First two stages of New Glenn assembled for the first time
After years of delays, Blue Origin announced yesterday that it has finally joined the first and second stages of its orbital New Glenn rocket, in preparation for its planned first launch later this year.
The stages remain horizontal inside Blue Origin’s assembly facility at Cape Canaveral, where engineers continue to check them out.
New Glenn’s launch was originally supposed to be in 2020. Problems with its first stage BE-4 engine put it (as well as ULA’s Vulcan rocket) four years behind schedule. The evidence now suggests that those problems were badly acerbated by the poor leadership of Bob Smith, Blue Origin’s CEO from 2017 to 2023, who apparently refused to spend money on test engines and the additional hardware necessary to test the engine to figure out what was wrong. Smith also appeared to slow all other work down in numerous ways as well as antagonize many at the company, causing a lot of high level engineers over time to flee.
Almost to the day Smith left last year Blue Origin has appeared to come to life. If so, this bodes well for both its future as well as that of the entire American rocket industry. New Glenn is a very powerful rocket, capable of lifting 50 tons to low Earth orbit, making it comparable to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. Its first stage is also designed to be reuseable, landing on a drone ship like the Falcon 9. If successful it will thus be a very capable competitor to SpaceX.
The company is aiming for an August launch. Keep your fingers crossed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
After years of delays, Blue Origin announced yesterday that it has finally joined the first and second stages of its orbital New Glenn rocket, in preparation for its planned first launch later this year.
The stages remain horizontal inside Blue Origin’s assembly facility at Cape Canaveral, where engineers continue to check them out.
New Glenn’s launch was originally supposed to be in 2020. Problems with its first stage BE-4 engine put it (as well as ULA’s Vulcan rocket) four years behind schedule. The evidence now suggests that those problems were badly acerbated by the poor leadership of Bob Smith, Blue Origin’s CEO from 2017 to 2023, who apparently refused to spend money on test engines and the additional hardware necessary to test the engine to figure out what was wrong. Smith also appeared to slow all other work down in numerous ways as well as antagonize many at the company, causing a lot of high level engineers over time to flee.
Almost to the day Smith left last year Blue Origin has appeared to come to life. If so, this bodes well for both its future as well as that of the entire American rocket industry. New Glenn is a very powerful rocket, capable of lifting 50 tons to low Earth orbit, making it comparable to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. Its first stage is also designed to be reuseable, landing on a drone ship like the Falcon 9. If successful it will thus be a very capable competitor to SpaceX.
The company is aiming for an August launch. Keep your fingers crossed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Given their experience with New Shepard, I wouldn’t be surprised if they land it on the first try.
The key thing is going to be rapid re-use — getting the first stage back isn’t worth as much if it takes six-eight months to refurbish it for the next flight.
Do they plan to recover the (fairly large and thus expensive) fairings? That one is a major cost saver for SpaceX ($3-6M per flight?).
Another advantage for Space X over Blue Origin is the names they give to their rockets. New Shepard (for example) may honor our first astronaut, but it sounds “clunky“ & “stilted” as a rocket name. New Glenn also sounds “forced” & “contrived”. Even the company name leaves a person scratching their head trying to figure out what they do. “Blue Origin” could be an ocean-based enterprise! The other organization choosing bad names is the ISRO. Perhaps both these folks should contact George Lucas. There‘s a guy who knows how to name spacecraft!
Blue Origin is probably going to be stuck with a quasi-reusable heavy-lift rocket with nothing like the F9 “underneath” it in the market.
Unless they buy ULA of course. Then they’ll have additional market coverage from Vulcan, albeit with only “SMART” reusability if any.
Both powered by BE-4s of course, which so far is very much a pig in a poke in respect to manufacturability and reusability.
Meanwhile, Raptor is evolving to Gen 3, with all the numbers going up… except weight, parts count, and cost to build.
To David.
Dragon should have been the rocket’s name–Falcon, the capsule