Blue Origin announced on Friday that it would not fly its original New Shepard rocket for at least another two years. The stated reason is to “shift resources to further accelerate development of the company’s human lunar capabilities.” That may sound like an accounting concern, but it’s a symptom of a much larger shift for Jeff Bezos’ space venture. Blue Origin is getting its sea legs (or, space legs) under it, and now it is shifting trajectory towards becoming a major player in the space industry. It won’t just be a way for celebrities to go on a star safari anymore: it’s ready to get deeply involved in the orbital economy and the next phase of human exploration of space. In essence, it’s coming for SpaceX’s throne, and for traditional space contractors along with it.
Bezos founded Blue Origin back in 2000, only a few years after founding Amazon, the little online bookstore that grew into a juggernaut of e-commerce. It then spent a long time in gestation, only launching its New Shepard (named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard) for the first time in 2015. It would be another six years before the rocket, which cannot reach full Earth orbit, would take human beings to the edge of space, including Bezos himself. The New York Times reports that it has now flown 38 times, taking 92 rich and/or famous people to space. Yet, despite a years-long waiting list to catch a ride, Blue Origin is halting flights for now. That’s because the New Shepard was really a baby rocket at the end of the day. Now it’s big brother is here, and suddenly, Blue Origin is a whole other company.
Reaching the big leagues
The New Glenn (named after the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn) completed its first successful mission in November, bringing it out of testing and into full operation. The New Glenn is much larger than its little sibling, capable of reaching Earth orbit and delivering actual payloads, such as satellites. Tourists are nice, but even the ultra-wealthy don’t pay very much in space terms; the NYT has that side of the business taking in only $100 million for Blue Origin so far. The real money is in enterprise, which is where SpaceX’s $8 billion in profit last year came from.
Well, enterprise plus government and military, and Blue Origin is coming for those, too. NASA’s Artemis program aims to put human beings back on the Moon, but to get boots onto white sand, the agency needs a lander. Blue Origin already had a contract in place to build one for future Artemis missions, but now SpaceX’s proposal for the first lander has run into problems. Not only does its Starship rocket have a bad habit of exploding, but the plan for the lunar lander requires it to be refueled in-orbit over ten times. That is a feat no one has done even once, let alone ten times. Well maybe the Chinese have, but they’re not talking. NASA has finally woken up to reality and re-opened the lander contract, originally worth $2.9 billion. Realistically, Blue Origin is the only other company that can do it, since they were already building a lander anyway.
Drawing Washington’s eye
Meanwhile, the military wants to dominate space, and the current leadership is pretty fed up with the legacy players in the field. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited Blue Origin’s facility in Florida on Monday and derided, in very blunt terms, the “glacial pace” of traditional space contractors, per Bloomberg. Praising Blue Origin’s combination of cost control and delivery speed, he sent a clear signal that the Pentagon foresees the start of a beautiful friendship.
SpaceX has a long-running relationship with both NASA and the Pentagon, being the primary launch vehicle for many of their space assets. But its very success may be circling around to bite it now. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Todd Harrison told Air & Space Forces, “Folks across government are getting more and more concerned about the level of dominance of SpaceX, both in launch and in satellite production. And part of DOD’s acquisition approach is to not get locked into a single source, so I think visiting Blue Origin is a tacit way of highlighting that they want there to be other sources when it comes to space in particular.” There are other up and coming space companies, but Blue Origin is the closest thing to a direct competitor that SpaceX has. That means rockets, but it also means satellites.
Two constellations
Everybody wants a constellation of thousands of satellites these days, but few are in a position to do it. SpaceX launched this era of space history with Starlink, of course; militaries around the world want their own. Blue Origin is already well on its way to building out its own, now called Leo after renaming from Kuiper. The company started putting up internet satellites last April, with now over a hundred in orbit; it won’t start taking on customers until 3,200 are deployed. To date, these satellites have been launched by its rivals; now that the New Glenn is up and running, Blue Origin will start shifting its own business to itself.
But that’s not all! Blue Origin has also announced a different satellite constellation called TeraWave. Planned to be 5,280 satellites strong, this one will be exclusive to enterprise and government customers, providing symmetrical download/upload speeds of up to 6 terabytes per second. Nobody else has anything like this, so Blue Origin is starting to carve out its own niche. Provided they can actually do it, of course.
The state of space is evolving rapidly, and no one’s quite sure what the combination of unprecedented number of space launches, orbital congestion, and both geopolitical and commercial competition will bring. But there’s a chance that Blue Origin is landing astronauts on the Moon while simultaneously providing the internet to a huge swath of people in the next few years. Sound familiar? That was SpaceX’s dream. After over a decade as the uncontested king of space, SpaceX finally has some company.