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Blue Origin scraps New Glenn recovery ship, finishes first ‘test tank’
After four years of halting work, Blue Origin has fully abandoned a transport ship it once intended to convert into a landing platform for its orbital-class New Glenn rocket.
Known as Stena Freighter at the time of sale, Blue Origin purchased the ship for an undisclosed sum – likely several million dollars – sometime in mid-2018. Aside from a flashy, December 2020 re-christening ceremony in which Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos named the vessel Jacklyn after his late mother, the private aerospace company left the ship largely untouched in a Florida port. Small teams of workers would occasionally work on retrofitting the roll-on/roll-off cargo ship for a future life as a rocket recovery asset but made very little visible progress despite working on Jacklyn for several years.
Now, a few months after a Blue Origin spokesperson first acknowledged that the company was evaluating “different options” for New Glenn booster recovery, Jacklyn has left Florida’s Port of Pensacola for the Texan Port of Brownsville, where documents show that the ship will be scrapped.
According to an unconfirmed report, Blue Origin may ultimately use the same contractors as SpaceX to turn existing barges into ocean-going rocket-landing platforms. Blue Origin had hoped that a large, keeled ship would allow it to launch New Glenn and still recover its expensive booster even if seas were stormy downrange. However, after 107 successful SpaceX Falcon booster landings on flat-bottomed barges that are exceptionally sensitive to wave conditions, just a tiny fraction of launches have been delayed by the ocean. Further, SpaceX has only lost one booster to waves, and it solved that problem by developing a relatively cheap robot. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s not hard to see why Blue Origin changed its mind.
Much like SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket, Blue Origin began work on its semi-reusable New Glenn rocket in the early 2010s. Jeff Bezos publicly revealed New Glenn just a few weeks before CEO Elon Musk’s long-planned September 2016 reveal of SpaceX’s next rocket, then known as the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). Both were massive, meant to be powered by huge new methane/oxygen-fueled engines, and designed from the ground up with some degree of reusability in mind.
But with fairly different designs and wildly different development philosophies, the paths of Blue Origin and SpaceX have only gotten further apart over the last six years. SpaceX thoroughly redesigned its next-generation rocket multiple times before throwing out a large portion of that prior work and settling on an unexpected stainless steel variant that CEO Elon Musk christened Starship in late 2018. Further differentiating the companies, SpaceX began work on steel prototypes almost immediately and successfully built and flew a scrappy pathfinder – powered by an early version of the same Raptor engine meant for Starship – less than a year later.
SpaceX then improvised a factory out of a series of tents and began churning out and testing dozens of more refined prototypes, seven of which would go on to perform flight tests between August 2020 and May 2021. SpaceX’s last test flight ended with a full-size steel Starship prototype successfully landing after launching to an altitude of 10 kilometers (~6.2 mi). Testing slowed considerably after that success but SpaceX appears to have begun ramping up again as it begins to test a Starship (S24) and Super Heavy booster prototype (B7) that have a shot at supporting the rocket’s first orbital launch attempt.
That orbital launch debut has been more or less continuously delayed for years and is about 20 months behind a tentative schedule Musk first sketched out (albeit for a drastically different rocket design) in 2016. Technically, the same is true for Blue Origin, which also said that it intended to debut New Glenn as early as 2020. However, while SpaceX can point to the instability of Starship’s design before 2019 as a fairly reasonable excuse for delays, the general characteristics of New Glenn’s design appear to be virtually unchanged despite its many delays. The smaller rocket – 7m (23 ft) wide and 98m (322 ft) tall to Starship’s 9m (30 ft) width and ~119m (~390 ft) height – will still use traditional aluminum alloys for most of its structures, will be powered by seven BE-4 engines, will land on several deployable legs, will have an expendable upper stage powered by two BE-3U engines, and will be topped with a large composite payload fairing.
Blue Origin canceled plans for a smaller interim fairing, abandoned plans to land the booster on a moving ship, and tweaked the booster’s landing legs and a few other attributes, but New Glenn is otherwise (visibly) unchanged from its 2016 reveal. Ultimately, that makes it even stranger that Blue Origin has done practically zero integrated testing of any major New Glenn components. Only in 2022 did the company finally complete and test a New Glenn payload fairing. Blue may have also built and tested a partial booster interstage, which the New Glenn upper stage will attach and deploy from.
But the true star of the show, at long last, is an apparent full-scale prototype of New Glenn’s upper stage. At minimum, Blue Origin’s first ‘test tank’ (using SpaceX parlance) should allow the company to finally verify the performance of New Glenn’s aluminum tank barrel sections and domes under cryogenic (ultra-cold) conditions. It’s unclear how (or if) Blue Origin intends to complete integrated static-fire testing of New Glenn’s upper stage before the rocket’s first launch, but it’s possible that the tank it finally delivered was designed to support testing with and without engines.
Nonetheless, Blue Origin hasn’t specified what it actually plans to do with its first New Glenn test tank and it’s even less clear why it has taken the company so long to complete one. While difficult, the methods Blue Origin is using to build New Glenn’s primary structures are about as standard as they get for modern rockets. Blue Origin itself even uses the same tech to build its smaller New Shepard rockets. So does SpaceX, ULA, Boeing, Arianespace, and virtually every other manufacturer of medium-to-large rockets, including NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) core stage, which is wider than New Glenn.
The results of those challenges (managerial, technical, or otherwise) are clear: Blue Origin is nowhere close to debuting its next-generation rocket while competitors like Arianespace and ULA are tracking towards H1 2023 debuts of their Ariane 6 and Vulcan rockets. SpaceX, who is pursuing full reusability and really only settled on the design of its larger rocket in 2019, could even be ready to attempt an orbital-class launch with Starship before the end of 2022.
Still, the long-awaited beginning of hardware-rich New Glenn development appears to have finally arrived, and it’s possible that Blue Origin’s first orbital-class rocket could finally start picking up momentum towards its launch debut.
A Texas man has been arrested and charged with manslaughter after his Tesla crashed into a home last month, striking a woman inside and killing her. The driver, Michael Butler, claimed the vehicle was in self-driving mode, but information from Tesla shows that Butler overrode the system.
Butler was arrested on Wednesday and booked at the Harris County, Texas, jail. He remained in custody through Thursday and Friday; he did not enter a plea, and his next court hearing is scheduled for Monday.
Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration
There are a handful of new clues in the case that could clear Tesla of any wrongdoing, especially as the woman who was killed’s family, the Avilas, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Tesla and Butler, seeking at least $1 million in damages.
Charging documents from the Harris County prosecutor now show that Butler, who was working DoorDash the evening of the accident, had been using Full Self-Driving mode without incident through the duration of multiple deliveries that evening.
In the moments leading up to the crash, while in FSD and approaching a left turn, Butler pressed the accelerator pedal, overriding FSD’s speed control, and continued to push it until it reached 100 percent. This caused rapid acceleration; the brake pedal was never pressed, and there is no data to show that Butler aimed to turn away from the curb or house.
The charging documents state:
“I noted that the brake pedal was never pressed in the final minute before the crash. I also did not see any data to indicate that the driver attempted to turn away from the curb that he eventually struck. Further, I observed that no mechanical error was detected or recorded by the vehicle before BUTLER and the Tesla struck the curb.”
Additionally, a forensic analysis of Butler’s phone showed that he searched Google around the time of the crash with queries questioning why FSD was “too timid,” “not aggressive enough,” and even searched, “FSD is not aggressive enough for city driving.”
The documents outlined this:
“Investigator Veal also informed me that he had received BUTLER’s cell phone from Deputy Amad and that HDAO digital forensics team had completed a data extraction and download of the phone. Multiple Google searches related to Tesla had been made from BUTLER’s phone in the months leading up the crash. I noted multiple searches in May of 2026 indicating an apparent frustration with Tesla’s FSD mode, including the following searches: “Tesla fsd not aggressive enough 2026 model,” “Tesla fsd not [sic) aggressive enough 2026,” “FSD is not aggressive enough for city driving,” and “tesla fsd too timid.”‘
Tesla had claimed just after the crash that its internal data showed Butler had overridden the system’s speed control and pressed the accelerator completely, causing the vehicle to travel at an excessive rate of speed. Eventually, the car slammed into Avila’s house, killing her.
Butler has now been formally charged with Manslaughter, a felony.
Tesla shocked with its quarterly delivery report yesterday by reporting it delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter of 2026, a 25 percent year-over-year jump that crushed Wall Street estimates of roughly 400,000–408,000 units. Production reached 451,758, with Model 3 and Model Y accounting for the vast majority.
The result ended two years of annual delivery declines and drew down inventory, signaling demand that outpaced earlier production.
Tesla bears had long warned that the expiration of the U.S. federal EV tax credit would hammer demand. Without the $7,500 incentive, they argued, American buyers would balk at higher effective prices, leading to a sharp slowdown.
Will Tesla thrive without the EV tax credit? Five reasons why they might
That narrative has not played out as predicted. While U.S. EV sales faced broader headwinds, Tesla’s global numbers held firm, underscoring the company’s ability to offset domestic pressure through other levers.
There are several plausible factors that explain Tesla’s strength during this quarter. Let’s take a look at them:
Rising Gas Prices
Rising gas prices provided a powerful tailwind, especially in the U.S.
Geopolitical tensions tied to the Iran conflict pushed fuel costs higher earlier in the year, amplifying the lifetime savings of electric vehicles. Even as oil prices later moderated, the psychological and financial impact lingered, encouraging fleet operators and private buyers to accelerate EV purchases. European sales rebounded sharply, helping drive the quarter’s outperformance.
Full Self-Driving Adoption
Advances in Full Self-Driving (FSD) supervised software also appear to have boosted appeal. Tesla expanded FSD availability in select European markets and continued refining the system.
No complaints from me because I finally got to enjoy this drive on FSD; I usually like to manually drive down this mountain https://t.co/RBFniRPSR0 pic.twitter.com/XQ5sOpN1Yg
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 26, 2026
For tech-oriented buyers, the promise of future autonomy and enhanced driver-assistance features adds perceived value beyond the car itself. This differentiation helps Tesla stand out in a crowded market where competitors focus primarily on hardware and basic range.
Pricing Strategy, Affordable Configurations
Tesla’s offerings and its pricing strategy during Q2 further stimulated demand. Tesla introduced lower-cost versions of the Model 3 and Model Y, widening accessibility without sacrificing core margins.
These moves countered affordability concerns and attracted buyers who had been waiting on the sidelines. Combined with attractive financing and leasing options, the pricing strategy converted interest into actual orders more effectively than many analysts expected.
Broad European Recovery
Supported by government incentives, corporate fleet electrification, and easing political headwinds around CEO Elon Musk, Tesla was supplied additional momentum through stronger registration numbers throughout Europe.
Strong exports from the Shanghai Gigafactory and a production ramp at Giga Berlin ensured supply met this resurgent demand. Corporate buyers, in particular, accelerated transitions to EVs to meet sustainability targets, providing a steady volume base.
These elements created a virtuous cycle that delivered the strong deliveries report. While bears correctly flagged the loss of the U.S. tax credit as a risk, Tesla’s diversified playbook demonstrated that it could remain resilient against those headwinds. The Q2 beat suggests the company remains adept at navigating shifting market conditions, even as competition intensifies.
A Tesla Semi was involved in a fatal collision on U.S. Highway 50 in Dayton, Nevada, on Sunday, June 28, 2026, marking the first known fatal crash involving the electric Class 8 truck. The incident occurred around 7:20 a.m. at the intersection with Traditions Parkway, approximately 40 miles east of Reno and close to Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada.
According to the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office and the Nevada State Police Highway Patrol, a semi-truck struck two passenger vehicles stopped at a traffic signal. The truck hit the vehicles from behind. Two people were pronounced dead at the scene, and a third person suffered life-threatening injuries and was flown to a hospital, Forbes reported.
Preliminary statements gathered at the scene by the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office suggested the truck driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel. However, the Nevada Highway Patrol, which is leading the investigation, stated that the official cause has not yet been determined.
Additional information is expected to be released early the following week. The truck was seized for evidence as part of the ongoing probe.
Responders at the scene included deputies from the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office, personnel from the Nevada Highway Patrol, Central Lyon County Fire Department, and the Nevada Department of Transportation. The crash led to the temporary closure of U.S. 50 in both directions.
The Tesla Semi is Tesla’s battery-electric heavy-duty truck, produced at the nearby Gigafactory in Nevada. Authorities initially described the vehicle as a semi-truck; its make was subsequently confirmed through reporting and scene identification; an interesting bit of information here, as the Semi is not yet available publicly and many do not know that Tesla builds electric trucks.
The investigation remains active, with no further official details on contributing factors or vehicle systems released as of early July 2026.
This incident highlights ongoing scrutiny of commercial vehicle safety on Nevada highways, particularly involving fatigue. Law enforcement continues to gather evidence and witness statements.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Tesla’s strong Q2 deliveries: Four key drivers behind the surprise
