Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Plots Launch of Its Mega Rocket. Next Year. Maybe.
reality. SpaceX has pulled away from Blue Origin, launching its Falcon rockets almost 250 times as of last Saturday, including for human space missions the company is starting to make routine. The gap between the two companies has drawn notice from space-industry officials and executives.
“Many of us think of Blue Origin as really, truly a potential competitor to SpaceX," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the former top science administrator at National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “I think for many of us there’s a little bit of a sense of anxiety." The two companies’ strategies are different. SpaceX has built a reputation for speed and embracing fireballs when developing rockets.
Blue Origin, which once used tortoises on a logo, operated for years like a think tank, with a more cautious, methodical style. “The advantage is you’re not going to make as many mistakes," George Sowers, who developed rockets at United Launch Alliance, said of the route Blue Origin has taken. “But SpaceX would say, ‘Hey, making mistakes is how we learn.’" In April, SpaceX blasted off Starship, its new 394-foot-tall rocket, for the first time from its complex in South Texas.
The launch spread debris over hundreds of acres and started a fire. Starship flew for four minutes before an onboard system destroyed it. “In launching, what you’re doing is trying to resolve the unknowns, which you cannot know before you launch," Musk said in June.
Executives said the data gleaned made the flight worth it. Blue Origin wants the first flight of New Glenn, named after famed NASA astronaut John Glenn, to work from the moment the rocket reaches the pad to when its reusable booster lands back on a barge not long after liftoff. The inaugural flight will have
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