Blue Origin has detailed a series of proposed upgrades for its New Glenn rocket after its successful launch last week. The new “9×4” design would be classed as a super-heavy launch vehicle, expanding its payload to low Earth orbit to 70 tons, or around 155,000 pounds, as Ars Technica reports. That’s roughly equivalent to NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), and not far from what SpaceX promises with Starship, but it’ll do it at a fraction of the cost of NASA’s system, and possibly far sooner than SpaceX’s.
To achieve this greater performance, the upgraded New Glenn rocket will be larger and taller, reaching over 120 meters: bigger than the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s. It will also add new rocket motors, bringing the number of BE-4 engines in the first stage to nine instead of seven, and four BE-3U engines instead of two in the upper stage. The BE-4 engines will also have their thrust increased from 550,000 pounds (lbf) to 640,000 pounds, and the BE-3U from 320,000 pounds each to 400,000 pounds.
Credit: Blue Origin
The compounding effect of these bigger, more numerous, more powerful engines will be a New Glenn rocket that can deliver SLS-like performance, but at a fraction of the cost. New Glenn 9×4 would be partially reusable, like the existing New Glenn 7×2 design. The final launch price is said to be less than a 10th of the SLS’ gargantuan $2.2 billion launch price.
This latest announcement comes at a time of acceleration for Blue Origin. Long seen as merely a bit-player in the 21st-century space race, launching small tourist vehicles with celebrities in sub-orbital trajectories, the successful launch of its New Glenn rocket for the second time, and the hunt for new contracts for NASA’s Artemis III mission, have put Blue Origin on a war footing. It’s coming for SpaceX in a variety of ways, and this new New Glenn design makes that very clear.
This is a Starship killer if it can be made in time. Its performance profile isn’t far off, and though it won’t offer orbital refuelling, that technology is one SpaceX has yet to prove viable. Although Starship’s promised reusability and cost efficiency will be hard to beat once developed, we’re not there yet. In the meantime, an upgraded New Glenn could fill a very important niche in the market.
