Congrats to the Blue Origin team! That's a heck of a milestone (landing it on the second attempt). It will compete more with Falcon Heavy than Starship[1] but it certainly could handle all of the current GEO satellite designs. I'm sure that the NRO will appreciate the larger payload volume as well. Really super glad to see they have hardware that has successfully done all the things. The first step to making it as reliable as other launch platforms. And having a choice for launch services is always a good thing for people buying said launch services.
Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on.
[1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.
New Glenn significantly increases the capacity to Low Earth Orbit, which is what this first phase of the space race has always been about (for Golden Dome, and to a lesser extent commercial internet constellations). All eyes on Starship now.
Falcon Heavy does up to ~64 tons to LEO and has been available for a while. New Glenn isn't bringing any new capabilities to the table. It is still a very welcome alternative.
64 tons is if Falcon Heavy is fully expended (nothing recovered) configuration. Even with smaller payload, the center core is generally a lost cause. Falcony Heavy is extremely difficult to launch as I learned when I worked at SpaceX. It turned out that slapping a bunch of Falcons together was not structurally reasonable design choice.
I'll defer to your experience on this, however Falcon Heavy is the comparable platform so what you're saying is that New Glenn might be able to out compete Falcon Heavy given it was designed from the start for this space? (Not trying to put words in your mouth, just keeping my launch services portfolio up to date :-)).
> slapping a bunch of Falcons together was not structurally reasonable design choice.
True. But given the far-lower demand for the Heavy's payload capabilities (vs. Falcon 9), and the costs of the alternatives launch providers for such payloads - slapping a bunch of Falcons together looks like an excellent corporate engineering strategy choice.
The individual Falcon turn-around is slow (months of refurb), and the record half-month ones swapped some engines. B1067's 30-reuse is a ship of Theseus rebuilt over 4+ years.
Feh, swapping engine is not an option for the first few initial Mars trips, unless its payload also contains engines (can't imagine the scissor-lift payload either that needs to go with).
The head of SDI formed the Mars Society with Zubrin. He was originally going to run SpaceX as Chief Engineer (cite: Liftoff) but he instead got appointed NASA admin and directed the first few $billion to a zero-experience SpaceX. This same SDI head then formed something called SDA in 2017 under Trump which is the platform for Golden Dome, or "the SDI 2.0".
This is a multi-trillion dollar program which only Musk has been awarded contracts (as of Nov 2025) and involves the total weaponization of space.
The US space industry isn't that big. The same people are all over the place and many have been in the industry for many, many decades and had many positions. And many of the people interested in Mars are also interested in space in general and in military space in general, this isn't surprising.
When SpaceX got started, clearly with the focus on Mars he tried to pick up well known experts. Griffin among them, again this isn't surprising. And when SpaceX did that it was not at all clear that Griffin would be able to be NASA Administrator. And because Griffin as a very opinionated person he didn't get along super well with Musk and instead went to In-Q-Tel. But he knew that SpaceX was serious and Musk had the financed to put more money into SpaceX then most other companies.
Also you will see the Griffin was also at Orbital Sciences as CEO. So he had some links to both competitors in the COTS competition and likely knew or worked with many others over his career.
And if you do the research on COTS instead of just saying 'directed the first few $billion to a zero-experience SpaceX' is just a major oversimplification. COTS started by other people inside NASA who were sick of the old practices.
The first round of COTS were selected May 2006. SpaceX launched the first Falcon 1 in March 24, 2006. So during COTS SpaceX was not some 'nobody' company, NASA was aware of them and while today 'private company close to launching Orbital rocket' isn't impressive anymore, back then it was very much so. SpaceX had done more already then many other companies in the competition.
Also, if you know anything about NASA processes, the Administrator can not just 'pick' whoever he wants. There is process that is guided by lots of requirements and so on. Unless you have any actual evidence that this process was somehow corrupt and that Griffin conspired to give money to SpaceX above everybody, then you better show some evidence for that. And 'worked for few month with Musk' isn't evidence. And in fact SpaceX was selected because many of the NASA people who did the selection were impressed with SpaceX as many have talked about in interviews over the years.
Given that SpaceX was selected and was successful, its hard to argue that NASA made the wrong choice. NASA selected 3, SpaceX, Kistler and Orbital, and 2 of those were successful. So it seems the program wasn't run by idiots.
Literally the whole 'evidence' for 'theory' is Mike Griffin likes missile defense and he has been in the Space industry for many, many decades and knows everybody. That's it, that's your evidence. Griffin and others like him never made secret of what they wanted. That doesn't mean that when he worked at NASA missile defense was the only thing he ever thought about and that all his actions at NASA were only with the singular goal of missile defense.
If you want to make the argument that orbital missile defense is a bad idea, that's fine, you don't need need to make up a bunch of conspiracy theory where non exists. You just make yourself look silly.
Actually I recall their were a number of anomalies with Griffin's contracts at NASA. It was widely reported he was chasing away the bigger companies from the COTS program he formed. Saying himself that he assigned the decision-making to Doc Horowitz... Mike Griffin, Doc Horowitz and Elon Musk were close friends and the most prominent founding members of the Mars Society other than Zubrin. In the end all the money went to Griffin's own small company Orbital and Musk's newfound SpaceX.
It was well known in those circles that Mars Society leadership was from Team B and Citizens' Advisory Council (which were the two groups that originally conceived Reagan's SDI, the Golden Dome predecessor). Max Hunter was the force behind reusable rockets with the DC-X. As mentioned, Griffin was effectively SpaceX's early chief engineer leading the guys he poached from the nearby McDonald Douglass Huntington Beach DC-X site (Chris Thompson, Tim Buzza, John Garvey, etc..) The other half of the DC-X team went to Blue Origin of course.
Funny how well the Mars mania took hold and people forget this basic history. It's the only way to make heads or tails of what's going on with Elon these days. He truly believes in SDI, but God help us all if he's in charge of it. It was recently reported he wanted to make Golden Dome a subscription service!
One question for you since your worked at SpaceX. Starship v4 is supposed to be able to bring 200 metric tons to LEO vs 35 metric tons for v2. Do you have any guesses on the finally amount that New Glenn will be able to bring up when it reaches its version/block 4?
^ Be aware that a large number of accounts in this thread are throwaway sockpuppets which are obviously linked. It's a problem that they're pretending to be a crowd of unrelated people; it's an inauthentic attack trying (I don't know why) to manipulate HN sentiment.
It's the new age of propaganda. It's not just on HN; it's just slightly easier to spot here because we can easily look at history. Bots are everywhere, trying to drive the narrative in the direction their owners desire. They're playing a really long game here and we don't even know who the players are.
The pro-Musk propaganda on X is truly staggering as of late. Pretty sure talking about his Golden Dome connections, which have been widely reported by Reuters, WSJ, etc.. is at least the opposite of that.
I figure evolution will solve that. The kind of people who don’t have kids while living in prosperity will die out. The ones who reproduce will stick around.
We’ll build mirror life to assist us so we keep not needing children before evolution has a chance to fix anything. I postulate it is coming this century.
This is only a problem when you look at the micro level of cultures or individual states. Sure, some culture may die out, but that's been happening forever.
There's 8 billion humans on this planet, and we're still fucking like we always have been. The human race will be safe from prosperity.
Humans will number 10 to 11 billion before the curve starts pointing downward. Even China, the supposed basket case of population collapse will "collapse" to their level of a few decades ago. The current population was supposed to be catastrophically overpopulated.
I don't agree with them but there are significant numbers of people who think 10 or 11 billion is way beyond sustainability.
Population decline is predicted or currently happening in some poor countries too. It's not a prosperity driven effect. Children don't die young anymore even in poor countries. There's just generally less pressure to spawn your own gang of supporters. Elon excepted I guess.
"Prosperity" implies that the problem is folks smart enough to not have children beyond the means to raise them into a similar or better lifestyle.
I prefer "Precarity" induced fertility collapse. Down here in the mud I guess I have a different view with my 1 child and wife with a heart condition who would likely die from a 2nd pregnancy.
Literally Dr. Strangelove (Edward Teller). This whole thing is a decades-old Heritage Foundation scheme to beat MAD game theory so they can start and win a nuclear war.
Really? They knew about Project 2025 when they started development and were 100% certain that Trump would return and green light such a project in 20205?
The "dream" of such a system was there for a long time, waiting for the proper tools to build it. Even without that plan though, once you have a hammer you'll find plenty of nails. Putting heavy stuff in space was always going to catch the eye of the deep-pocketed military.
I agree on ULA. It will be hard for them to compete on price. And if the US military has two reliable launch-providers, there won't be room for a third heavy-lift vehicle.
But it will probably take a while for the "steamroller" to get going. For the next year or two it will seem to ULA as if everything is fine. And then they'll get flattened.
tl;dr: a strategic military recognition that relying exclusively on full-custom, military-spec weapon systems is unaffordable (on either a dollar or time-to-develop basis), when your competitor is a vertically-integrated Chinese civilian+military procurement system
The "production" lift capacity included some assumptions apparently about how much they could get out of Raptor and what they expected the assembly to weigh. Engineering constraints requiring more structure, the heat shield being inadequate, and the inability to raise the chamber pressure on Raptor to get the promised ISP have all impacted what the "expected" lift to LEO/GEO will actually be. Don't misunderstand, I am impressed as heck with SpaceX's engineering team and they are definitely getting closer to the point where they will have the design space fully mapped out and can make better estimates. The NASA documents are a better source of news on how Starship is going (as it's slated to be part of the Artemis program) than SpaceX marketing (one is engineering based, one is sales based). AND New Glenn isn't "fully" re-usable, its another 'upper stage gets consumed' platform (like Falcon). That is definitely an advantage with Starship if they make that work. For history, the shuttle has a similar history of shooting high and then finding that the engineering doesn't work.
The first version was supposed to launch 150 tons to LEO. In reality it was something like 15 tons. Even the new V3 (significantly taller) only aims for 100 tons, and whether they achieve it is still an open question.
Falcon Heavy has been successfully flown 11 times. Falcon Heavy can lift 67 tons to orbit. Starship has only lifted a fraction of that. SpaceX claims the price per kilogram to orbit for Falcon Heavy is even less than Falcon 9.
Every attempt at building products that are better faster cheaper more capable than your own existing successful products is extremely difficult.
Vaporware is "late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled" [1].
Starship is late, so you're pedantically correct. But so is New Glenn, and it started being developed when Falcon 9 made its first trip to the ISS. (2012.)
And Blue Origin was incorporated a few years prior to SpaceX. They’ve been working on this problem significantly longer than SpaceX, so they were more confident in their approach.
"a computer-related product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become available"
It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available, but only thing it'll share with original announced product is a name. Nowhere close on the cost/features/scale/etc.
Only things that were shown so far are prototypes that are many iterations away from being anywhere close to a product.
New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps.
> It's not available and it's going to be the same as all products coming from their CEO - it maybe one day available
Did you miss Falcon 9 and Heavy? (New Glenn competes with them, not Starship. Falcon Heavy can launch more mass than New Glenn, currently, for cheaper.)
> New Glenn is actual product that's just going through final validation steps
This is literally the first time they've successfully recovered New Glenn. Recovered. No reuse. It's the second time they've every flown the damn thing. It's impressive. But it's not "just going through final validation."
I have a background in aerospace engineering, specifically astronautics. It's wild to see armchair engineers shoot shit at major accomplishments like this.
I'm reading this thread and there are a few things that come to mind.
My sense is that SpaceX's goals with Starship are significantly more ambitious than what is being tried with New Glenn. I don't mean to underplay the difficulty of what Blue is facing with New Glenn, but if we take that "rapid reusability" goal seriously the problem set seems significantly larger and not so "been there, done that". This makes the development programs much more difficult to compare.... certainly on the surface of the public optics at the very least.
While it's one thing to talk about rockets, it's another altogether to look and the engineering and practices going into the manufacture process of those rockets. I'm not an engineer, but I do work in manufacturing and, at least looking from the outside, SpaceX seems to be dedicating some significant amount of effort into building a scalable manufacturing process. Many other efforts have always appeared to be more about "bespoke" production even if the designs of each unit produced are constant. I could be wrong and maybe it's just SpaceX is a lot more transparent (willingly or otherwise)... but looking in from the outside, they seem to be developing a very mass-production oriented rocket factory.
And if New Glenn is just finalizing things and Starship is just vaporware... well New Glenn still has to land a couple more boosters and re-fly one (or two?) to catch up to those vaporware numbers. :-) Sure, New Glenn has now flown a paying customer... but I think we'll see Starlink launches on Starship pretty soon... well before it gets to "final validation".
> yes, they're in final validation steps, as that's just how they develop things
You're wrong, but I'm curious for the sources that lead you to think this.
> Starship is at the stage of putting random ideas on the rocket and seeing if it explodes
"Following the launch, New Glenn’s first stage attempted a landing on the recovery vessel Jacklyn, also known as Landing Platform Vessel 1, which was positioned 620 km downrange from LC-36. However, controllers lost telemetry from the stage sometime after the entry burn started and Blue Origin confirmed that the booster was lost" [1].
Yeah, the SS just don't make a lot of sense at this point. The mail slot design was always dubious, and that orange stain was really uninspiring as well.
> nothing even remotely reassembling what was advertised to the public (and sold to the government) as Starship
If it can get its mass into orbit, it delivers what it sold. I'd currently put my money on a successful orbital launch of Starship before New Glenn re-flies a booster for a paying customer.
US government didn't pay for getting its mass into orbit.
Getting Starship to the orbit means that they have something called Starship in the orbit. It doesn't mean product that they sold isn't vaporware - what was sold with a name of Starship included much more things than getting stage 2 into orbit.
None of them were cancelled. But none of them exist in any form or shape remotely reassembling the product - therefore - vaporware. It's that simple.
But also, since you're telling me there had been no material impacts to the customers timelines, sorry, I don't think you're arguing in good faith, so I'm not going to engage here anymore.
In this thread your pedantic definition of vaporware seems to hinge on a compatibility between spec and delivery that has not existed once in the history of frontier engineering, so I'm not sure good faith is in high supply here in any case.
wow, given the recent starship milestones that were reached, this is a really strange comment (well, they are behind schedule, but that's Elon Musk way of working).
Notably, from a US policy standpoint, if they successfully become 'lift capability #2' then it's going to be difficult to ULA to continue on.
[1] Although if Starship's lift capacity keeps getting knocked back that might change.