Then there's New Glenn, Blue Origin's planned rocket that aims to send crew capsules into orbit. Like the rockets before it, New Glenn honors Mercury astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth during his Friendship 7 flight. New Glenn is planned to be a two-stage rocket that will be powered by seven BE-4 rocket engines in the first stage and two BE-3 engines in the second stage. The rocket will use liquid hydrogen and oxygen for fuel.
Designed to be economical, New Glenn’s first stage is planned to be reusable up to 25 times (a feat which is easy to say but hard to actually accomplish). The first stage is designed to land vertically on a seaborne platform; the second stage would be expendable. With a large fairing diameter of 23 feet (7 m), the designers hope it will be able to lift bulky payloads into space. The company promotes the craft as being able to place 45 tons into low Earth orbit in a single flight — a significant accomplishment if they can make it a reality. New Glenn was originally scheduled to make its first flight in 2021, but this has now been delayed to 2022.
In 2018 the U.S. Air Force committed $500 million to Blue Origin to be used by 2024. While on the surface this appears to be an altruistic move, the reality is that the Air Force wants several viable options to compete for its launch business in the future — and they also don't want to be dependent on Russian launch systems any longer. The Air Force and Space Force have likewise helped fund other private space ventures, such as SpaceX.
Beyond sub-orbital and orbital launch vehicles and a crew module, Blue Origin is making even loftier plans. The company’s website openly touts that they have their eyes on an even bigger goal — a return to manned lunar flights, up to and including landings. Their lunar launch vehicle (which does not as yet exist) is referred to as Blue Armstrong (for obvious reasons). Their lunar landing system, Blue Moon, is planned to incorporate both manned and unmanned landers to ferry people and cargo to the surface of the Moon.
While it should be stressed that Blue Origin is still in a developmental phase and has yet to put a human into space, its efforts to date have been both concerted and impressive. Blue Origin has enjoyed some early successes with New Shepard, and a successful crewed launch later this month would be a tremendous boost to both the company and private spaceflight in general.
One can imagine a near-future in which Blue Origin, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and other companies are all independently launching both crewed and uncrewed missions to low Earth orbit and beyond. Blue Origin still has a way to go if they hope to catch up to, or even surpass, SpaceX. But you can certainly accomplish a lot when your founder is one of the wealthiest people on (or off) the planet.
Doug Adler is the co-host of The Right Stuff Companion podcast.