After Over 10 Years, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Is Finally About to Launch Its First Falcon 9-Style Rocket

Better Late

Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin is preparing to launch its New Glenn rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida just after midnight on Sunday.

It's been a long time coming: the company has been working on the 320-foot rocket, which shares similar proportions and stats with SpaceX's Falcon 9 workhorse, for well over a decade.

But whether it can truly compete with the likes of SpaceX remains an open question. Over that time, the Elon Musk-led company has seized the opportunity to cement itself as the space company and NASA contractor to beat.

The mission was originally slated for a January 10 launch, but the date slipped to Sunday almost immediately.

So far, the Bezos-led company has launched a much smaller reusable suborbital launch vehicle called New Shepard, which has been sending wealthy space tourists to the Earth's upper atmosphere since July 2021.

If successful, New Glenn could offer SpaceX some much-needed competition as US space exploration efforts continue to grow in scope and scale — but a failure could represent even more egg on Bezos' face.

Stiff Competition

Despite a lengthy development time and plenty of setbacks, the multi-stage rocket is no slouch. The New Glenn can produce roughly twice as much thrust at liftoff than Falcon 9, but falls short of the Falcon Heavy variant. It's 90 feet taller and 11 feet wider in diameter than a Falcon 9.

As part of its NG-1 mission this weekend, Blue Origin is hoping to launch a payload dubbed the "Bue Ring Pathfinder" into orbit, a testbed for the company's Blue Ring spacecraft platform designed to support orbital operations.

A lot is at stake for the company — and we're not just talking about the longstanding feud between Musk and Bezos.

SpaceX is currently firmly in the driver's seat, and NASA's incoming administrator is deeply in the pocket of the firm. Musk's close relationship with president-elect Donald Trump could also make it difficult for Blue Origin to secure important governmental contracts.

"This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it," Blue Origin's New Glenn senior VP Jarrett Jones told the Orlando Sentinel. "But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket."

"It’s time to fly," he added. "No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch."

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