r/BlueOrigin • u/hypercomms2001 • 1d ago
In U.S.: Generals, spies and moguls cross their fingers for Bezos’ New Glenn
By Cat Hofacker|January 9, 2025
Inaugural launch of heavy-lift rocket could establish Blue Origin as a welcome competitor to SpaceX, ULA for national security launches
This story has been updated to reflect the new launch date.
Latin is a dead language, but Blue Origin has made two Latin words famous in the space industry: “gradatim ferociter,” or “step by step, ferociously.”
The company’s most ferocious step yet in the rocket marketplace will be attempted Sunday morning during a launch window that opens at 1 a.m. Eastern, technology and weather permitting at the launch site and the booster landing zone in the Atlantic Ocean. Blue scrubbed the original Friday morning window “due to a high sea state in the Atlantic.”
At pad 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station stands New Glenn, a 98-meter-tall space launch vehicle of a design that has never left the ground before. Aboard is a pathfinder version of Blue Ring, a logistics spacecraft that would stay in orbit to ferry payloads to their destination orbits and refuel other spacecraft.
“This New Glenn is not launching crew anytime soon, and therefore [the inaugural launch] is lower stakes” than the company’s other big debut, the 2021 launch of a New Shepard capsule with people aboard for the first time, says astrophysicist Laura Forcyzk, founder of the Georgia consulting firm Astralytical. “But they still want to succeed so they can prove to the market that it is safe and reliable.”.....
"https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/generals-spies-and-moguls-cross-their-fingers-for-bezos-new-glenn/"
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u/TheMailNeverFails 1d ago
If this launch date/time sticks, I will be able to catch it live here in New Zealand around dinner time. Can't wait!