New Glenn: All about Blue Origin's next rocket
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has been the leader of reusable spaceflight for almost a decade now, but soon, Blue Origin and their New Glenn rocket are bringing the competition. New Glenn is mere weeks away from its inaugural launch, so to celebrate that, I made this article where you will learn all you need to know about New Glenn and Blue Origin.
New Glenn
New Glenn is Blue Origin’s first orbital class rocket, whose first stage will have the ability to land on a drone ship in the sea. It will be able to be reused up to 25 times, which is very important for decreasing launch cost and increasing launch cadence. It will stand at 98 meters or 322 feet tall, with a diameter of 7 meters or 23 feet, making it the 4th largest rocket to ever fly. This 2-stage rocket is officially classified as a Heavy-Lift launch vehicle, being capable of pushing up to 45 tonnes into Low Earth Orbit, and this payload capacity will be very important for something I’ll explain in just a bit. It is currently assigned Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, where it might launch from just weeks after the publishing of this article.
Render of New Glenn (Blue Origin)
At the moment New Glenn has a singular landing platform, a drone ship named Jacklyn, but as New Glenn launch cadence grows so will their drone ship fleet. Unlike SpaceX, Blue Origin actually names its boosters, with the booster for the first flight getting the name ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s A Chance?’, referring to the possibility of being the first orbital class booster to successfully land on its debut flight. New Glenn’s first stage uses liquid oxygen and liquid methane and is powered by seven BE-4 engines, and the 2nd stage uses liquid oxygen together with liquid hydrogen, powered by 2 BE-3U engines. I’ll explain these interesting engines in more detail in a minute. On descent the first stage will be controlled using fins on the interstage, which, according to Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, generate an aerodynamic force roughly equal to the weight of a Boeing 737. After maneuvering towards its landing site, it will land on a drone ship using 6 landing legs.
New Glenn landing on a drone ship (Blue Origin)
Project Clipper
Project Clipper, also known as Project Jarvis, is a very secretive project to develop a reusable 2nd stage for New Glenn, which would make New Glenn 100% reusable. One of their ideas uses a single turbo pump assembly powering a bunch of separate thrust chambers surrounding a heat shield, forming a very truncated aerospike. The heat shield is actively cooled by liquid hydrogen, which changes into a gas when it absorbs heat. A small amount of the gaseous hydrogen powers the turbine that drives the engines turbopumps, while the rest is fully burnt for thrust in the main combustion chamber.
Schematic of this engine cycle (ZenothKSP)
The gas that powered the turbine is then expelled through small holes to create an extra protective layer over the heat shield. It's essentially an expander bleed cycle implemented with an actively cooled heat shield, and I have a whole separate and way more in depth article on this idea, which you can check out here.
Patent of this idea (Blue Origin)
Engines
There are 3 main engines that will be of importance here, starting off with the BE-3U. The BE-3U is a vacuum optimized open expander cycle engine, running hydrolox propellants. This works pretty much the same as what I explained about Project Clipper/Jarvis, except for that the liquid hydrogen doesn’t flow past a heat shield in this case, but rather it flows past the walls of the nozzle to cool the engine, considering that in this case the 2nd stage won't be reused. Two of these engines are used on the 2nd stage of New Glenn, and have recently been static fired as flight hardware.
Render of BE-3U and a schematic of BE-3U (Blue Origin, ZenothKSP)
Next up, we have the BE-4, seven of which power New Glenn’s first stage, each of them producing a whopping 2400 kN of thrust. The BE-4 runs on liquid oxygen and liquid methane, and uses a single shaft oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle. This cycle uses a preburner, which is essentially a smaller rocket engine, to power the turbine that drives the turbopumps. A full flow of liquid oxygen enters the preburner, where it partially combusts with a small amount of liquid methane. The low Fuel to Oxidizer ratio in the preburner generates an oxygen-rich exhaust, which powers the turbine. After it powers the turbine it goes into the combustion chamber and fully combusts together with the liquid methane. BE-4 is also used on ULA’s Vulcan rocket.
Render of BE-4 and a schematic of BE-4 (Blue Origin, ZenothKSP)
And lastly, we have the BE-7, another hydrolox expander cycle engine producing 44 kN of thrust. This engine is currently under development, but it is intended to be used on Blue Origin’s Moon lander: Blue Moon.
BE-7 (Blue Origin)
Blue Moon
In May 2023 NASA contracted Blue Origin to land humans on the surface of the Moon for the Artemis V mission, and the lander to do that is called Blue Moon. It is intended to carry 4 astronauts to the lunar surface for up to 30 days at a time. Development is led by Blue Origin but it is being worked on by several other companies including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Astrobotic, together with a few more, and like I said previously, these landers are going to be powered by BE-7. It will have a total mass of 45 tonnes, which matches payload mass limit for New Glenn. If all goes well the first uncrewed demo landing will take place sometime in 2028, and the crewed Artemis landing will happen around 2030.
Render of Blue Moon (Blue Origin)
Upcoming launches
First up we have its maiden flight which is happening No Earlier Than (NET) December 2024, but don’t be surprised if it slips to 2025. It will carry a prototype of their Blue Ring space platform and the first stage will attempt landing on drone ship Jacklyn. NET 2025 they’ll attempt 2 Pathfinder missions, which will be validation flights for a bunch of Blue Moon tech, including life support hardware, their BE-7 engine, flight avionics and more. These missions will both have Lunar orbit as final destination. Then the one I’m personally most excited about, the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE. This launch contains 2 spacecraft that will head to Mars to study its magnetosphere and how solar wind contributed to the loss of most of the planet’s atmosphere. This mission is scheduled to take place NET Spring 2025. There also dozens of Project Kuiper missions planned, Project Kuiper being a mega constellation of satellites providing global internet, similar to Starlink. And lastly we have the 2 lunar landing demos, both crewed and uncrewed. These are expected to take place no earlier than 2028 and 2030 respectively.
Render of New Glenn launching (Blue Origin)
That was everything you must know about New Glenn and Blue Origin! Thanks for reading!