Blue Origin plans to finally fly the New Glenn rocket and to get a lot of launches. The first launch is in days. For 2025, they expect to have between 8 and 10 launches, with the capacity for up to 12 launches. In 2026, Blue Origin aims to increase this number to 24 launches.
Blue Origin should finally be launching significant numbers of the Amazon satellite constellation.
The Blue Origin first booster stage is designed for reuse. If Blue Origin rocket succeeds then it is a true SpaceX Falcon Heavy competitor.
New Glenn can take up larger payloads than all but the SpaceX Starship. The fairing is Seven meters. This is twice the volume of smaller, five-meter class payload fairings, customers have more flexibility to package their payload in new ways.
With New Glenn & Starship expected to launch within days of each other I'm seeing a lot of people saying that New Glenn is too late and already redundant.
However, New Glenn's much delayed launch is intended to be a fully operation launch system, Starship is still in development.… pic.twitter.com/BXWKRFXu7w— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) January 5, 2025
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.
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Thank you! I keep thinking I am living in a strange Universe where things work perfectly in their very 1st attempt.
Especially for a company that has never flown a 2 stage rocket nor never flown anything to orbit. Their flight control software will magically work with zero real world data to verify anything. We all know landing is so easy especially at sea 100 miles out, for the 1st time.
8 to 10 launches in 2025? Hahaha, we are still talking about Blue? 25 years to attempt an orbital flight, now they are going to fly every 5 weeks? BO can’t fly New Shepard that often.
Revitalized competition from private industry in the American space launch area is good for all concerned. The desperate need to replace the “traditional” (and failing) space launch suppliers is growing urgently in the race to catch up to China’s efforts in this field.
I am flabbergasted that NASA still thinks that their outdated and dangerous SLS has any part to play out in space exploration! The new management at NASA needs to rapidly clean out all of the redundant bureaucracy and get back to it’s mandated charter towards the manned exploration of the moon, and boldly get American boots onto Mars in the very near future! That will require daring, ambition, drive, and the managerial talent to turn pretty words into actual facts.
Yes, we were discussing this in the design office yesterday. Musk really does need some competition, if only to keep the anti-trust regulators at bay. The only question is if BO is genuinely capable of providing that competition. I have my doubts; While that rocket might be up to providing a government second source, it doesn’t seem likely to be able to fly at a competitive price.
“Musk really does need some competition, if only to keep the anti-trust regulators at bay.”
Which is crazy. Nobody ‘needs’ competition; if you’re just so much better than everybody else that no one can offer anything on par with your product, well, that’s not exactly a problem on your side. I understand your point, though.
“if you’re just so much better than everybody else that no one can offer anything on par with your product, well, that’s not exactly a problem on your side.”
Yeah, that’s the exact basis the Bell system got broken up by the anti-trust people: They were so good nobody could compete with them.
I don’t think Musk wants SpaceX broken up into several “baby SpaceX’s”. At least, not yet.
The sour grapes post by the BO exec or what minimizing the Starship platform is totally transparent. “Yeah, it’s got twice the payload, is more reusable, more flexible, quicker turn around…. What was I saying? Oh yeah, ours is better”
I hope bo is successful that would give more options to customers it will be the only other rocket that can fly more than once they can give spacex some competition a single use rocket can’t do that
..or..
maybe these ‘other’ deep-pocketed space companies can abandon the saturated and mostly-realized ‘to orbit or almost’ industry -and- instead can design, test, and manufacture en masse some orbiters, stations, outposts, landers, rovers/ hoverers/copters, NEO exploitation craft, orbital yard components, debris scavengers, surface base components, off-earth excavators/ bores/ transports, orbital energy, etc., etc.
Geez. When did Follow-the-Musk become the number one pastime of billionaires and aerospace firms?
Plenty of companies are doing that too, and it’ll probably work out in their favor for SpaceX to have some competition.
All spacex needs is an adaptor to falcon heavy farings for an expandable starship.
Spacesx could pull this of in 2 month and beat blue origin
3 Newlyweds were drinking coffee and discussing sex with their new husbands.
Bride 1 says, “My husband is a distance runner. He has such stamina that sex with him is amazing!”
Bride 2 says, “My husband is a power lifter. He is so powerful that sex with him is amazing!”
Bride 3 says, “My husband is an engineer on the New Glenn Rocket. We haven’t actually had sex yet. But, he assures me that when we finally do, it will be the best sex ever!”
Hah!
It’s nice that New Glenn is *intended* to be a fully operational launch system. Intending it to be fully operational is different from it BEING fully operational.
Maybe BO’s “We’ll be REALLY careful, and succeed fully on the first try!” approach will work. But 40 years of engineering experience doesn’t lead me to expect that.
Just to clarify, it is of course perfectly possible to be really careful and succeed fully on the first try, but generally only when you’re operating far from the cutting edge of technology. But if you’re operating far from the cutting edge of technology, you’re not a competitive rocket company.
At least they’ve already flown the engines in Vulcan.
Since the number of launches is currently zero, you can’t say they’re finally competitive. When Bezos gets 4,000 satellites in orbit then you can say they are competitive but until then…
Compared to some Russian rockets, SLS, others it is still a good point that New Glenn is way ahead specs wise. They just need to get it to orbit someday,…
Competition is good.