all over American news, e.g. [1][2]. Apparently makes American astronauts onboard Boeing ship being stuck in space less embarrassing.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/science/space/china-space...
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/05/china/china-shenzhou-20-a...
Why are landing strips the big unlock? Blast effects? Tiny landing legs?
Also the landing strip can be designed to slowly go up hill which could help with the breaking phase as well.
Makes me wonder if you could accelerate to orbital velocity using something like a maglev train and not have to worry about rockets at all.
Rough estimates? Mass drivers make sense. I haven’t seen the numbers for just compressing and leveling regolith.
The moon is dangerous because there's no people and civilization is 5 days away at best but if there was already civilization at the moon you wouldn't think it was dangerous.
On top of that the materials on the moon are already "on the high ground" meaning you don't need to spend a lot of money on propellant to get it into orbit. So building space habitats and delivering them into an appropriate orbit on the moon is a tiny fraction of the fuel needed from Earth. To put this into perspective the Apollo Lunar Module only needed 2.2 Tons of propellant to get the upper part of it back into orbit to meet up with the service module. 2.2 tons of propellant is basically nothing with the scales we are talking about.
On top of that if we could produce the propellant on the moon the costs and logistics and difficulty of all of this drop significantly.
So in short the best possible way to lower the risk, cost, and provide functionality is to establish civilization on the moon and get to the industrial age there as quickly as possible.
We're doing it regardless of what you naysayers will say about it because it's the right thing to do for a thousand different reasons. And we're doing the robot thing too. At the same time.
One of those strides has been in characterising just how magnificent the human eye, mind and hand are at picking weird shit out of a background.
I have only armchair amateur half a world away knowledge of this, but I want to believe all they need is an exhaust diffuser thingy and refueling capabilities; the former can probably be built cheap enough anywhere, the latter can be made portable.
(of course then you also have the challenge of assembling and loading a rocket, lmao. But a hub-and-spokes setup with VAB(s) and launch sites spread out around it like an airport could work. Bonus evil villain points if the launch sites are underground to contain explosions in case of failure.
(this post is just imagination / castles in the sky)
But it is cadence that drives SpaceX to have multiple launchpads plus specialized capabilities and orbital dynamics for F9.