NASA dumps New Glenn! PLUS SpaceX Starship Flight 12 went worse than we thought!

[00:00] 5, 4, 3, ignition. We have a go.

[00:15] Good afternoon, spaceflight enthusiasts. It's the Angry Astronaut back with another no BS, straight to the point breakdown of what's really going on in the space industry right now.

[00:27] buckle up because we've got two interconnected stories that the mainstream space media and SpaceX fanboys and even some NASA folks are spinning harder than a Raptor engine at full throttle

[00:40] and both of them are flashing giant red warning lights for NASA's entire Artemis program. First of all, we're going to talk about Starship Flight 12, the one that SpaceX and half the internet

[00:53] are desperately calling it a success just because the upper stage didn't explode this time. They even leaned into it to hype SpaceX's upcoming IPO in their prospectus.

[01:06] Give me a break. This was supposed to be the big reliability breakthrough with the brand new Raptor 3 engines. However, a new article on SpaceDaily.com has revealed that this test went significantly worse

[01:21] than anybody was prepared to admit at the time. And really, people are still not talking about how bad it actually was. And second, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman basically just threw up his hands and said,

[01:34] New Glenn? Yeah, we're dumping that for now. Blue Origins NASA's new rocket just exploded on the path during a static fire at Cape Canaveral, as all of you know, and now they're scrambling to find any ride

[01:48] that can actually launch the blue moon Mark I lunar lander because nothing else is truly ready or capable. These two stories getting back to back, they're not just bad news.

[02:00] They're a giant flashing red warning light for the entire Artemis timeline, taxpayer dollars also, and the dream of getting sustainable boots back on the moon anytime soon.

[02:12] We're going to break it all down with a cold hard fact with no hype and no spin, and it's going to be equal opportunity as well because I'm going after SpaceX and Blue Origin in this video.

[02:24] So let's dive in. So Flight 12 launched a little over two weeks ago on May the 22nd,

[02:39] And it seems longer than that now with the all-new Starship Version 3 hardware and the shiny new Raptor 3 engines. The very engines that Elon Musk and SpaceX have been hyping for the better part a few full years as the silver bullet that would finally end Starship's long-standing reliability nightmare.

[03:01] They called it simpler, with fewer parts, fewer welds, higher thrusts, and far fewer of those pesky failure modes that had plagued the Raptor 2 family on earlier flights.

[03:14] And yes, it was simpler. It did have fewer parts. It really looked like quite a breakthrough, but I'm a show-me kind of guy, even though I wasn't born in Missouri, and I reserved judgment on it until I actually saw it fly.

[03:29] Quote, this is the engine that fixes everything, they said. Sound familiar? We've heard versions of this promise before. Well, here's what actually happened. Straight from the telemetry shown on SpaceX's own webcast and recent official reports.

[03:46] Liftoff was impressive on the surface. As you can see, all 33 Raptors on the super heavy booster lit up cleanly at T-0. One engine shut down roughly a minute and 42 seconds into a sense,

[04:00] but hey, they always built in an engine out capability, so the booster kept climbing just fine, and hot thinking between the booster and the ship worked as planned. The upper stage reached space, successfully deployed its Starlink mass simulators,

[04:15] although it required some adjustments because of another engine failure on the upper stage, but it survived re-entry and executed a controlled splashdown, more or less, in the targeted zone

[04:27] of the Indian Ocean Given how it landed I not sure if it would have been successfully captured by a tower if needed but still credit where it due the ship side performed mostly solidly for a first flight for the version 3 redesign

[04:43] That part was genuinely a technical win, but the booster was an absolute, unmitigated disaster. During the boost back burn, that critical, high-stress maneuver where the booster is supposed to realize

[04:58] its engines reverse course and head back towards the landing zone for eventual reuse. Several of the brand new Raptor 3 engines failed to light quingly almost immediately,

[05:10] and only about 20 seconds into the burn, most of the engines got down. And by the way, that boot back burn was supposed to last a full minute. The booster never builds up the necessary thrust to reverse its trajectory.

[05:25] It flipped abnormally fast, lost control, and slammed uncontrollably into the Gulf at over 1,400 kilometers per hour, over 300 kilometers off course, with a hard impact, no recovery, just a very expensive splash in the ocean.

[05:43] The FAA immediately classified the whole event as a mishap that grounded the entire Starship program and launched another federal investigation that SpaceX has to complete and get approved before anything else flies from Starbase.

[05:58] But this wasn't some minor glitch. This was the first flight of the engine that was marketed as the reliability fix, failing in exactly the kind of operational maneuvers Starship needs to master for true reusability.

[06:14] And don't forget the real-world consequences beyond the rocket itself. This test disrupted actual commercial air traffic. Again, the FAA activated a debris response area, leading to six departure delays and five airborne holding events for commercial flights in the region.

[06:34] No public injuries or property damage was reported, but that's still real disruption to everyday aviation, Something the FAA has been warning about as Starship cadence ramps up the potential impacts to over 13,000 aircraft operations per year.

[06:52] But what did we get from the headlines and SpaceX's own recap videos and all the fans? Starship hits most targets. Successful test ahead of IPO. Epic flight despite a few hiccups.

[07:05] They gloss right over the booster failure like it's just another data point in the rapid iteration playbook. Come on, a reusable rocket that can't reliably relight its engines for boost back?

[07:20] The very heart of the reuse cycle and ends up crashing into the ocean over 300 kilometers off target is not a success. It's a very expensive, very public data point on something that still isn't working after 12 flights and years of promises.

[07:40] And incidentally, full disclosure, a successful SpaceX IPO will really help me personally as well. The vast majority of my pathetic IRA is invested in Rocket Lab, which, by the way, is riding SpaceX's goetails.

[07:57] If SpaceX succeeds, if their IPO and stock price is high, Rocket Labs will be as well. And yet, still, I can't support this if it's not true.

[08:09] So let's be real. The boostback burn isn't some exotic edge case. It's core to every operational Starship profile if this thing is ever going to fly cargo, refuel in orbit, or support crewed missions.

[08:23] Engine out tolerance is great in theory, but losing multiple Raptor 3s in quick succession during a planned, choreographed burn on their maiden flight suggests a systemic issue in the new design, not just random bad luck.

[08:40] And by the way, Raptor 2 never experienced this kind of problem with the booster anyway during any of the test flights in spite of the upper stage problems that Starship had during that whole test process.

[08:54] And here's the part that should have everyone curious, especially if you care about NASA's moon plans. This thing Starship is the absolute cornerstone of NASA human landing system for Artemis The current plan is for a Starship HLS variant to launch refuel in orbit multiple times head to lunar orbit

[09:16] dock with Orion, transfer crew, and finally put American boots back on the moon. Some optimistic timelines have talked about this happening as soon as 2028. After flight 12? No way.

[09:30] We are still years away from reliable booster reuse, tower captures, orbital refueling, and safe crewed lunar operations. This flight was a very public reminder that Starship is still deep in the figure-it-out phase,

[09:46] while NASA and the taxpayers are banking the entire return-to-moon schedule on it.

[10:00] So just days after Starship Flight 12, literally within a week, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded violently on the path during a static fire test at Launch Complex 36 at Case Canaveral.

[10:24] We're talking massive fireballs, a booster in upper stage destroyed, significant damage to the launch pad, infrastructure, and yet another investigation. The rocket that was supposed to be Blue Origin's big orbital workhorse and the primary launcher for their Blue Moon lunar landers is now out of commission for who knows how long.

[10:47] Path repairs alone could take a year or more. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman didn't waste any time. He flew out to survey the damage personally, met with Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Lemp,

[11:02] and publicly stated that they are, quote, decoupling the lander from the launch vehicle and the pad itself, unquote. Translation, NASA is done waiting around for New Glenn to get its act together for the Blue Moon Mark I missions,

[11:17] which are very important to Artemis. They're actively hunting for alternate rockets right now to keep the schedule from slipping even further. But here's the problem, and it's a huge one that exposes just how fragile the whole commercial HLS strategy has become.

[11:35] Blue Loon Mark I is a hydrogen-fueled lunar lander, and it's not just some tiny payload. It's massive in both mass and volume. Falcon 9? Well, forget it, except for anything beyond the smallest demos.

[11:49] It can barely handle something like this, even in the extended fairing. Remember how tight the X-37B integrations were in the past? And Falcon 9 simply does not have the performance to throw that much mass all the way to the moon on a translunar injection.

[12:08] So the only realistic SpaceX option becomes Falcon Heavy. An extended fairing probably won't be necessary. the basic fairing will do, and that's good because SpaceX still doesn't have an extended

[12:22] fairing for Falcon Heavy, and may not anytime soon. Vulcan Centaur from ULA is another possibility on paper, but it's been dealing with its own grounding in solid rocket motor issues since earlier this year, so it's not exactly a slam

[12:38] dunk backup either. And here's the real kicker that should keep Artemis planners up at night. Nothing currently flying, or even close to flying reliably, is big enough or capable enough for Blue Moon Mark II, the actual crewed version that's supposed to carry astronauts.

[12:57] Starship could theoretically handle it with its massive payload capacity, but after what we just saw on Flight 12, with zero cargo Starship flights even on the near-term manifest, Good luck getting NASA or anyone else to bet the farm on that anytime soon.

[13:14] And no liquid hydrogen fueling infrastructure is in place with anybody yet either. This is supposed to be the backup human landing system for Artemis, the competitive alternative to Starship HLS.

[13:28] Blue Moon Mark I was the Pathfinder demo mission, with Mark II following for crewed landings as early as Artemis IV or V. Now it looking extremely unlikely that this thing even gets to orbit in 2027 for Artemis 3 let alone flies a full demo mission that keeps the whole Artemis 4 and 5 timeline alive

[13:51] Isaacman is pushing hard behind the scenes with a whole-of-government response to accelerate bad recovery and root-cause analysis, and he's publicly optimistic about still landing astronauts in 2028

[14:05] using whatever lander is ready, but the reality staring everyone in the face is brutal. Both of the big commercial lander options, Starship and Blue Moon,

[14:17] are hitting major snags at the exact same time. There's blood in the bed. No, can't look so long. Yay!

[14:31] Yay! It's hard to believe that the triumphant moments of Artemis 2 happened less than two months ago, if you count the splashdown, that is.

[14:47] And look, I'm not here to root against SpaceX or Blue Origin or NASA. I want us back on the moon, sustainably designed more than almost anyone. Rapid iteration is real, and learning from failures is how we get better.

[15:04] But when the media and companies call multiple engine failures on a brand new engine, a booster crash hundreds of kilometers off course, and an uncontrolled ocean impact a success,

[15:16] just because the IPO prospectus needs good vibes? And when NASA has to scramble and decouple an entire lunar lander from its primary launcher because that rocket just blew up on the pad.

[15:30] That's not rapid iteration. That's two flagship commercial programs hitting major systemic snags at the worst possible moment. Artemis is already years beyond schedule.

[15:43] The moon was supposed to be back in 2024 with Artemis II and then 2026. Now we're talking 2028 at the earliest And even that page is looking very, very unlikely as these issues pile up.

[15:59] SLS and Orion have their own endless delays and billions in overruns. But looks like they're going to be ready for Artemis 3 in time next year. Artemis 4 as well, probably.

[16:12] But it's the commercial partners now that we're supposed to say today that are struggling. This is exactly why I stay angry. because every time they spin failure is victory for the cameras,

[16:25] real timelines slip further, real taxpayer money gets burned on investigations and redesigns, and the dream of a sustainable lunar presence with habitats, resource utilization, and actual science

[16:38] gets pushed further and further away. What do you think, astronauts? Is Starship Flight 12 really the win they're claiming, or just more marketing spin ahead of the IPO? Can Falcon Heavy or Vulcan actually step up and save Blue Moon Mark I without massive delays and modifications?

[16:58] Or is Artemis tearing down even more slips? Drop your thoughts in the comments. And if you're new here and you want unfiltered, no BS space news without the corporate hype, hit that subscribe button, smash the like if this fires you up, and hit that notification bell.

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