Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launch success silences skeptics

On Thursday morning, while most Americans were asleep, Jeff Bezos' space company launched its first rocket into orbit.

At 2:03 a.m. ET, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of the 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The blaze continued to burn throughout the night and day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket initially moved little, inching upwards, then accelerated in an arc over the Atlantic Ocean, lighting up blue, the color of the rocket's methane fuel.

Thirteen minutes later, New Glenn's second stage reached orbit.

The launch was a huge success for Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin. That should allay criticism that the company is too slow compared to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has dominated the global spaceflight industry in recent years. New Glenn could prove to be a reliable competitor to Musk's company and win commercial contracts as well as launch contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense.

But for at least a moment, the two richest people in the world warmly cheered each other on.

“Congratulations on reaching orbit on your first attempt!” Musk wrote on his social media site X.

“Thank you!” Bezos replied.

Bezos posted a series of photos and videos. Musk commented on one of the images, calling it “beautiful.”

Although the ascent flight appeared nearly perfect, Blue Origin's stretch goal of landing the booster stage on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean failed. As planned, the booster activated three engines to slow down, but then the data flow stopped, indicating the booster was lost.

“We learned a lot from today and will try again with our next launch this spring,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a statement.

For years, Mr. Bezos has talked about his ambitious vision of millions of people working and living in space, sending spacecraft to the moon and building a space station. But skeptics pointed out that Blue Origin hasn't sent anything into orbit since the company was founded nearly a quarter-century ago, two years before SpaceX.

Now that's the case.

“Before this launch, there was reason to doubt whether Blue Origin actually had the technical capability,” said Todd Harrison, a space policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington. said. “And now they've proven they do.”

Until now, Blue Origin had only launched smaller New Shepard rockets, which carried space tourists and scientific experiments to the edge of space in suborbits and provided them with a few minutes of levitation. Bezos was one of the first passengers on the 2021 New Shepard flight.

New Glenn, named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the Earth, dwarfs New Shepard. In fact, New Shepard could fit within New Glenn's payload area within its nose cone. Reaching speed to circumnavigate the Earth is a much more complex challenge than what the New Shepard vehicle accomplished.

“Suddenly you have a new level of credibility,” said Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at Blytech, a consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia.

When Bezos announced his plans for the rocket, he said it would be completed by the end of 2020. Just outside NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the huge Blue Origin rocket factory stood, but there was little evidence of the rocket itself. The original target date has passed.

Blue Origin was selected to launch the NASA mission ESCAPADE to measure Mars' atmosphere last October. However, it became uncertain whether Blue Origin would be ready in time, and NASA canceled the spacecraft after its first flight.

Instead, the launch required orbiting a prototype of the Blue Ring, a vehicle capable of moving satellites in orbit around the Earth. On this flight, the prototype (Blue Origin calls it “Pathfinder”) remained attached to the rocket's second stage and tested communications, power and flight computer systems.

Blue Origin says that in the future, Blue Ring will be able to move payloads between very different orbits, including one that reaches all the way to the moon and performs a variety of tasks.

Blue Origin said the Blue Ring prototype performed as expected during the six-hour mission.

Blue Origin still lags far behind SpaceX in performance, with Musk's company conducting more than 100 launches last year. But New Glenn could provide a much-needed competitor to SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which currently dominate the launch industry.

“I think the only question that remains is how quickly can we increase the rate of fire,” Harrison said.

In an interview Sunday, Limp said that following the success of New Glenn's first launch, Blue Origin is aiming for a second launch in the spring and hopes to have six to eight launches this year.

“I think this is going to be a good year for us,” he said.

“Jeff wants us to do more, so we're pushing,” Limp added, referring to Bezos, who was sitting next to him.

“It's very real,” Bezos said.

One of Blue Origin's contracts is with Amazon, another of Mr. Bezos' companies, to launch the Project Kuiper Internet satellite constellation. This would compete with SpaceX's Starlink system.

Blue Origin officials have not yet announced what will be launched this year, but launches could include an unmanned lunar lander. Blue Origin is working on a spacecraft that will take NASA astronauts to the moon's surface in the coming years.

In an interview on CBS News' “60 Minutes'' last year, Blue Origin officials said the company is developing a small lunar lander called Blue Moon Mark 1, scheduled to launch to the moon in 2025. revealed.

Limp said it's still a plan and the spacecraft is currently under construction.

A full-scale model of the Mark 1 lander is displayed in the lobby of the Blue Origin building in Florida.

“That should happen this year,” Bezos said. “I think I can go this year.”