In the race to develop reusable rockets there were two companies that seem to be at their peak, we are talking about SpaceX y Blue Origin, which have crossed a series of statements when understanding that the milestones achieved by SpaceX were more important because their rockets went further. Now from Blue Origin they want to match the competition by presenting their new rocket, which they have baptized with the name of New Glen, in honor of John Gleen, the first American astronaut to fly in Earth's orbit.
As the company has commented, the New Gleen will be his first orbital rocket and, thanks to this, it seeks to enter a booming market sector such as private space services. Going into a little more detail, as you can see in the image that is located right at the top of this same post, the New Gleen will literally be a giant with the capacity to offer services to send satellites and even astronauts to the low earth orbit, a task that is currently distributed by companies such as United Launch Alliace or SpaceX.
Blue Origin presents its new orbital rocket
Returning again to the photograph present at the top of this post, if we pay attention, we will discover that New Gleen may have up to three stages which will even allow you to carry out missions that go beyond low Earth orbit. In this three-stage version, the rocket will have a height of 95 meters while, in the stage version, its size will be reduced to 82 meters. As you can see, in both cases, the size will be larger than the Delta IV Heavy of the United Launch Alliance or the Falcon Heavy of Space X.
As a detail, everything learned in the New Shepard will be put into practice in the first stage of the rocket so this, will be reusable. Due precisely to this, Blue Origin now must face a new problem and that is that it will have to land rockets that arrive from a much higher altitude and at a speed much higher than the tests carried out to date where the New Shepard only flew to the area. suborbital.
The New Glenn will be powered by seven BE-4 engines, still in development, engines that will also power the new Vulcano rocket of the United Launch Alliance. The BE-4 engines will power the New Glenn of 3,85 million pounds of thrust, which to put in context the Falcon Heavy will have a power of 5 million pounds while the Delta IV Heavy has 2 million pounds.
More information: Blue Origin