r/BlueOrigin • u/EthanWilliams_TG • 21h ago
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to debut new rocket in SpaceX challenge
https://fortune.com/2025/01/10/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-debut-new-rocket-elon-musk-spacex-challenge/14
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u/Simon_Drake 21h ago
Some unofficial figures on the launch cost puts New Glenn around $65million and Falcon Heavy around $90million. Apparently methane is cheaper than RP1, they both expend the second stage but New Glenn (hopefully) lands the whole first stage where Falcon Heavy expends the centre-core in every launch. So New Glenn reuses more of the rocket per launch and uses cheaper fuel. Plus Bezos is considering a reusable second stage in the future.
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u/Southern-Ask241 20h ago
Where are you getting $65M from?
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19h ago
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u/Southern-Ask241 19h ago
All rumors of a $68M launch price date back to several years ago when an ArianeSpace presentation speculatively put $68M as the launch price of New Glenn. One, ArianeSpace has no special insight here, and two I even recall that number having a question mark on it as pure speculation.
You know why they used that price? Because that was the price of a Falcon 9 launch at that time.
Unfortunately what has happened since then is everyone takes that number as gospel and has repeated it everywhere including on Reddit, and apparently that CNET article.
The only hard data point we have at this point is a per-launch price of $100M for Kuiper launches, but some portion of that may be for infrastructure and services - so we simply do not know what the absolute base price is.
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19h ago
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u/Southern-Ask241 18h ago
My guess is that they will not undercut Falcon Heavy on a per-launch basis, but they will still be competitive with Falcon Heavy because the volume of New Glenn's fairing is way more important than the mass capability of Falcon Heavy (which, with full 3-core reusability, isn't that far ahead of New Glenn). If you can carry more stuff in the same launch, then New Glenn is cheaper.
I will also add that a lot of people don't realize that Falcon Heavy's upper stage, the same upper stage as Falcon 9, was not engineered for super heavy payloads. Structural and center-of-mass considerations will prevent it from ever getting anywhere near its nominal payloads. In other words, while on paper New Glenn carries less mass than Falcon Heavy, in practice it won't. Falcon's upper stage is the constraining factor.
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u/romario77 16h ago
I recently saw that SoaceX made a new bigger fairing. They might modify the upper stage to work better with this new fairing. So, things could change in near future.
And they can become irrelevant if Starship is successful - this will be another ballgame
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u/lespritd 15h ago
My understanding is that the extended fairing is made by Beyond Gravity (nee RUAG), and is very expensive in part due to it being a low volume part. I doubt anyone but the DoD or NASA will use it for a few missions that absolutely need the extra volume.
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u/mfb- 12h ago
SpaceX might reuse them just like the normal fairings. Some fairing halves are at 20 flights.
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u/KitchenDepartment 4h ago
SpaceX generally doesn't reuse fairings on high energy falcon heavy missions. I doubt there are enough edge cases where you need a massive heavy payload that only goes to LEO for them to bother developing reusability on large fairings. Especially because that is the market where starship is at its best.
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u/Carlos_Pena_78FL 1h ago
SpaceX aren't going to make a new upper stage for FH ever. They've dragged their feet on even making an extended fairing for it and that's only for DoD payloads. SpaceX don't want to build custom hardware that's only going to be used a tiny number of times, they want mass produced, high flight rate rockets to put lots of mass in orbit.
Ultimately falcon heavy is a legacy system and starship is the future, so it gets full attention.
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u/BobDoleStillKickin 20h ago
New Glen has however cost many many billions of dollars to develop though. If BO wants their business to be healthy, their external launch price can't be $65M (I can't believe their internal cost is $65M either. Have any source material on that?)
That said, Bezos could just set the price at $50M to customers and eat the deficit for a very long time if he wanted to go that route
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u/Martianspirit 15h ago
I can imagine the marginal cost of New Glenn being $65 million. Marginal cost of F9 is around $20 million. New Glenn is more capable but surely also much more expensive. The second stage and the huge fairing add up.
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u/kaninkanon 13h ago edited 13h ago
And Starship has cost billions and is still nowhere near ready to launch payloads, do you feel the need to point that out every time someone talks about its price?
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u/RedWineWithFish 6h ago
No one knows what starship’s price will be. We’ve only been told the marginal cost per launch they aspire to. Price will be a different matter entirely
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u/RGregoryClark 11h ago edited 10h ago
Remember this is with reusability of the booster. SpaceX discounted the reused booster version of the Falcon 9 by a third, from ca. $60 million to $40 million. If Blue Origin followed same discounting plan then it would charge ca. $100 million for a new one. This is around the same price as the Falcon Heavy.
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u/Salategnohc16 14h ago
That said, Bezos could just set the price at $50M to customers and eat the deficit for a very long time if he wanted to go that route
This is what will happen. It's the way Jeff Bezos does work.
BO has probably spent 20 billions on New Glenn/Be4 ( 1B/years since 2002+ 2 B/Year since 2021, first 5 years or so the R&D were for new Shepard) There is basically no way it becomes a net profitable rocket.
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u/kaninkanon 13h ago
1B/years since 2002
Lol how many people do you think worked at Blue Origin in 2002? Bezos didn't start putting that amount into the company till 2017. And that's for the entire company, not the development of one vehicle.
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u/New_Poet_338 19h ago
The center core is expended on high energy and very heavy missions. It can be recovered down range on a drone ship otherwise.
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u/bicball 20h ago
They can land the center, I’m sure it depends on weight/orbit though
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19h ago
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u/New_Poet_338 18h ago
Why would they need to roll a natural 20? They have landed hundreds of boosters. Under that logic Blue Origin would need to roll a natural 20 + 20 since they have landed no orbital boosters. The launches that go to FH just generally require a lot more performance than F9 - which is a rare requirement - and that requires an expended central booster. That said FH is a deadend product that rarely flies.
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18h ago
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u/New_Poet_338 18h ago
They can reuse it if they can land it. They landed one so yeah, they can reuse the centre core. Whether it is practical is a question for each launch and so far no. They also have not landed a New Glenn core so...
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u/Martianspirit 15h ago
It seems SpaceX have abandoned center core reuse. After a few initial trials they have never attempted it again.
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u/New_Poet_338 13h ago
That may be because of the flight profiles - very heavy, high satellites and high energy planetary probes. The thing has only flown a several times and probably will only fly several times in the next year. The later blocks of F9 covered quite a range of launches for a third the price. It might not be a profitable product overall. Musk wanted to cancel it once the development got somewhat out of control, but Shotwell kept it going - and it is pretty cool.
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u/Heart-Key 9h ago
At cadence, I expect New Glenn to cost around $100M. That's market pricing and ~reflects Kuiper contract pricing. Falcon 9 pricing near term is borderline delusional or at least just a way to lose money.
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u/RGregoryClark 11h ago
Article behind paywall. What size rocket is this?
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u/No-Surprise9411 3h ago
Would be the fourth largest rocket currently flying after
1) Starship (estimated 150 T to LEO)
2) SLS (93 T to LEO)
3) Falcon Heavy (63 T to LEO)
4) New Glenn (45 T to LEO)
It is important to note that Starship would be flying fully reusable, expendable payload is much higher. But the system is also still undergoing development, so not currently on the market.
SLS is a finished design, but so hideously expensive and slow that all flights of the rocket for the next decade are booked out.
Falcon Heavy is for now the only available competitor, and probably within the same price range as NG.
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u/ragner11 20h ago edited 19h ago
We have now many sources stating New Glenn launch price is $65 to $68million. This is a huge advantage if it holds
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u/Southern-Ask241 20h ago
What sources? The ArianeSpace estimate from 4 years ago is not reliable by any stretch (they don't have any insight into pricing either).
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u/Cultural-Steak-13 19h ago
Dave Limp suggested some single digit millions in the future as a target. Hope so. Launchers should be boring and dirt cheap one day. Today no one talks about airplane they boarded so hopefully one day no one will mention the launcher they used for space travel.
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u/ClearlyCylindrical 16h ago
Absolutely no chance they're able to reliably build the second stage at that price point. Let alone the rest of the vehicle manufacturing and operations.
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u/Cultural-Steak-13 14h ago
I am not sure he suggested it with new glenn. I don't remember that much about that interview.But if you want millions in space, then it must be very cheap to get there.
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u/ThaGinjaNinja 19h ago
Starship at full reuse would be lucky to reach this goal. Propellant/infrastucture/employee costs alone at full reuse 2hr turn around time would struggle to pull profit off in single digit millions. There’s always going to be hefty maintenance and other factors that don’t really make this price tag sustainable in any near future. Sure maybe inhouse launch costs could get as low as that for ss landing at the pad but falcon and Ng needing large vessels and plenty of infrastructure just to return to launch really burdens this prospect. And I’m not going to consider adjusting for future inflation lol
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u/Cultural-Steak-13 14h ago
I think that price tag is about making space launches as cheap as possible not about turning a profit. You are right 4-5 million wouldn't work. At least not with New Glenn. If I am not mistaken Jeff talks about using the launch vehicle like an airliner. Then it would be possible or even profitable.
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u/ThaGinjaNinja 9h ago edited 9h ago
Ehhh i don’t know BO financials but we do know that Bezos was pumping money in. Technically he could do that for a very long time but quite frankly that’s probably not how they want to operate. Spacex definitely operated as if it did not and does not have deep pockets to fall back on. So regardless of what they could theoretically get the cost down to running it at a loss is very unlikely. Plus with how competitive markets go and (not that there is one) with how monopolies can happen or be beat to submission with regulations and in ways you wouldn’t think. it’s really not in any companies best interest to sell at a loss or near cost. Especially if your competition is selling at insane costs with the current market being heavily influenced and in one way or another subsidized by government “pockets” which in this field often have competition and multi awardee clauses. Why would you not undercut your competition enough to spice up your proposal regardless of capabilities and at the same time you rake in significantly more profit regardless of how much better your proposal could be on a technical standpoint
It’s not generally in a companies interest to operate a portion of their company at a loss without some very good reason or assistance being fed to them. The only good examples i can think of are like game consoles like ps and Xbox. It makes sense for them to initially sell and roll the consoles out even at a loss because yes the giant companies make money in other ventures and products to cover that ones loss like it was non existent….. but also that product technically will be raking in millions more due to live services offered. Like subscriptions and market place mark up. The core product is required for the addon sales that really are the profit. A rocket is the product and unless you’re spacex with inhouse starlink you want to operate your vehicle on profit for its core purpose
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u/CollegeStation17155 18h ago edited 18h ago
Actually I suspect that SpaceX wouldn't really cry to retire Falcon Heavy and pass future loads too heavy or high for F9 over to Blue post Dragonfly, even if starship is still totally occupied with Artemis and Starlink. Its a total pain in the lower extremity to reset the launch pad and even post starlink, there will be lots of light loads that Falcon can throw for $30 million every week while NG gets $60 or $70 mil for the big ones once a month.
And one other point; it's not really SpaceX that should worry... NG will eat Vulcan's manifest in a heartbeat if they can turn and burn like they hope to