back to article Blue Origin's New Glenn will launch any day now – but it better hurry up

Blue Origin has confirmed its New Glenn rocket is on track for launch before the end of 2024. The company made the announcement alongside confirmation that the Blue Ring payload – which replaced the initially manifested NASA ESCAPADE mission to Mars earlier this year – was ready to launch. The plan is that New Glenn's first …

  1. Ken Y-N
    Mushroom

    "before being trumped by SpaceX"

    I suspect they might get trumped, musked and doged next year once Musk starts fiddling with the budget...

  2. frankvw

    Interesting, though, how all those young upstart whipper-snappers are focusing on reusable launch systems and space craft while the established order (NASA, ESA, Roscosmos) continues to use expendable ones. One would expect organizations with decades of R&D and experience in their arsenals do have done a little better by now. One would be wrong, apparently...

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Ariane quickly spotted a huge flaw in re-usability: If a rocket can fly ten times then Ariane would have to fire 90% of their manufacturing workforce. Their anchor customer would be furious. Eventually Europe worked out they wanted their own communications satellite constellation and would need a re-usable rocket to launch it. Funding for a suitable engine started in 2022. There is progress. Simply comparing achievements and dates put Ariane 15 years behind SpaceX. In real life, SpaceX took some steps in wrong directions which Ariane do not have to repeat but Ariane have to convince a committee of politicians to hand over money while SpaceX only had to convince one person.

      ULA inherited Atlas and Delta. Vulcan is the first rocket they designed in house. Vulcan was designed to fix the key problems at the time: congress voted to prevent the use of Russian RD-180 engines for government launches and ARJ had been working tirelessly on the price of their engines. The RS-68a engines for Delta were about $20M each and ARJ have successfully reduced the price of RS-25 (Space Shuttle/SLS) from $100M to $146M each. (I have confidence Blue Origin will be able to cut costs while matching ARJ's prices given time.) ULA's owners Lockheed and Boeing think of ULA as a cash cow and have shown no interest in funding a re-usable rocket.

      Russia's strategy for a re-usable rocket involves sending their rocket scientists to fight in Ukraine. There is method in this madness: Sergei Korolev came from Ukraine as did the Zenit rocket family and plenty more of the USSR's achievements in space.

      1. Wellyboot Silver badge
        Facepalm

        >>>successfully reduced the price of RS-25 (Space Shuttle/SLS) from $100M to $146M each.<<<

        You can tell it's government* money

        *taxpayer!!

        1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

          Governments have many and significant sources of money other than taxes, though you'd never think so to read the Daily Mail.

      2. fishman

        "Ariane quickly spotted a huge flaw in re-usability: If a rocket can fly ten times then Ariane would have to fire 90% of their manufacturing workforce."

        Ironically SpaceX builds more new boosters each year than Ariane. And then there is those 135+ second stages they will have built this year. Lotsa manufacturing going on there.......

    2. DJO Silver badge

      NASA did vertical rocket landings decades ago.

      The issue is economics, for regular low orbit missions using the same kit reusability can work. SpaceX launch dozens of essentially the same mission, flinging their astronomer annoyers into orbit by the dozen.

      For NASA however almost every mission is unique so reusability is pointless also and probably more importantly in order to land the rocket you need to reserve a proportion of fuel reducing the rockets maximum altitude and/or payload, not a problem for commercial low orbit missions but if you want to escape the gravity well you need every bit of power available and being further away you'd need even more reserve fuel for the return trip.

      Finally the economics of reuse is questionable, the refurb cost is not that much less than the scratch build cost, again this can work for companies where they use identical rockets by the dozen but for the scientific missions NASA & ESA specialize in it just does not work.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        "For NASA however almost every mission is unique so reusability is pointless "

        The task is almost always "put this craft in orbit", usually with a kick stage as part of that craft. There is nothing unique about that, it's what spaceX have been doing for a while now with the F9. Occasionally the energy requirements are such that they expend a booster or three (and no doubt charge for that) - but the basic tenant is always "mass to orbit". What happens after is largely irrelevant.

        They certainly don't design a new rocket for each mission, and since they don't do that it's clear that reuse would be beneficial.

        1. DJO Silver badge

          Actually they DO design a new rocket for every mission. It may be with mainly off-the-shelf components but each configuration is different.

          Also you're ignoring the difference between easy low orbit and tricky high orbit or orbital escape, the low orbit stuff doesn't need much fuel to turn around and return to the surface. From high orbit the fuel costs needed to turn around and land would mean there's not enough fuel to get there in the first place so they'd need a much bigger rocket just to get the same payload up - the increased cost of the bigger rocket would far eclipse the savings made by reuse.

          1. John Robson Silver badge

            "Actually they DO design a new rocket for every mission. "

            No they don't - they choose from the variants of the atlas/delta and other launch families.

            That's not a newly *designed* rocket each time, just a newly built one.

            1. DJO Silver badge

              They don't design the engines each time but every stack is designed for the specific purpose and will be slightly different almost every time. It's nothing like the commercial operations where the same stack design can be used every time.

              Most commercial operations are to low orbit where recovery is possible, most NASA/ESA stuff is to higher orbits where recovery is not possible. Reuse only works from low orbit because of the extra fuel needed to bleed off the speed and to effect the landing, doing that from higher orbits would mean you'd need to carry so much fuel there be severely reduced capacity for the payload. You'll note that SpaceX don't recover the stacks from the few high orbit launches they make.

              1. John Robson Silver badge

                Most commercial operations are starlink, if we exclude that as a special case then out of what is left there is quite a bit of GTO/GEO, as well of course as all the ISS supply missions, which are both NASA *and* commercial.

                There are a variety of orbit options requiring different performances, because inclination matters alot, but it's the same rocket that gets you there.

                Adding/Removing SRBs isn't a rocket redesign any more than having the shorter nozzle on the MVac is for the F9.

              2. MachDiamond Silver badge

                "Reuse only works from low orbit because of the extra fuel needed to bleed off the speed and to effect the landing,"

                It changes the flight profiles a lot to make sure the first stage is recoverable. Going faster/further means more cost in recovery. Landing on a barge is pretty impressive, but if that's half way across the Atlantic and has to be slowly dragged back, weather has to be suitable for the trip back and barges aren't the most hydro-dynamically streamlined craft. Way back I worked on a few fireworks shows that we launched from a barge and it took ages to get from the dock to the site and back. We were all set up long before arriving and bored out of our minds since there's not much entertainment, a buffet or casino.

          2. fishman

            They don't design a new rocket for every mission. Probably 95% of the Falcon 9 non starlink missions use the standard reusable booster / standard nozzle second stage. Light energy requirements they use a smaller nozzle on the second stage engine - nozzles are expensive. Heavy energy requirements mean you aren't recovering the booster so you leave the landing equipment off (landing legs, grid fins).

            It's not uncommon for an older Falcon 9 booster to have done manned missions, cargo to ISS missions, starlink missions, GEO missions, and other LEO missions over it's lifetime.

            And the Falcon 9 has done GEO and interplanetary launches and recovered the booster.

            1. MachDiamond Silver badge

              "And the Falcon 9 has done GEO and interplanetary launches and recovered the booster."

              Please provide a reference.

              Looking at the F9 manual, GEO is not listed as an option. GTO is 8,300kg (expendable) or 5,800kg (reusable). I'm assuming kg as there were no units on Wikipedia and SpaceX doesn't seem to publish official specs. Satellites going to Geostationary orbits are generally large/heavy craft. There's only so many slots and they are highly coveted so the satellites going there are far more capable and long-lived. The DART mission is a 630kg payload so getting the booster back was possible. The DSCOVR mission couldn't recover the booster due to weather at sea and after 3 scrubs, it was tough luck for SX since launch contracts probably don't let them put off launching indefinitely to suit their own wants.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          "The task is almost always "put this craft in orbit","

          A fair number are "send this rocket out of Earth orbit" and every erg of performance is needed. The accountants have to sort out whether it makes sense to build a rocket that has 40-50% more capability than missions require so that airframe can be reused economically. Lots of small stuff goes to LEO which means more chances at a reuse in the short term. SpaceX skews the numbers since a lot of what they are doing is their own Starlink launches which doesn't translate to being cost effective for another company that doesn't also have their own mega-constellation program to support for the next several decades (or years). If a rocket is going to launch a payload, be recovered and then sat in storage for several years, the cost of the storage and the aging of the technology become large factors to consider.

          A company I was working for had a Centaur upper stage for a system we were working on and it had to be kept under pressure or there would be structural problems. That meant a stack of large Nitrogen tanks every month, constant monitoring and the need for storage building that didn't go through large temperature fluctuations. $$. There's costs for that maintenance that have to be considered. Keeping a rocket secure so somebody doesn't break in to decorate the exterior, take photos and souvenirs costs money. In the US, there's a legal security requirement due to "national security/ITAR" laws.

          So, do you do all of the work to have a reusable rocket that flies once every 3 years?

      2. Gordon 10 Silver badge

        "Finally the economics of reuse is questionable, the refurb cost is not that much less than the scratch build cost, again this can work for companies where they use identical rockets by the dozen but for the scientific missions NASA & ESA specialize in it just does not work."

        Really? How come Space Karen has materially changed the cost to orbit per Kg measure then? Where's it coming from if not substantially reduced build and fly costs driven by re-use? (Not a fan of him but SpaceX appear to be a launch machine roughly 50% cheaper than anyone else).

        https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-earth-orbit

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          yeah, it's not, musky hides the real figures.

        2. DJO Silver badge

          Please don't auto-reply, try reading what was written.

          I mean you actually copied the answer to your question: "this can work for companies where they use identical rockets by the dozen".

          Anyway he hasn't reduced costs that much. To compete with the shuttle Soyez used to cost $50m per seat, when the Shuttle was retired they upped the price to $90m per seat to exploit their monopoly, SpaceX charges about $85m per seat. Given that the Russians are gouging ISS customers it seems that SpaceX are doing exactly the same.

          1. fishman

            SpaceX charges what the market will bear. Even before they were reusing boosters they were the lowest cost launcher.

            The internal costs for launch a Falcon 9 for SpaceX is estimated to be $20M (Eric Berger) and some estimate that it is between $15M and $20M.

            "SpaceX charges about $85m per seat. "

            No. It's $55M per seat. And Boeing is charging $90M per seat.

        3. MachDiamond Silver badge

          "Really? How come Space Karen has materially changed the cost to orbit per Kg measure then?"

          Because he can do funding rounds twice a year to keep fresh money coming in.

  3. BackToTheFuture
    FAIL

    Sleighed

    Well it's now clashing with Santa's launch window so don't expect anything to happen before December 26th.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why...

    ...do they always put "new" in front of the actual name?

    All of the naming, branding and media that comes along with Blue Origin is extremely cheesy and wanky. I've watched a couple of live streams of their launches and it always feels like I'm watching the intro to some 80s sci fi that later turns out to be dark as fuck...you know what I mean? Like they've intentionally made things extremely positive at the start to contrast better with the dark foreboding, dystopian shit that happens later in the movie.

    If you put one of their live streams on a billboard in a shit hole like Croydon, I'd immediately feel like I've landed in Bladerunner.

    1. Roj Blake Silver badge

      Re: Why...

      The "new" is there to avoid confusion with the original John Glenn and Alan Shepard.

    2. _Elvi_

      Re: Why...

      Their launches look pretty cool, whilst parked on the side of the 54 highway going towards El Captian.....

  5. John Robson Silver badge

    Good luck to them...

    And I hope they can provide a decent stream for those of us who are interested in all things space.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Good luck to them...

      "And I hope they can provide a decent stream for those of us who are interested in all things space."

      The New Sheppard launches have good video so I'd expect New Glenn to be top notch. Jeff's spending loads of money for this so I'm sure he wants to watch it in high-def too. While Blue Origin doesn't have stockholders to impress to keep investments flowing in, there's still a need to present a polished and professional aire about the company so blood suckin... err, politicians will look favorably on the company for contract awards.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Postponed till 2025

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