When Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket burst into a fireball on a Cape Canaveral launch pad late on May 28, the quickest reaction came from its main rival.
“Very unfortunate. Rockets are tough,” Elon Musk wrote on X. (1)
Must read
It was a rare solidarity between two billionaires who have spent a decade trading blows in space. And it came as Musk’s SpaceX is days away from what could be the largest initial public offering in history, while Blue Origin stares months ahead.
What caused the Blue Origin New Glenn explosion?
Footage from Spaceflight Now shows Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploding during a hot fire test. With fuel full, the engines ignited while the vehicle remained bolted to the platform, triggering one of the largest rocket explosions in U.S. history ahead of a launch scheduled for the following week. (2)
Residents along Florida’s Space Coast reported feeling their homes shake, and Blue Origin later warned that debris could wash up on local beaches. No one was injured, but Launch Complex 36, Blue Origin’s only operational platform at New Glenn, was severely damaged. (3)
“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” Bezos wrote in (4)
Musk responded below: “Ad astra per aspera” — through hardships to the stars. (4)
New Glenn’s second failure in six weeks
The explosion was Blue Origin’s second setback in New Glenn in about six weeks. On April 19, during the rocket’s third flight, the first stage booster successfully landed on a marine platform. But the upper stage failed and failed to lift AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite into a usable orbit – a total loss. (2) The FAA opened an investigation into the mishap and its immobilization was lifted only approximately a week before the platform explosion. (5)
The destroyed rocket was intended to fly the fourth New Glenn mission, carrying 48 satellites for Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper), the broadband constellation that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is building to rival Starlink. (2) It was the first of 24 launches that Amazon had reserved with Blue Origin.
Amazon’s FCC license requires it to deploy half of its constellation of approximately 3,200 satellites, about 1,618 satellites, by July 30, 2026, or risk losing its authorization. (6) With only about 230 in orbit, Amazon was already far behind and has asked the FCC for a two-year extension, which analysts expect to be granted.
Amazon downplayed the blow. It said New Glenn represents about 25% of its more than 100 booked launches and that four other rockets remain on its manifest. The night after the explosion, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V carried another batch of Amazon Leo satellites into orbit from a pad near the explosion site. (3)
New Glenn is also linked to NASA’s Artemis program. Blue Origin has a $3.4 billion contract to build a crewed lunar lander, and on May 27 it won a $188 million award, part of the nearly $1 billion NASA is dividing among four companies, to take rovers to the Moon as initial infrastructure for a permanent lunar base. (5)
Read more: Taxes are going to change under Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’: 4 reasons you can’t afford to waste time
SpaceX’s $1.8 trillion IPO is going the other way
While Blue Origin has months of research, Musk’s SpaceX accelerates towards public markets. Bloomberg reported that the company had cut its target to a floor of at least $1.8 trillion after talks with investors. Musk dismissed the report about X as “false,” insisting that SpaceX is still aiming to surpass $2 trillion. (7)
Either figure would make SpaceX’s planned raising of up to $75 billion the largest initial public offering in history, and it is expected to tour in early June before a Nasdaq debut under the symbol SPCX.
The financials are more confusing than the valuation suggests. Revenue rose to $18.7 billion in 2025 from about $14 billion, but the company suffered a loss of $4.94 billion after turning a profit in 2024. (8)
It’s helpful to think of SpaceX as several companies united. Starlink is the telecommunications division and the engine; Its connectivity segment posted $11.4 billion in 2025, about 61% of total revenue, and wastes the cash that funds everything else. (9)
The launch business added approximately $4 billion, much of it from Pentagon and NASA contracts. (9)
Then there’s xAI, the artificial intelligence company that SpaceX absorbed in a merger in February that gave rise to Grok and the (8)
Even Starlink’s growth has a downside. Subscribers have roughly doubled each year, topping 10 million in March 2026, but average revenue per user has fallen three years in a row, from $99 a month in 2023 to $66 in early 2026, as Starlink cuts prices and moves into cheaper overseas markets. (9) Volume is outpacing the per-user decline for now. Investors are being asked to price a profitable telecoms business that involves a loss-making AI bet.
Space stocks sell off after explosion
Investors had bid up anything with “space exposure” for weeks before SpaceX’s IPO. The Blue Origin explosion stopped the rally in its tracks.
Hardest hit was AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS), the satellite-to-phone company whose payload was lost in April. Its shares fell as much as 18% intraday. (10) Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) fell more than 6%, while Planet Labs (NYSE:PL), Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ:LUNR), and Voyager Technologies (NYSE:VOYG) each fell more than 5%. The Procure Space ETF (UFO), which is up more than 100% over the past year, was on track for its worst session of the year. (10)
The exception was Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE), which closed with gains of approximately 40%. (11) That rebound was largely due to its own catalysts: a VSS Unity glider flight on May 27 that marked its return to flying after a two-year hiatus and reopened ticket sales. Blue Origin’s setback added fuel, with traders betting that a lull in New Shepard tourism could push customers toward Virgin’s manifesto.
The sell-off showed how closely these names are traded. But rivals can’t simply absorb New Glenn’s lost capability, because most of them don’t fly in its class. New Glenn is a heavy-lift rocket that carries about 45 tons to low-Earth orbit via a 23-foot fairing.
Rocket Lab’s next Neutron is a medium-lift vehicle in the 13-ton range, a Falcon 9 competitor, not a New Glenn one. And it is not expected to fly until late 2026 at the earliest, after a propellant tank rupture during testing in January. (12) For heavy duty, only SpaceX has flight-ready capability today.
you may also like
Join over 250,000 readers and get the best Moneywise exclusive stories and interviews first – clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.
Article sources
We rely only on verified sources and credible third-party reports. For more details, see our ethics and guidelines.
X (1), (4); CNN (2); CNBC (3); NBC News (5); Space News (6), (7); Bloomberg (8); Yahoo Finance (9), (10), (11); Satellite today (12)
This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com with the title: ‘Rockets are hard’: Elon Musk responds to Jeff Bezos’ rocket explosion as his own SpaceX slides toward a $1.8 trillion initial public offering
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
