SpaceX-rival Blue Origin's 1st orbital rocket launch next week
05 Jan 2025

Jeff Bezos's aerospace company, Blue Origin, is gearing up for its first orbital rocket launch next week.

The event will be a major milestone in the commercial space race dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The mission, dubbed NG-1, will carry a prototype of Blue Ring, a US Defense Department-funded spacecraft designed to serve as a multi-purpose satellite deployment platform.

Blue Origin's transition to orbital launches
Market shift

The upcoming launch marks Blue Origin's entry into the lucrative orbital launch market, after years of suborbital flights with its smaller New Shepard rocket.

As Laura Forczyk, Founder of space consulting firm Astralytical, told AFP, "The market is really orbital."

She added, "Suborbital can only take you so far -- there are only so many payloads and customers for a quick ride to space."

A closer look at Blue Origin's rocket
Rocket details

The rocket, dubbed New Glenn, will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida as soon as Wednesday 1:00am (US time), with a backup window on Friday.

This was revealed in a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) advisory.

The NG-1 mission will carry the Blue Ring prototype onboard the rocket's second stage for the duration of a six-hour test flight.

New Glenn's features and capabilities
Rocket comparison

Similar to SpaceX's Falcon 9, New Glenn also comes with a reusable first stage that will land vertically on a ship at sea.

The ship, humorously dubbed "So You're Telling Me There's a Chance," captures the difficulty of landing a reusable rocket on the first try.

Standing at 320 feet, New Glenn is much bigger than the 230-foot Falcon 9 and designed to deliver bigger and heavier payloads.

Industry experts weigh in on Blue Origin's progress
Expert opinions

G. Scott Hubbard, NASA's former "Mars Czar" now at Stanford University, told AFP that he would be thrilled to finally have some competition to the Falcon 9.

However, SpaceX continues to dominate the market with rivals such as United Launch Alliance (ULA), Arianespace, and Rocket Lab trailing far behind.

Despite this, Bezos remains committed to his vision of populating the solar system with massive floating space colonies.

Blue Origin's cautious approach and future prospects
Strategic approach

Founded by Bezos in 2000, Blue Origin has moved at a slower pace than SpaceX, given its more cautious approach.

Scott Pace, a space policy analyst at George Washington University and former National Space Council member, told AFP that there's been impatience within the space community over Blue Origin's very deliberate approach.

However, if successful, New Glenn could offer the US government "dissimilar redundancy" ie. alternative systems that provide backups if one fails.