Blue Origin's first rocket climbed just 285 feet before the company went big
Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and then said almost nothing about it for years. Its first test vehicle, a rocket called Goddard, flew in November 2006 from a ranch in West Texas and reached an altitude of only 285 feet. The company's philosophy was to creep upward step by step, from hops to suborbital flights to orbit.
Funded by Bezos's private fortune, the company bought land about 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas, in 2006 for what it calls Launch Site One. Rob Meyerson, who joined in 2003, led it until 2018, followed by Bob Smith and, from September 2023, Dave Limp. In 2015 its New Shepard rocket made its first uncrewed launch and landing, and the company announced plans for a far larger orbital rocket. Critics nonetheless complained that its progress looked slow next to SpaceX.
New Shepard, named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, is built for tourism. A single BE-3PM engine lofts a capsule for up to six people to about 100.5 kilometres, above the Karman line, where riders float for a few minutes before the capsule drifts down under three parachutes and the booster lands upright on its own pad. Its first crewed flight, on 20 July 2021, lasted about ten minutes and carried Bezos, his brother Mark, the veteran aviator Wally Funk and the teenager Oliver Daemen.
The company also became an engine supplier, agreeing in 2014 to build the BE-4 for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur and delivering the first one in January 2023. Seven BE-4s power the first stage of New Glenn, the heavy-lift rocket named after John Glenn, whose design work began in early 2012. It is 7 metres wide and claims the world's biggest payload fairing. New Glenn finally reached orbit on its first launch on 16 January 2025, carrying a test satellite.
The Moon is the longer goal. After NASA picked SpaceX's Starship as its lunar lander in 2021, Blue Origin challenged the decision, and in 2023 NASA awarded it a separate $3.4 billion contract to develop the Blue Moon lander for the Artemis V mission, with a crewed landing planned for 2029. A still larger rocket, New Armstrong, has been mentioned since 2016, though its design remains secret.
Source: Blue Origin
