A few weeks ago, the chief executive of Blue Origin, Dave Limp, convened an all-hands meeting for the more than 12,000 employees at the company. Among the most critical items he discussed was the launch rate for the New Glenn rocket and how the company would fall significantly short of its goal for this year.
Before 2025 began, Limp had set expectations alongside Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos: New Glenn would launch eight times this year.
However, since the rocket’s mostly successful debut in January, five months have passed. At one point the company targeted “late spring” for the second launch of the rocket. However, on Monday, Limp acknowledged on social media that the rocket’s next flight will now no longer take place until at least August 15. Although he did not say so, this may well be the only other New Glenn launch this year.
The mission, with an undesignated payload, will be named “Never Tell Me the Odds,” due to the attempt to land the booster.
“One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster,” Limp wrote. “This will take a little bit of luck and a lot of excellent execution. We’re on track to produce eight GS2s this year, and the one we’ll fly on this second mission was hot-fired in April.”
A key departure
In this comment, GS2 stands for “Glenn stage 2,” or the second stage of the large rocket. It is telling that Limp commented on the company tracking toward producing eight second stages, which would match the original launch cadence planned for this year. This likely is a fig leaf offered to Bezos, who, two sources said, was rather upset that Blue Origin would not meet (or even approach) its original target of eight launches this year.
One person familiar with the progress on the vehicle told Ars that even a launch date in August is unrealistic—this too may have been set aggressively to appease Bezos—and that September is probably the earliest the rocket is likely to be ready for launch. Blue Origin has not publicly stated what the payload will be, but this second flight is expected to carry the ESCAPADE mission for NASA.
