Can Jeff Bezos match Elon Musk in space?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. IT HAS BEEN a long time coming. Assuming there are no last-minute delays, then in the next few days Blue Origin, a firm run by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, will make the first launch of its New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

If everything goes smoothly, then almost a quarter of a century after it was founded, Blue Origin will reach orbit for the first time—and the private space industry may have another contender. That is quite a big “if". Getting all the way to orbit with a brand-new rocket is a rare feat.

Blue Origin also hopes to recover the rocket’s first stage by landing it on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Doing that on a maiden flight would be unprecedented: that kind of partial reusability was pioneered by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket firm, and it required several attempts before eventually sticking the landing in 2016. (In a nod to those long odds, Blue Origin has named the booster So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance.) Admittedly, Blue Origin will not be starting entirely from scratch.

Since 2021 the firm has been flying tourists (including Mr Bezos himself) above the Karman Line, the 100km boundary that marks the edge of space. The New Shepard rockets that power those missions are capable of landing for later re-use. But going into orbit is much harder than crossing the Karman Line.

It requires not only flying much higher, but also accelerating sideways to around 28,000 kilometres per hour. New Glenn is, therefore, far bigger and more capable than New Shepard (see diagram). At 98 metres tall it is just two metres shy of one commonly used definition of a skyscraper.