Jeff Bezos' rocket company Blue Origin is entering the final stages of the development cycle of its New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle. Like Falcon 9, New Glenn is a reusable rocket with a first-stage booster designed for a propelled vertical landing. However, unlike the "Falcon 9", this rocket uses seven BE-4 rocket engines, which are more powerful than the similar "Merlin" engines. According to Blue Origin, the rocket will fly at least 25 times before being retired.
Currently, Blue Origin's only operational rocket is the New Shepard suborbital rocket. Like New Glenn, this rocket is designed for vertical landings and has flown 21 missions so far. New Shepard's last flight was in September 2022. During the ascent, the rocket engine failed, causing the rocket to crash. The New Shepard has since been grounded, but it is likely to return to the skies soon after the FAA concluded its accident investigation in September.
While New Shepard is Blue Origin's most successful rocket, New Glenn is at the heart of the company's commercial success. It has a designed carrying capacity of up to 45 metric tons, nearly twice the carrying capacity of the Falcon 9 rocket. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will use New Glenn to build a satellite internet constellation and perform other missions, including transporting lunar landers for NASA's Artemis program.
Now, local media covering NASA at Kennedy Space Center in Florida captured New Glenn's intermediate stage before its engines were engaged with it. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin makes its own engines, but unlike SpaceX, it also supplies them to other companies.
New Glenn's flight curve is also very similar to SpaceX's main product Falcon 9. Like the Falcon, the rocket will perform a flip maneuver after the first and second stages separate. The booster then lands vertically after slowing down in a landing burn. But unlike Falcon 9, if our interpretation of public information is correct, the New Glenn rocket's first flight goal is also an attempted landing. By contrast, SpaceX flew the Falcon 9 several times before testing propulsion landings and conducting such operations on land for the first time.
Both companies are backed by billionaires, giving them huge amounts of cash to fund expensive developments. While little is known about Blue Origin's development process, based on SpaceX's rocket design, the company manufactures any parts it deems necessary in-house to reduce costs and speed up manufacturing.
If New Glenn is successful and enters service, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will face more capable competitors, and it can also reduce costs in the long term by saving on the production cost of the first-stage booster. However, while New Glenn promises to deliver 45 tons to low Earth orbit, SpaceX's Super Heavy Starship more than doubles that capability, targeting at least 100 tons.
Starship is the world's largest rocket, and SpaceX has conducted two test flights of the integrated rocket system so far. Significant progress has been made in these tests. In the first test in April, Starship successfully separated from the launch pad, while the second test earlier this month was the first successful separation of its first and second stages.