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Blue Origin’s Nightmarish Rocket Explosion Looked A Combination Of A Nuclear Blast And Like That One Famous ‘Succession’ Scene (Multiple Videos)

#Blue Origin
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National Science Foundation/HBO


The latest Blue Origin failure was its biggest yet, as the explosion of a rocket on Thursday night looked like a combination of hell-on-Earth, a nuclear explosion, and that one famous scene from HBO’s Succession. Perhaps this is what happens when we let billionaires fire whatever they please into the cosmos.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn first-stage booster — nicknamed “No, It’s Necessary”, a reference to the famous quote uttered by Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper in Interstellar when attempting to dock with a rapidly spinning space station — exploded in a seismic fireball during a static fire test at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday, May 28.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn first-stage booster exploded on Thursday night and videos of the incident have been going viral on social media

According to reports, the booster was running “a hotfire test of its seven BE-4 methane engines” ahead of the planned NG-4 Amazon satellite mission when the anomaly (their words, not ours) occurred. It was the first on-pad explosion at Cape Canaveral since a SpaceX Falcon 9 blew up on a nearby pad in September 2016.

“We experienced an anomaly during today’s hotfire test. All personnel have been accounted for,” Blue Origin confirmed in a brief statement.

While the explosion, which could be seen from miles away, destroyed the booster and damaged pad infrastructure including a lightning tower, no injuries were reported.

Jeff Bezos addressed the explosion on social media with the following statement:

“All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also publicly weighed in with a statement.

“NASA is aware of the anomaly that occurred tonight at Launch Complex 36 involving Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. 

Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult. We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets. We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available.”

You can check out additional videos/angles of the explosion below.

While Blue Origin has experienced public failures before — a 2022 New Shepard crash in West Texas caused by a nozzle failure and an April 2026 upper stage engine failure that left a satellite in the wrong orbit — neither came close to this to the magnitude or visibility (literally) of this incident.

Blue Origin, launched in the year 2000, is Jeff Bezos’ private aerospace company, was founded with the alleged goal of making space travel more accessible. The company operates two rocket programs — the suborbital New Shepard, which has carried paying tourists (perhaps most famously William Shatner) to the edge of space, and the orbital New Glenn, which made its debut in 2025.

Eric Italiano BroBIble avatar
Eric Italiano is a NYC-based writer who spearheads BroBible's Pop Culture and Entertainment content. He covers topics such as Movies, TV, and Video Games, while interviewing actors, directors, and writers.
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