Jeff Bezos' first heavy-lift rocket "New Glenn" is scheduled to launch on 16 January at around 7 a.m.
These are exciting days for Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origins: his new rocket "New Glenn" is launching its first cargo mission. It is to earn its spurs in medium Earth orbit for future cargo flights for the US Department of Defence.
Billionaires and their rockets: Elon Musk's company Space X has been successfully completing space missions for some time now. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is still lagging a little behind with his company Blue Origin, but now wants to follow suit with the heavy-duty rocket "New Glenn". With this first mission of the rocket, called NG-1, Blue Origin wants to secure approval for future flights for the US Department of Defence and thus lucrative contracts.
Mission profile of NG-1
"New Glenn" is Blue Origin's second spacecraft and was developed to transport particularly heavy cargo, especially with a view to future lunar missions. Blue Origin has been working on the design of the rocket since 2012. It is intended to offer a significantly larger payload volume than other rocket systems.
Blue Origin is also working on making the second rocket stage, which can currently only be used once, reusable. This could save the company a lot of money on future launches of the rocket, as almost the entire engine could be used for further missions.
Blue Origin becomes a competitor to Space X
Bezos and Musk are among the richest people in the world and both have a soft spot for space. Bezos founded Blue Origin back in 2000, Musk followed two years later with Space X - both before their major commercial successes with Amazon and Tesla. Space X is ahead of the game: the company successfully flew astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) back in 2020. Its employees work with NASA, ESA and other space agencies.
Blue Origin completed its first manned flight in 2021 with its first rocket design, the New Shepard. On board the rocket were Jeff Bezos himself, his brother and two paying passengers. The flight into suborbital space lasted around ten minutes. There was no pilot on board; the spacecraft took off, flew and landed completely automatically.
To date, no Blue Origins rocket has docked with the ISS and no commercial cargo flights have been carried out. However, the company wants to change this with "New Glenn".
Follow-up: Starship from Space X also has a partial success
Also in reverse to Blue Origin, however, Space X lost the upper rocket stage. The live transmission and the transmission of telemetry data were interrupted. Shortly afterwards, a spectacular swarm of debris could be seen in the sky. Space X confirmed that the stage had exploded and is still investigating the causes.
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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