Blue Origin has made major investments and upgrades to facilities at the Kennedy Space Center site 36. Blue Origin is clearly preparing for major New Glenn reusable rocket launches.
The launch site and reusable rocket refurbishment facilities are getting prepared for a major rocket testing and launching program.
In 2018, Jeff Bezos started increased the staff of his rocket company Blue Origin to 3000 people over the next two or three years. Blue Origin staff was at 1500 people in 2018. SpaceX has 6000 people. Blue Origin has not yet reached orbit with any rocket and is developing the New Glenn reusable heavy launch rocket. New Glenn’s first-stage booster will be reusable like the SpaceX Falcon 9. Blue Origin has said there will be test flights in 2020 or 2021. The New Glenn capabilities will be close to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
Blue Origin is finalizing details on New Glenn’s design and are building model components that must be put through extreme testing.
French satellite firm Eutelsat SA is the first New Glenn customer.
Blue Origin released animations a few months ago of their proposed New Glenn rocket which will use seven BE-4 rockets for the first stage and will have two BE-3 engines for the second stage.
The New Glenn Rocket and the BE-4 engine are getting substantial funding from the US government.
SpaceX Continues to Make Rapid Progress with Starship and Ground Facility Construction
Droid Junkyard, Tatooine pic.twitter.com/yACFR9y04P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2019
SOURCES- Youtube What About it, SpaceX, Blue Origin
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Moving to the Kennedy Launch Center in Florida is a must to Earth orbit. 2024 Moon landing is from today 51 months. Using it wise, set up journey, details down tasks and schedules, hire and hold high valuable coworker, making progress daily are the guarantees not moving to retirement but build the Moongate.
Still haven’t reviewed the video, but it is clearly for the THIRD stage.
(edit: and reusable, on airless bodies or in Space.)
Why did you put “motto” in quotations?
Always been my deal. All this planet fixation. It will be HARD to even para-terraform a planet like Mars, nevermind legitimate terraforming.
Build habitats in space. You can control the size, atmosphere, location, gravity. Everything is controllable. Not so with a planet, at least not as easily.
NS is absolutely tiny compared to NG. It’s not even close. Not even the same hardware[namely the engines]
I think a reasonable conclusion, too. It will be a SH class. Hell, NG is almost SH class.
“They are ramping up quickly though”
ie- they have tested and started manufacturing in the past couple years vs the previous 15 years.
You restate the problem I have been trying to correct for 40 years, which we all have. No ISRU. Only Mars Direct plans. Musk has no ISRU plans, except where it does not help anything else, on Mars. Bezos has a lunar lander ready to go, and understands O’Neill, which is ISRU for all.
Bezos hopes to do ISRU one day.
So far he’s only doing ISRU because his “in situ” is on Earth.
I’m going from recollection of what Bezos said in his long Blue Moon talk. Perhaps he only was talking about the fact that New Shepard is H rather than Methane as a test for the second stage, not the stage itself. But I think he said it was the correct size, too? I will check it out!
Looks like possible third stage, perhaps?
Ha ha nope.. New Shepard is tiny, at less than 4 meters diameter.
New Glenn requires a much bigger upper stage with 7-meter diameter tank body and two BE-3U engines, which run on a different cycle than the single BE-3 on New Shepard, as well as the BE-3U being vacuum optimized with far larger nozzles. Both the BE-3U and NG upper stage both need to be separately qualified.
And the NG upper stage will not be recoverable without taking a huge hit to payload capacity because of the need for orbital-speed re-entry heat shielding, which suborbital New Shepard does not have, or need.
New Shepard, which exists, is the second stage of New Glenn.
ISRU is exponential, launch is linear. Musk is not ISRU, Bezos is.
Slow and steady might win a simple linear race, but it is a losing technique when operating OODA loops.
…And he has a steady yearly supply of 1.5 B supply of funds that he doesn’t need to get from nobody.
Bezos has been ahead of everyone else for over forty years, just as I have, in our understanding of G. K . O’Neill’s obvious truth. We should live in Space. Get used to it!
If New Glenn is as big as FH, New A should be at least as big as Starship, as the Falcon size is being skipped.
Not really.. New Glenn hasn’t even passed its Critical Design Review yet. You can’t build your first flight-ready rocket until the design passes CDR.
In contrast, ULA’s Vulcan (which will use the same BE-4 engine as New Glenn) passed its CDR back in September 2018 and it’s looking like Vulcan will make the 2021 deadline for its maiden flight.
Basically New Glenn is about a year behind Vulcan. That’s why they are protesting to the U.S. Air Force for choosing block-buy winners of the Launch Service Procurement Phase 2 competition next year which BO is expected to lose, because they won’t have New Glenn ready by the 2021 deadline.
At this rate, New Glenn will have its first flight in 2022, at the earliest.
Meanwhile, in Boca Chica TX and Cocoa FL…
That “motto” is a rationalization.
Pretty sure that they are already thinking about a reusable version for the second stage. Nobody wants to stay behind.
So that is part of their motto. Basically slow and steady. They are ramping up quickly, though.
Congrats to Jeff and BO being behind Elon on everything. Rivian is 10 years behind Tesla and BO is 10 years behind SpaceX. BO opened its doors NINETEEN years ago and still has less to show for it than almost any space company still in business.