Blue Origin restacks LC-36 and confirms a crew ship; CRS-35 flies Tuesday at 10:33:44 UTC

LC-36 rebuild — Four months after a New Glenn blew up on the pad at Launch Complex-36 in Florida, Blue Origin is stacking the repaired support tower back together, module by module, and has dropped the old transporter-erector in favour of vertical integration — the way Starship is handled at Starbase. Jeff Bezos told Fox News the company is targeting December for the return-to-flight mission, carrying a Blue Ring tug. Separately, CEO Dave Limp confirmed that an orbital crew vehicle is under development, the first such public admission in years.

This is the running story to watch alongside Starship: whether a second heavy-lift pad is alive again before New Year, and whether NASA ends up with a third way to put people in orbit. Blue Origin says it will not pay for its own on-ramp, and NASA says it will not fund a new programme, so the crew ship has no route to the ISS yet. The blast knocked over the lightning tower, bent beams in the support tower and dropped the launch mount and launch bridge into the flame trench; the bridge has been restored, mostly from salvaged structure, and the water deluge rainbirds are back in place. NASASpaceflight

“We've made significant investments in human spaceflight technologies over the past couple of years”