It’s not every day you wake up to one of the richest people on the planet’s latest vanity project literally being engulfed in a skyscraper-sized fireball, but today is not like any other day. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company made sure of that after a malfunction during its latest test flight engulfed an entire Florida launch pad in flames so spectacular, Hollywood disaster movie VFX artists will be studying them for years.
The explosion occurred around 9:00 p.m. ET on May 28. Blue Origin was preparing a rocket set to carry 48 satellites for Amazon’s internet competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk, another billionaire who has spent a lot of money to make things blow up.
According to The New York Times, the rocket was simply being tested by firing seven of its engines in the booster stage while the rest of it was held on the launch pad. Seconds later the flames began to rise up and soon enveloped the entire launchpad.
They’re calling it the “most dramatic and powerful rocket explosion since the Soviet Union’s N1 rocket was destroyed during a launch attempt in 1969.”
The explosion has toppled the right-hand lightning protection system tower! It’s nowhere to be seen. pic.twitter.com/2aXFl2lKy8
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 29, 2026
Bezos did a Roman’s Rocket Launch from Succession IRL lol https://t.co/c8aIVqar7c pic.twitter.com/nwIbZFa6mf
— ParaPower Mapping (@KlonnyPin_Gosch) May 29, 2026
The explosion has toppled the right-hand lightning protection system tower! It’s nowhere to be seen. pic.twitter.com/2aXFl2lKy8
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) May 29, 2026
“We experienced an anomaly during today’s hotfire test,” Blue Origin announced on X. “All personnel have been accounted for.”
The premature fireworks happened just days after NASA awarded Bezos’ space company a contract worth up to $468 million to take its rovers to the moon. The New Glenn rocket, named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth, was going to be central to that effort. The 322-feet tall structure will reportedly take months to repair, delaying NASA’s already tight deadlines further as a full investigation into what went wrong gets underway.
“Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly,” Elon Musk wrote on X.
The viral launch misfire occurred the same month Bezos praised President Donald Trump and defended billionaires, arguing that taxing his roughly $275 billion fortune more wouldn’t do anything to help a nurse in Queens. He suggested people who are poor should just start selling chicken sandwiches.
“The way … you make $1 billion, or $100 million or $10 million or anything, is you create a service that people love, and if millions of people choose your service, you’re going to end up with a billion dollars,” Bezos told CNBC. “Just try it with a chicken franchise.”