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The foundational building block for Jeff Bezos\u2019 space dreams is finally ready to launch.<\/p>\n
A New Glenn rocket \u2014 built by Blue Origin, the rocket company that Mr. Bezos started nearly a quarter century ago \u2014 is sitting on a launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It is as tall as a 32-story building, and its voluminous nose cone can carry larger satellites and other payloads than other rockets in operation today.<\/p>\n
In the predawn darkness on Sunday, it may head to space for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been very long awaited,\u201d said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington.<\/p>\n
New Glenn could inject competition into a rocket business where one company \u2014 Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX \u2014 is winning big. While companies and governments have welcomed SpaceX\u2019s innovations that have greatly cut the cost of sending stuff to space, they are wary of relying on one company that is subject to the whims of the world\u2019s richest person.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX is clearly dominating\u201d the market for launching larger and heavier payloads, Mr. Harrison said. \u201cThere needs to be a viable competitor to keep that market healthy. And it looks like Blue Origin is probably the best positioned to be that competitor to SpaceX.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
New Glenn is larger than SpaceX\u2019s current workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, but not as big as Starship, the fully reusable rocket system that SpaceX is currently developing.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin is also working on a future private space station called Orbital Reef, a lunar lander for NASA called Blue Moon and a space tug called Blue Ring \u2014 a vehicle that could move satellites around in Earth orbit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Bezos\u2019 other company \u2014 the behemoth online retailer Amazon \u2014 also has big space plans. Project Kuiper, a constellation of internet satellites, will compete with SpaceX\u2019s Starlink network.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bezos, the second richest person in the world, after Mr. Musk, also talks grandiosely about a future where millions of people live and work in space, of immense cylindrical habitats spinning to provide artificial gravity, and of moving polluting industries into space someday to allow Earth to return to a more pristine state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI know that sounds fantastical,\u201d Mr. Bezos said during an interview at The New York Times\u2019s DealBook Summit in December, \u201cso I beg the indulgence of this audience to bear with me for a moment. But it\u2019s not fantastical.\u201d<\/p>\n
But those plans and hopes cannot get off the ground without a rocket. \u201cThat\u2019s what New Glenn, our orbital vehicle, is all about,\u201d Mr. Bezos said.<\/p>\n
The 21st-century space age is often depicted as a race of billionaires rather than of nations, but so far it has not been a race at all. SpaceX, which Mr. Musk started in 2002, launches its Falcon 9 rockets once every few days. Blue Origin, founded in 2000, has yet to put anything in orbit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of people forget Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX,\u201d Mr. Harrison said.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin has built and launched a smaller rocket, New Shepard, which goes up and down. It passes the 62-mile-high altitude regarded as the edge of space but never comes close to reaching the velocity of more than 17,000 miles per hour needed to enter orbit around the planet. The New Shepard flights have provided a few minutes of weightlessness for space tourists, including Mr. Bezos himself, and for science experiments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The powerful BE-4 engines that Blue Origin built for New Glenn are also a proven success. United Launch Alliance, a competing rocket company, uses the Blue Origin engines for the booster of its new Vulcan rocket, which successfully launched twice last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In 2015, with pomp and publicity, Mr. Bezos announced plans for the rocket, which was then unnamed.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bezos said it would be manufactured at a factory that Blue Origin would build in Florida near NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center. He pledged it would launch by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n
The factory appeared \u2014 gargantuan boxy buildings colored with the company\u2019s signature bright blue hue \u2014 but the rocket, later named New Glenn after John Glenn, the first American to reach orbit Earth, did not.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin kept pushing back the date of the rocket\u2019s debut.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
During an industry panel in 2023, Jarrett Jones, the senior vice president at Blue Origin overseeing the development of New Glenn, said he expected \u201cmultiple\u201d launches of New Glenn in 2024. While giving a tour of the Blue Origin factory in February 2024, he said he expected two launches by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The delays continued. The debut flight of New Glenn, which was to carry two identical spacecraft for NASA\u2019s ESCAPADE mission to make measurements of the atmosphere of Mars, was to launch in October.<\/p>\n
But in September, NASA, doubtful that New Glenn would be ready in time, announced it had pulled ESCAPADE off that inaugural launch.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin said that a prototype of Blue Ring, the space tug, would fly instead. In early December, the full rocket rolled out to the launchpad.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin had been still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to award a license for launch. That finally came on December 27.<\/p>\n
Later that day, Blue Origin conducted a launch rehearsal, with the countdown clock ticking down to zero and the rocket\u2019s engines lighting up and unleashing torrents of flames and smoke. But, as intended, the rocket remained firmly clamped down, and after 24 seconds, the engines were turned off \u2014 a final test to sift out and fix glitches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As soon as 1 a.m. Eastern time on Jan. 12, Blue Origin will repeat the same countdown, but this time, instead of a shutdown of the engines, New Glenn will soar toward space. The middle-of-the-night launch window, which extends until 4 a.m., results from air restrictions imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration for a large, untested rocket.<\/p>\n
The hope is that the debut of New Glenn is better late than never.<\/p>\n
Last year, Mr. Jones said he hoped Blue Origin could speed up its pace to as many as one launch a month in 2025 and eventually double that or more.<\/p>\n
No rocket company, not even SpaceX, has ever been able to accelerate the launching of a new vehicle that quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s pretty substantial,\u201d said Carissa Christensen, the chief executive of BryceTech, a space consulting company in Alexandria, Va. But if Blue Origin cannot keep up with its promised pace, its customers could also fall behind schedule.<\/p>\n
Like SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rockets, New Glenn aims to be partially reusable, with the booster designed to land in the Atlantic Ocean on a floating platform named Jacklyn, after Mr. Bezos\u2019 mother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
For the first flight, the booster has been given the nickname So You\u2019re Telling Me There\u2019s a Chance.<\/p>\n
On the social media site X, Dave Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, explained: \u201cWhy? No one has landed a reusable booster on the first try. Yet, we\u2019re going for it, and humbly submit having good confidence in landing it. But like I said a couple of weeks ago, if we don\u2019t, we\u2019ll learn and keep trying until we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Harrison said the reusable boosters, designed to launch at least 25 times, would help Blue Origin compete with SpaceX on price. The Vulcan from United Launch Alliance and the Ariane 6 rocket from Arianespace both currently fly just once and drop into the ocean.<\/p>\n
The second stage, which heads to orbit with the payload, will burn up when it re-enters the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
With several companies planning to fill the sky with multitudes of communications satellites, there appears to be more than enough business for all of the rocket companies, at least for a few years. Two years ago, Amazon announced it had signed contracts for up to 83 launches from three companies \u2014 Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance and Arianespace \u2014 to loft more than 3,000 Kuiper satellites.<\/p>\n
Amazon later announced it was also buying three Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin is not relying solely on business from Amazon. In November, it won an agreement from AST SpaceMobile for several New Glenn launches. AST is building a cellular broadband network that is to work directly with smartphones.<\/p>\n
The lucrative business of launching satellites for the Department of Defense is another target for Blue Origin. If successful, this flight would count as the first of two flights needed for the U.S. Space Force to certify the rocket as ready for national security satellites.<\/p>\n
The ESCAPADE mission, bumped off the first New Glenn launch, could head to space on a later New Glenn flight in 2025 or 2026.<\/p>\n
Blue Origin is also aiming for business beyond rockets.<\/p>\n
The concept of space tugs like Blue Ring is not new, and there could be several uses for a spacecraft that could nestle up to another one. A rocket launch could drop off several satellites to one particular orbit, and a space tug could then move them to different destinations. Space tugs could also repair or refuel older satellites or dispose of dead pieces of space junk by pushing them back into the atmosphere to burn up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Defense Innovation Unit, part of the Department of Defense, is sponsoring the flight of what Blue Origin calls the \u201cpathfinder\u201d for future Blue Ring spacecraft. The prototype will remain attached to the second stage of New Glenn during the six-hour mission.<\/p>\n
Several New Glenn launches will be used to get the Blue Moon lander in position to take astronauts to the lunar surface during the NASA\u2019s Artemis V mission, currently scheduled for 2030. If the incoming Trump administration revamps the Artemis program, Blue Origin\u2019s role in it could grow, or diminish.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bezos\u2019 Amazon wealth means Blue Origin does not need to be an immediate success, and he is investing for the long term.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be the best business that I\u2019ve ever been involved in, but it\u2019s going to take a while,\u201d Mr. Bezos said during the DealBook Summit. \u201cBlue Origin is going do some very amazing things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n