Overview
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Blue Origin’s Merritt Island rocket factory on Feb. 2, speaking to employees with founder Jeff Bezos during his monthlong Arsenal of Freedom tour.
- He escalated criticism of legacy contractors over delays and misaligned incentives, warning against buybacks, dividends and outsized executive pay when companies miss delivery targets.
- Hegseth tied the push to the Golden Dome initiative, describing a missile-defense architecture built on space-based sensors and interceptors.
- Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK One lander, Endurance, arrived in Houston for thermal-vacuum testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, coinciding with the visit.
- The visit followed earlier tour stops at SpaceX and Rocket Lab, with reporting that the Pentagon will integrate X’s Grok AI chatbot into internal systems.