Blue Origin Moves from New Shepard to New Glenn

September 13, 2016 – Jeff Bezos has his eye on surpassing his rival Elon Musk with his latest space company announcement. The first reusable single-stage rocket built by Blue Origin is named after the first Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard. The designated New Shepard has enjoyed four successful launches taking it to suborbital heights.

Now the company in its Monday announcement has revealed the New Glenn, a multi-stage rocket with a reusable first stage that Bezos says has been worked on for four years. New Glenn comes in two and three-stage versions. The three-stage design is almost the height of the Apollo era Saturn V, standing 95 meters (313 feet). The two-stage version stands 83 meters (270 feet) tall. First flight is planned before the end of the decade.

So what exactly are Blue Origin’s plans? First of all the company is about to upgrade the New Shepard giving it a more powerful rocket motor. That change will put Blue Origin into the business of delivering payloads to low-Earth orbit. The less powerful New Shepard will be used for suborbital space tourism flights.

The plans for New Glenn are far more ambitious, putting Blue Origin into direct competition with SpaceX, ULA (Boeing-Lockheed), Roscosmos (Russia), ESA (Europe), ISRO (India) and China.

Bezos has been secretive about his company’s suborbital flights to date. Only one, the latest, was televised live. But he believes that caution has served them well. He states, “building, flying, landing, and re-flying New Shepard has taught us so much about how to design for practical, operable re-usability.” The New Glenn with seven rocket engines in its first stage, and generating 3.85 million pounds of thrust, will incorporate that same re-usability.

Blue Origin intends to use a launch pad at Cape Canaveral as its base for New Glenn operations.

And if you think New Glenn represents the end product in Blue Origin’s rocket evolution, Bezos raised the bar announcing plans for a next generation rocket that will go by the name of New Armstrong. Bezos vision is to see “millions of people living and working in space.”