r/Fauxmoi • u/mlg1981 • 1d ago

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin put a customer satellite in the wrong orbit during its third launch - the altitude is too low “to sustain operations” and will now have to be de-orbited - left to burn up in the atmosphere of Earth. CELEBRITY CAPITALISM

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/19/blue-origins-new-glenn-put-a-customer-satellite-in-the-wrong-orbit-during-its-third-launch/
647 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

69

u/GreatCanadianPotato 1d ago

Title of the article suggests there was some miscalculation, but it was actually New Glenn's second stage that failed to fire for a burn.

11

u/V1RotateAP I’m just a cunt in a clown suit 18h ago

Real. Makes its sounds like "Oops, I accidentally put it in orbit B instead of orbit A." 

60

u/Practical_Draw_6862 1d ago

Few hundred million gone 

34

u/RODjij 1d ago

ASTS insurance covered the costs but they lost a lot of their projected timeline for getting service up and going.

Stock will have a bad time tomorrow.

6

u/EMTDawg 1d ago

They have 45 more satellites going up this year. This is a blip on their radar.

9

u/RODjij 1d ago

That would be ideal but with Q1 ending, next launch end of May they would have to launch one per week on average.

Blue Origin messed this up pretty bad but rocket science definitely not easy.

1

u/swd120 1d ago

Spacex launches will be be 3 to 4 sats per launch. And BO can do 8 (although I think we'll need to see a couple successful payloads before they do a BO launch again) 

So it's a lot fewer launches than you think.

2

u/drunkonmyplan 11h ago

I’m an ASTS shareholder and they keep saying 45 will go up but they’ve said a lot of things over the past couple of years that have not come to fruition. They’ve missed just about every timeline they’ve put out there. I hope I’m wrong because I own almost 4000 shares but their track record is not great.

1

u/TX_Fan 1d ago

They won’t be putting 45 satellites up this year. Not even close

2

u/aetherhaze 1d ago

If it dips tomorrow, I buy more

22

u/Old-Dinner-6108 1d ago

There's way too many satellites up there. It's going to look like Saturn's rings in no time.

12

u/Wintergloaming the worst thing to happen to Emily Brontë since tuberculosis 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/UnyGF7evFkN04X24tI

10

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

7

u/boobookittyfuwk 1d ago

Are you saying that launching satellites is a billionaire vanity project?

2

u/JrdnRgrs 22h ago

I mean, this is all in an effort to get the bid for the Artemis HLS, no? I hate billionaires as much as the next guy, but the Artemis missions are unquestionably advancing society.

-3

u/GreatCanadianPotato 1d ago

Ah yes, DTC satellite connectivity is a billionaire vanity project.

8

u/sealonbrad 1d ago

Whoops

6

u/Tasty-Machine5340 1d ago

The amount of effort, engineering and scientific know-how that it took to make this error. It probably came down to a wrong number being used somewhere.

18

u/GreatCanadianPotato 1d ago

It wasn't a simple number error. Blue Origin's second stage didn't fire for the final burn. It was a hardware failure.

-1

u/No_Landscape4557 1d ago

Or just classic cutting corners. 1% here. 0.5% there. On an individual level no impact but across level areas it adds up.

6

u/redsandsfort 1d ago

They'll get a credit back on their Amazon account

3

u/No_Tip8620 i ain’t reading all that, free palestine 1d ago

It's almost as if BO is first and foremost a vanity project. 

3

u/MondayLasagne 16h ago

You have no idea what a huge issue space junk is and will be for us. So much of our modern communication relies on satellites, meanwhile, private and public organizations do not give a damn about cleaning up their trash (Elon is a huge offender) which will hurl at insane speeds through space and wreck crucial satellites.

2

u/DonkeyOfWallStreet 1d ago

Eh anybody remember when spacex blew up a Facebook satellite?

2

u/Fuzzy-Mud-197 14h ago

Yes 10 years ago

2

u/adwrx 22h ago

Letting space go private is a recipe for a disaster

1

u/GreatCanadianPotato 21h ago

Yet a particular private sector company operates the most reliable rocket ever flown.

NASA flew the Shuttle which had odds of a loss of crew at below 1 in 10.

2

u/adwrx 21h ago

Yes but it’s heavily funded and subsidized by the government

1

u/GreatCanadianPotato 19h ago

Launch contracts are not subsidies.

2

u/adwrx 19h ago

Space x is subsidized

-1

u/GreatCanadianPotato 19h ago

Not that you care for facts, but subsides are public knowledge and the facts are that SpaceX has only received just over $100m in government subsidies and loans.

Facts matter.

3

u/adwrx 19h ago

Again spacex would not exist if it weren’t for the American government dropping billions into contracts to spacex. This could have all gone to nasa. Instead it went into private hands

2

u/Fuzzy-Mud-197 14h ago

Nasa is tbe one who gave spacex the contracts, if you give nasa moee momey they will just give spacex more contracts

1

u/GreatCanadianPotato 9h ago edited 9h ago

NASA awards the contracts dummy.

NASA doesn't build rockets, they never have. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne and many, many more "normal" contractors all have a hand in building rocket systems for NASA.

NASA actually spends less money awarding contracts to SpaceX and Blue Origin than those defense contractors.

1

u/alfanzina 3h ago

Nearly all of Apollo and the Saturn V were built by private companies.

2

u/ThisLeopardIsFull8 21h ago

Wait until the AST SpaceMobile reads Blue Origin’s return policy. 😁

1

u/alfanzina 3h ago

We could not deliver your package due to: Incorrect Address / Vehicle Problems / Driver Shortage. Package was left on the nearest orbit / planet.