New Glenn successfully launches Escapade orbiters AND lands 1st stage
New Glenn first stage after landing
Blue Origin today successfully placed two the NASA Escapade Mars orbiters into space, its New Glenn rocket launching for the second time from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
More significantly, the company successfully landed the rocket’s first stage on a barge in the Atlantic. New Glenn is now the second rocket capable of vertically landing and recovering its first stage, after SpaceX.
Several take-aways: First, this first stage recovery took place almost exactly a decade after Blue Origin successfully landed vertically its suborbital New Shepard rocket, and almost a decade after SpaceX successfully did it with its Falcon 9 orbital rocket. It is a shame that it took Blue Origin so long to get to this point. It is also magnificent that it has finally made it happen. The United States now has two reusable rockets, with two more (by Rocket Lab and Stoke Space) expected to launch by next year.
Blue Origin is not likely to reuse this particular first stage, but its recovery will make future reuses likely and soon.
Second, Blue Origin made one interesting broadcast choice that I like. It listed the rocket’s altitude and speed in feet/miles and miles per hour, not kilometers. The engineers might have been using metric, but the audience is American, so using the traditional Imperial numbers is smart. Good for Blue Origin.
Third, Blue Origin’s announcers were once again annoying, distracting, ignorant, and childishly emotional. And they simply would not shut up, preventing the audience from hearing critical reports from mission control. They also seemed oblivious to reality, bragging repeatedly about the ten year gap between the first New Shepard landing and this landing, as if this was somehow a good thing. It was embarrassing to listen to.
The company would do a far better job selling itself by hiring announcers who are more serious and professional. Sadly, I have noted this problem from Blue Origin’s announcers now for almost a decade, with little change.
Finally, this success is a very big deal, both for Blue Origin and the United States. The company is now primed to begin regular launches next year, including the 27 launches Amazon has purchased for its Kuiper constellation.
For the U.S., this finally gives us a solid competitor to SpaceX. And that competition is finally going to force launch prices to drop significantly. SpaceX dropped prices, not as far as it could because there was no pressure to do so from anyone else. Now there is that pressure.
As this was only the second launch by Blue Origin in 2025, the leader board for the 2025 launch race remains unchanged:
147 SpaceX
70 China
14 Rocket Lab
13 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 147 to 116. Note that ULA hopes to launch its Atlas-5 rocket tonight.
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Congratulations to the Blue Origin Team!
This was an interesting launch. I watch on Tim Dodd’s channel, and he pointed out a few odd things about this launch.
I will not go through it, but will just wait and see if he gets answers.
Blue Origin video feeds were choppy, but it was their first go, and they had bigger things to worry about, and appear to have gotten those things right.
From a macro perspective, most people will rush to compare Blue Origin and SpaceX at this point.
The way I see it:
Blue Origin has beaten/exceeded Rocket Lab by landing an orbital class rocket.
At the same time, they are also finally catching up to Rocket Lab, by launching an orbital class rocket.
Ironically, they did it while launching a payload built by Rocket Lab.
SpaceX is still far ahead of everyone.
But I like all of it. If all goes well, Rocket Lab will be joining the “launch and land” club soon, further securing US dominance on the market, which is what really matters to me.
Congrats to Blue Origin.
As I read the numbers, I see mass lift to LEO:
ULA Atlas-5: up to 41500 lbs
Falcon 9: 50000 lbs when landing on drone ship
Starship block 2: 77000 lbs
New Glenn: 99000 lbs
Starship block 3: 220000 lbs
So NewGlenn will, for a short period of time, be the heavy booster, until Starship block 3 enters commercial operation (late 2026?). What is the proposed/planned launchings of New Glenns to take advantage of that? Doesn’t seem to me that Blue Origin has an operation that can scale up very much.
Small request: Robert, you list the leader board and then the numbers for SpaceX versus rest of the world. Perhaps we need a new listing of USA versus rest of the world if ULA and Blue Origin are going to start spooling up regular launches?
Steve White asked, “Perhaps we need a new listing of USA versus rest of the world if ULA and Blue Origin are going to start spooling up regular launches?”
I expect my launch count system will undergo significant changes next year, as more and more independent companies in the U.S. and Europe begin launching rockets. Right now however comparing the U.S. with the rest of the world is mostly pointless, as it is mostly SpaceX that puts the U.S. in the lead. We need to see other companies launching almost as much as SpaceX to make that comparison worthwhile.
I don’t believe that payload number for New Glenn. The first launch barely made orbit, with a light sample payload, and the second stage had to do extra work. BO has been very quiet about the issue publicly, other than stating that it wasn’t under-performance of the engines. The few leaks and rumors that didn’t get immediately corrected claimed it was just software issues and flight control, in which case they might get that claimed payload. It certainly wasn’t as slow and ponderous off the pad today, but it still didn’t leap off like you’d expect given the relatively light payload.
There have been claims that they’re working on a “V2” New Glenn, with 7 engines, and/or a third stage, but whether any of that is something that they are actually pursuing, who knows.
Even my wife was telling the two blondes to shut up. They even talked over the critical 2nd stage relight. They SCREAMED. One of them asked the other to “hold my hand.” Embarrassing.
Fortunately the rest of BO worked perfectly. What a beautiful launch.
Patrick,
I was trying to hear the mission callouts and all I could here was their babbling and the crowd cheers.
I get it. They are happy, and rightfully so.
But they needed to turn the volume down.
Unfortunately, I think that is their culture, starting with Bezos.
I remember him running around, cheering like a teenager, when William Shatner was experiencing post-flight awe. The moment was lost on Jeff.