A Blue Origin booster called "No, It's Necessary" - a nod to a line from the film Interstellar - was wrecked in the incident on Thursday, and the launch pad was "practically destroyed," experts said.

It was never going to be pretty if hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly flammable liquid oxygen, hydrogen, and methane suddenly erupted.

“The explosion will significantly impact the timeline for deploying Nasa’s Moon base.