Blue Origin still catches up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX – Quartz

The first passenger flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard marks a milestone for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezo’s space company. Does that mean he’s finally caught up with his main rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX?

The answer, for now, is no.

The two companies share many things in common: aspirations to lower the costs of accessing space with reusable rockets, wealthy founders from Silicon Valley, and even employees who have jumped from company to company. . Their rivalry has been played out in arguments and fights on Twitter for patents, launch site leases and, most importantly, lucrative government contracts for satellite launches and moon landers.

Now, Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle has finally demonstrated its ability to carry space tourists above the atmosphere, and executives promise to move to a monthly rate of flight for paying passengers and experimental payloads. Blue has definitely come a long way since 2010, when he received development funding from NASA, but didn’t know how to get it.

“We said, ‘Give us an invoice’, and they said ‘Huh? “” said Dennis Stone, the NASA executive in charge of the program. “They never billed anyone; they never had to.

Breaking down Blue Origin vs. SpaceX

Bezos’ company is still behind SpaceX on a number of key fronts. Importantly, Blue Origin still does not have a vehicle capable of transporting payloads into space permanently by placing them in orbit. He’s designing a rocket called New Glenn – named after astronaut John Glenn – which was due to debut in 2020, but isn’t expected to fly until late 2022. By comparison, SpaceX’s orbital rockets, particularly the Falcon 9 and its reusable first stage, now dominate the launch industry.

When New Glenn arrives, it has the potential to be a game-changer, as it’s supposed to be much bigger than the Falcon 9 and completely reusable. On the other hand, SpaceX is developing its own huge, totally reusable rocket, called the Starship. He’s already tested the second stage and tested the booster for the first time this week – two key demos we haven’t seen from Blue Origin.

Or, consider manned space flight: a day after New Shepard took four people into space for a few minutes, four astronauts jumped into the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that brought them to the International Space Station and whisked it away. for nearly an hour around the orbit the habitat to park in another port.

Or, satellites: SpaceX now operates the world’s largest network of satellites, called Starlink, which it uses to provide high-speed Internet access to customers on earth. Amazon, not Blue Origin, is launching a similar satellite network, but has yet to put any spacecraft into orbit.

It’s not that outsiders lack faith in Blue Origin. The company has the capital and the team to supply innovative space equipment. United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin which is the US military’s preferred launch company, has hired Blue Origin to build the engine for its next rocket, called the Vulcan. But the delivery of the engine prototypes was delayed, which has not escaped public attention.

Indeed, NASA officials and industry watchers have long believed that Blue is SpaceX’s only likely competitor and they would like a competitor to establish themselves to help lower the cost of going to space. . That day has not yet arrived.