Blue Origin's New Glenn just blew up on the pad during a static fire ahead of NG-4. This reshapes the whole space landscape in my mind and it's worth chewing on this weekend.
> It was a pre-launch hot-fire, and it took out the pad. LC-36 infrastructure is gone, and Blue has only ONE New Glenn pad. When SpaceX lost a pad to a Falcon 9 explosion in 2016, that pad was down >12 months, but SpaceX kept flying off its other pads. Blue has nowhere to fall back to.
>It's the second failure in a row. NG-3 stranded AST's BlueBird-7 in April; Blue closed that investigation and got FAA clearance on 22 May.
"Space is hard" sentiment is back, and it bleeds into how the market prices every other program.
BEFORE THE FAILURE: SpaceX the clear leader (Starship maturing, Falcon 9 humming), New Glenn a credible #2 about to ramp with few of its own payloads to deploy, plus $RKLB's Neutron and $FLY's Eclipse coming.
AFTER THE FAILURE: New Glenn out for 9–18 months minimum. They have to rebuild a pad, not just a rocket, every Blue program slips, and investors start asking "how many pads do you have?" $RKLB has ONE pad for Neutron. After watching this, I'd want a second built.
So what does it mean for the stocks?
> Losers: Sat manufacturers, constellation owners and lunar plays mostly go down, harder for them and their customers to get hardware to orbit. $ASTS is arguably the biggest relative loser: launch partner down, Starlink gets more runway in direct-to-cell while ASTS waits. (Caveat: they can re-manifest on Falcon 9, at a price.) Amazon's 24-launch Kuiper manifest on New Glenn is frozen too.
> Winners: Launchers, less competition. SpaceX faces no credible heavy-lift alternative for the next year. And the demand backlog that builds up is bullish for $FLY and $RKLB when their medium-lift debuts land.
Space basket: $MDA, $ASTS, $RDW, $LUNR, $BSKY, $PL
Launchers: $SPCX, $RKLB, $FLY, $SATS (SpaceX Holdco)
