Blue Origin New Glenn Has Two Stages Joined for the First Time

The first and second stages of Blue Origin New Glenn’s test vehicle mate for the first time, enabling us to exercise our tooling and stage interfaces in preparation for our first launch later this year.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has been in development for nearly 12 years. In 2012, Blue Origin began testing the Reusable Booster System (RBS) launch vehicle.

New Glenn is a two-stage rocket with a diameter of 7 m (23 ft). Its first stage will be powered by seven BE-4 engines that are also being designed and manufactured by Blue Origin.

The first launch is expected to take place no earlier than August 2024, carrying NASA’s EscaPADE spacecraft to Mars.

The first and second stages of New Glenn’s test vehicle mate for the first time, enabling us to exercise our tooling and stage interfaces in preparation for our first launch later this year. pic.twitter.com/9hIv5fyD4q

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 22, 2024

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy went from being mentioned in 2005 and had an original target of 2011. The SpaceX Falcon had testing in 2013 and was launched in 2015. The Falcon Heavy was developed with private capital with Musk stating that the cost was more than US$500 million. The Falcon Heavy was using a lot of systems in common with the Falcon 9. SpaceX has had 9 launches of the Falcon Heavy and five were made in 2023. All launches have been successful.

SpaceX started iterative designs of a large fully reuable rocket in about 2016. This would become the Super Heavy Starship. Prototypes and tests would start in 2018 and then we had two attempts at orbital flight in 2023. SpaceX had more development in four years than Blue Origin has achieved in 12 years.