The rocket comes in a two-stage and a three-stage version, intended to carry both cargo and humans into orbit. Named after John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to enter orbit, the company hopes to have their new vehicle leaving Earth’s surface before 2020.
Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, in an effort to make commercial space flight more affordable and more reliable. 16 years on, Blue Origin is part of the healthy mix of New Space companies, like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, promising a more accessible world of space flight options. The company’s New Shepard low earth orbital vehicle has been proven successful and reusable, with commercial flights supposed to begin as soon as 2018. Blue Origin has also agreed to supply the United Launch Alliance to supply it with new rockets for their Vulcan heavy orbital launchers.
Blue Origin announced the design through a newsletter for mail list subscribers. CEO Jeff Bezos addressed the impressive technology behind the new rocket.
New Glenn is 23 feet [7 meters] in diameter and lifts off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from seven BE-4 engines. Burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, these are the same BE-4 engines that will power United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket.
The New Glenn is the next ambitious step in Blue Origin’s plans for commercial space flight. It will also follow a dominant trend in the commercial space industry: like Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle, and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage of the New Glenn will be landable and therefore reusable. Bezos says that reusing rockets is essential to lowering the cost of spaceflight.
What kinds of payloads can we expect to see on board the New Glenn? While it’s too early to know for sure, with that much payload potential, it’s obvious that Blue Origin intends to take a big step towards its overall goals of massive increases of commercial cargo and crews entering orbit.
Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step. Up next on our drawing board: New Armstrong, but that’s a story for the future.
How does the New Glenn stack up?
The design shared by Blue Origin captures the imagination of many. The Saturn V, the three stage rocket that took humanity to the moon and launched Skylab stands right beside the three-stage New Glenn. The big rocket that, for better or worse, all other large rockets are judged next to. The Saturn V stood at 363 feet (111 m), taller than the Statue of Liberty or Big Ben.
Of course, big for the sake of big is pointless when it comes to the ambitions of the New Space movement. The Delta IV heavy, the world’s highest capacity rocket currently in operation, stands at 236 feet (72 m), and produces two million pounds of thrust at takeoff. The three stage New Glenn is 313 feet (95 m) and will produce 3.85 million pounds of thrust for those keeping score.
Of course, within the ever-shifting world of the commercial space industry, numbers can change in a very short period of time. The Falcon 9 heavy rocket in development by SpaceX is slated to have five million pounds of thrust upon takeoff. Though, due to the recent unfortunate setback for the Falcon 9 rocket, it may be a while before we get a chance to see that much power leave the earth.
Blue origin’s motto is ‘Gradatim Ferociter’ — step by step, ferociously; if the New Glenn starts launching sooner rather than later, the next steps in the commercial space industry will be ferocious indeed.
