Blue Origin is key to Amazon's ability to compete with SpaceX Starlink. Jeff Bezos has finally done it. He's finally reached space with an honest-to-goodness orbital-class rocket. Ten years ago, Bezos ignited a feud with SpaceX founder Elon Musk when his Blue Origin rocket company launched a suborbital New Shepard rocket to the edge of space and then landed it back on Earth.
The successful flight to orbit of the Amazon founder’s powerful rocket suggests it could grow into a credible competitor with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
One of the key questions about Blue Origin is whether it will push toward full reusability with New Glenn. In 2021, Ars first reported on an effort codenamed "Project Jarvis" to develop a stainless steel upper stage that could be reused. The company even built a test tank, although the effort was eventually shelved.
While Jeff Bezos has spent $14 billion to achieve his first space launch, his billionaire rival has built a thriving business, mostly with other people’s money.
New Glenn’s maiden voyage ramps up an ongoing space race between Blue Origin and SpaceX, which were respectively founded the world’s two richest people. Bezos currently has an estimated net worth of $237 billion, while Musk’s fortune stands at $428.5 billion.
Jeff Bezos worried aloud that Donald Trump, then an underdog presidential candidate, could “erode” American democracy. Speaking at a Vanity Fair summit in October that year, Bezos said Trump’s campaign tactics threatened the country’s commitment to freedom of speech and showed his inability to be scrutinized,
Flawed rocket launches by SpaceX and Blue Origin still leave both companies in position to dominate the space sector.
Blue Origin's NS-29 New Shepard rocket is expected to launch by late Jan. 31 after a delay if all goes well. Here's what to know
Elon Musk likened his apparent reunion with Jeff Bezos to the enemy-to-brother storyline in the Will Ferrell film “Step Brothers.”
If New Glenn can continue to demonstrate its capabilities and (more crucially) its reliability, it has the potential to take some business that SpaceX would otherwise struggle to accommodate.
Named after the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, soaring from the same pad used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century ago.
Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, successfully blasted off a 320-foot-tall rocket ship made by his Blue Origin company from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of the morning. It made the company the first to successfully reach orbit on its first launch of an orbital-class rocket.