Blue Origin postpones the first launch of its giant New Glenn rocket

The company Blue Originowned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, suspended the first flight of its giant New Glenn rocket on Monday due to technical problems, with which it hopes to enter the commercial space race.

Named New Glenn, in honor of a legendary astronaut, the 98-meter-high rocket, equivalent to a 32-story building, was scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral in a launch window at 0600 GMT on Monday.

The countdown stalled several times as teams attempted to resolve various “anomalies,” before the mission was officially “suspended” about two hours later.

“We abandon today’s launch attempt [lunes] to fix a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window“said Ariane Cornell, a Blue Origin executive, during a live broadcast followed by hundreds of thousands of viewers.

“We are studying the possibilities for our next launch attempt,” he added.

These postponements are common in the aerospace industry.

The launch, initially scheduled for Sunday, had already been postponed by one day due to “unfavorable” conditions at sea.

With this mission, baptized NG-1, magnate Bezos aims directly at the man with the greatest fortune in the world, Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

Rivalry

These serve the commercial sector, the Pentagon and the US space agency, NASA, including transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

“For the last few years, SpaceX has been pretty much the only player, and now, to have a competitor… It’s great“G. Scott Hubbard, a retired NASA official, told AFP.

In parallel, SpaceX plans the next orbital test of Starship – its gigantic next-generation rocket – just the next day, raising the stakes in their nascent rivalry.

Blue Origin has had experience for years in taking tourists into space for a few minutes thanks to its much smaller New Shepard rockets. But so far it has not carried out any flights into orbit.

This is the objective: “Reach orbit. Everything else will be a plus,” said David Limp, the company’s CEO.

Physically, New Glenn surpasses the 70-meter-tall Falcon 9 and is designed for larger payloads.

Its capacity in terms of mass is between that of the Falcon 9 and its older brother, the Falcon Heavy, but it has the advantage of a wider usable compartment, ideal for larger loads.

Slow development vs. fast

Blue Origin already has a contract with NASA to launch two probes to Mars aboard the New Glenn. The rocket will also support the deployment of Project Kuiper, a satellite designed to compete with Starlink’s internet network.

For now, however, SpaceX maintains the lead in this space race, while other competitors such as United Launch Alliance, Arianespace and Rocket Lab, are far behind.

Like Musk, Bezos has a lifelong passion for space. But while Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos imagines moving heavy industry off the planet to floating space platforms to preserve Earth, “the blue origin of humanity.”

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, two years before Musk created SpaceX, but adopted a more cautious development, in contrast to the philosophy of his rivals.

“There has been impatience in the space community with Blue Origin’s very deliberate approach,” says Scott Pace, a space policy analyst at George Washington University and former member of the National Space Council.

If New Glenn is successful, Pace adds, it will give the US government a “different redundancy,” a valuable backup if a system fails.

Musk’s closeness to US President-elect Donald Trump has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, especially over private astronaut Jared Isaacman – Musk’s partner – who is expected to be the next head of NASA. .