New Glenn Makes It Into Orbit on First Flight, but Reusable Stage Crashes Out

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.

Just shy of 63 years after John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, Blue Origin’s New Glenn reusable rocket has managed to put a payload into a stable orbit on its very first flight, albeit on the second attempt. The first was scrapped on the 13th due to ice on the propellant line, but the second went off almost without a hitch.

New Glenn is the flagship reusable rocket design for Blue Origin, Amazon-owner Jeff Bezos’ launch-vehicle initiative that looks to rival SpaceX in the burgeoning commercial space industry. Although SpaceX has been launching reusable rockets for several years now in the form of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, New Glenn is catching up fast, with ...