Blue Origin finally reaches orbit!

For possibly the first time ever, a Starship rocket launch was overshadowed last month.

It’s easy to forget that Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in the year 2000, two years before Elon Musk founded SpaceX.

For a long time, Bezos and Blue Origin have lived in the shadows of SpaceX’s achievements. Despite achieving impressive goals, like sending space tourists to the edge of space and back, there was always a caveat – Blue Origin had yet to reach orbit.

That has all changed now thanks to the first launch of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket.

Blue Origin became one of the first companies in the world to reach orbit on its first attempt. Let’s take a look at that impressive achievement and what it means for the space industry.

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SPOTLIGHT

Blue Origin finally launches New Glenn to orbit

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket flew to orbit on its first attempt on January 16. It wasn’t able to perform a booster landing on the first attempt. However, New Glenn did successfully insert Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder payload into orbit.

Throughout history, almost no rockets have reached orbit on the very first attempt. In fact, Chinese company Space Pioneer, became the first startup to perform the feat in 2023 with its Tianlong-2 launch vehicle. SpaceX famously failed to reach orbit on its first three attempts with Falcon 1.

"We got to orbit safely,” Ariane Cornell, vice president of in-space systems at Blue Origin, exclaimed during the company's live launch webcast. "Congratulations, everybody. What a day! We didn't have booster landing, but man, we got close. We collected so much data."

Unlike SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which flew a flight test just a few days later, New Glenn won’t be fully reusable. Instead, it will be partly reusable like SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. However, New Glenn does have a key advantage over Starship. Namely, it was designed to be operational from its first launch.

Starship, on the other hand, is undergoing an ambitious test campaign. While SpaceX is achieving impressive milestones with Starship, no date is currently set for the first operational launch.

Comparing New Glenn with Falcon 9 sets Blue Origin in a good position. This, despite the fact, that New Glenn has only flown one mission so far. New Glenn has more capability than Falcon 9. Unlike the medium-lift Falcon 9, New Glenn is a heavy-lift rocket. 

Falcon 9 is 229 feet (70 meters) tall and it can fly 50,265 lb (22,800 kg) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO). New Glenn, meanwhile, stands 320 feet tall. That’s roughly the size of a 32-story building. It will eventually be able to fly almost double the payload of Falcon 9. Flying to LEO, New Glenn can fire 99,000 lb (45,000 kg) into space. 

New Glenn could fly again as soon as March, when it is scheduled to fly Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Lunar lander prototype. SpaceX suddenly has some real competition on its hands. However, whether Blue Origin can come close to matching SpaceX’s impressive launch cadence with Falcon 9 – more than 400 successful launches to date – remains to be seen.

AERO BULLETIN

Blue Origin’s other space innovations

New Glenn isn’t the only impressive space innovation Blue Origin has brought to the table. The space company has an impressive portfolio of technologies in the works. Here are some of the standout innovations Jeff Bezos’ space firm is developing.

Orbital Reef

Blue Origin has flown a number of high-profile people to the edge of space with its New Shepard rocket. The company’s space tourist service has flown Will Shatner, Jeff Bezos himself, and a number of others. Now, with its Orbital Reef space station, the company aims to take these services to the next level.

The Orbital Reef station is advertised as a “space business park” that will have luxury living quarters. These will serve space tourists as well as scientists and astronauts. NASA has provided funding for the development of Orbital Reef, which will serve as one of several successors to the International Space Station.

Blue Moon

Blue Origin’s lunar lander plans were recently revived. Back in 2021, Bezos' firm infamously filed a lawsuit against NASA after losing out to SpaceX for the Artemis III lunar lander contract. Though that lawsuit was struck down, in 2023, the US space agency awarded Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract to develop its lander for Artemis V.

Blue Alchemist

Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist technology could be crucial for the future of human space exploration. The technology is capable of constructing solar panels using only lunar regolith. This would provide future space habitats a great deal of autonomy, as they would be able to harvest the energy they using panels made out materials that are abundant in space.