Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is about to fly people to space for the first time in 2 years. Here's why it took so long.
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Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin plans to launch a crewed rocket for the first time in nearly two years.
The New Shepard rocket was grounded for months after a failed uncrewed launch in September 2022.
The delay has let space tourism competitors like Virgin Galactic catch up.
Jeff Bezos' private space company, Blue Origin, recently announced its plans to launch a crew of six aboard its New Shepard rocket this Sunday.
If all goes well, this will be the company's first crewed rocket launch in nearly two years. The last crewed flight was in August 2022 and included Sara Sabry, who became the first Egyptian person and Arab woman in space.
This weekend's scheduled launch will be a major milestone for the company; marking its return to crewed suborbital spaceflight and the multi-millions in revenue that comes with it.
Still, late last year, Jeff Bezos told Lex Fridman on Fridman's podcast that "Blue Origin needs to be much faster."
Here's why Blue Origin is lagging behind competitors like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX.
Why Blue Origin's upcoming launch took 2 years
Blue Origin was on a roll in 2021 and the first half of 2022, completing about one New Shepard launch every two months — the most in the company's history.
But then one of its uncrewed rockets failed on September 12, 2022.
About one minute into the flight, Blue Origin lost the first-stage booster due to a faulty nozzle in the booster's engine. The first-stage fell from the skies and crash-landed in a Texas desert. No people, buildings, or other properties were harmed.
What was damaged, however, was the space company's momentum.
Afterward, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded New Shepard until Blue Origin addressed 21 corrective actions, including redesigning some engine and nozzle components to prevent a similar mishap.
The space company went more than 400 days before another launch. That gave one of Blue Origin's competitors, Virgin Galactic, time to catch up after suffering its own setbacks in the early 2020s.
Blue Origin's suborbital business
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are both in the suborbital space tourism business. They fly people to suborbital space, about 60 miles high, where they can experience a few minutes of weightlessness before returning.
In 2023, Virgin Galactic completed half a dozen crewed launches with its SpaceShipTwo vehicles. These launches included the company's first commercial service flight with Italian Air Force members in June 2023 and its first flight carrying a private astronaut in August of that same year.
The company was grounded in February, however, after a small part fell off the mothership of its space plane on Virgin Galactic's latest space tourism flight. So, this Sunday's launch may be Blue Origin's chance to catch back up.
However, the cost of a ticket on Blue Origin's rocket versus Virgin Galactic's space plane is worth noting regarding the companies' competitiveness.
Prices vary widely, and Blue Origin won't release what it charges per seat on New Shepard. However, Quartz reported that a seat on Blue Origins' last crewed launch in August 2022 cost about $1.25 million. That's nearly three times the cost of a $450,000 seat on Virgin Galactic.
Blue Origin's orbital dreams and delays
While suborbital tourism can be lucrative, the real money is in orbital spaceflight.
Private companies, including SpaceX (founded in 2002), United Launch Alliance (founded in 2006), and Rocket Lab (founded in 2006), have been doing this for years.
Getting to orbit requires bigger, more powerful rockets that are more costly and time-consuming to build. But the major benefit is that there's a much larger market for companies who want to send a satellite or other technology into orbit than for floating in a spaceship for a few minutes.
Over their lifetimes, SpaceX has launched more than 300 rockets to orbit, ULA has launched 155, and Rocket Lab has launched over 45. Blue Origin, by comparison, has yet to launch one rocket to orbit — though its New Glenn orbital rocket is scheduled for its first launch later this year.
Bezos' company announced it was building New Glenn in 2016, with an inaugural launch scheduled for 2020. However, the company has suffered a series of setbacks, delaying lift-off.
These delays have cost Blue Origin potentially millions of dollars in service flights that companies are willing to pay to get their tech to orbit. ULA, for example, states on its website that its rockets have "placed more than $70 billion of satellite assets into orbit."
That said, Blue Origin has contracts with NASA, the US Space Force, and Amazon for its New Glenn rocket once it's ready to fly.
Bezos says Blue Origin's culture isn't fast enough
Part of Blue Origin's sluggish pace is its work culture, which Bezos aims to change.
"We're going to get really good at taking appropriate technology risk and making those decisions quickly, being bold on those things and having the right culture that supports that," Bezos told Fridman.
Sunday's scheduled launch is a step in the right direction for Blue Origin. It may be playing catch-up now, but Bezos wants to kick the company into high gear, telling Fridman that's one of the reasons he left his role as Amazon's CEO.
"I turned the CEO role over, and the primary reason I did that is that I could spend time on Blue Origin, adding some energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster, and we're going to," he said.
Blue Origin did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
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