Jeff Bezos should leave the rocket ship building to Elon Musk

New Glenn rocket explodes on take-off and is completely destroyed.

The explosion occurred around 9 p.m. EDT as engineers were counting down to a brief test firing of the New Glenn’s seven methane-fueled BE-4 first stage engines at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Blue Origin was gearing up for a June launch to put a batch of Amazon “Leo” internet satellites into orbit.

As the engines appeared to begin firing, something clearly went wrong at the base of the rocket. The 188-foot-tall first stage became enveloped in a rapidly growing fire and moments later, the 86-foot-tall upper stage could be seen tilting and starting to fall as the first stage apparently began collapsing. Then the vehicle suddenly exploded as its load of methane fuel and liquid oxygen ignited in a roiling fireball.

The rocket was destroyed, and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible.

Apparently just being a billionaire does not mean you should be building space rockets.

Possibly the best response was from Elon himself:

The goal here is for Bezos to eventually compete with Starlink with his own internet system called LEO. Of course, there is a reason why everyone has heard of Starlink and nobody has heard of LEO. That may remain true for a bit longer after the set back suffered here.