Blue Origin needs to fly the New Glenn rocket to identify where the vehicle has margin.
A small pathfinder for Blue Ring is seen set against one half of a payload fairing of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. Credit: Blue Origin
Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff. The company published an image of the "Blue Ring" pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket's payload fairing.
"There is a growing demand to quickly move and position equipment and infrastructure in multiple orbits," the company's chief executive, Dave Limp, said on LinkedIn. "Blue Ring has advanced propulsion and communication capabilities for government and commercial customers to handle these maneuvers precisely and efficiently."
This week's announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products, but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes.
All Blue wants for Christmas is...
First of all, the relatively small payload contrasted with the size of the payload fairing highlights the greater volume the rocket offers over most conventional boosters. New Glenn's payload fairing is 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter as opposed to the more conventional 5 meters (16.4 feet). It looks roomy inside.
Additionally, the company appears to be publicly signaling the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulatory agencies that it believes New Glenn is ready to fly, pending approval to conduct a hot fire test at Launch Complex-36, and then for a liftoff from Florida. This is a not-so-subtle message to regulators to please hurry up and complete the paperwork necessary for launch activities. It is not clear what is holding up the hot-fire and launch approval in this case, but it is often environmental issues or certification of a flight termination system.
Blue Origin's release on Tuesday was carefully worded. The headline said New Glenn was "on track" for a launch this year and stated that the Blue Ring payload is "ready" for a launch this year. As yet there is no notional or public launch date. The hot-fire test has been delayed multiple times since the company put the rocket on its launch pad on Nov. 23. It had been targeting November for the test, and more recently, this past weekend.
After years of delays for the rocket, originally due to debut in 2020, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos hired a new chief executive to run the company a little more than a year ago. Limp, an executive from Amazon, was given the mandate to change Blue Origin's slower-moving culture to be more nimble and urgent and was told to launch New Glenn by the end of 2024.
Only three weeks remain in the year, and there are a lot of good reasons that Bezos wants to complete this debut launch.
Good reasons to get flying
There are only so many engineering questions that can be answered in ground tests. The acid test for any rocket is to go and fly the vehicle. Blue Origin already has good data on the performance of its BE-4 rocket engines, four of which have performed excellently on two launches of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. Historically, about half of launch failures are due to the problems with a rocket's propulsion.
However, a million things can go wrong during a launch debut, and it only takes one problem for a vehicle to be lost. With such a large rocket, integrating so many new components and software programs, there could well be hidden problems discovered only in flight.
Additionally, Blue Origin needs to fly its New Glenn rocket in order to identify where the vehicle has margin. Sources have indicated that the payload capacity of the current iteration of New Glenn is closer to 25 metric tons than its advertised mass of 45 tons. This is not uncommon for new launch vehicles, and the company will be able to use real-world performance data to refine the vehicle's hardware and software for future flights. Still, those improvements can only be made after a launch occurs, when data is collected and analyzed.
And there are other pressures on the rocket company to get moving. Officials with the incoming Trump administration are considering canceling NASA's Space Launch System rocket, a very large but expensive and inefficient-to-produce booster that is part of the agency's plan to return humans to the Moon. Therefore, they are interested to see whether Blue Origin can deliver a privately developed heavy lift rocket in New Glenn to increase the space agency's options for getting astronauts to the lunar surface. Sources have indicated that these officials very much would like to see Blue Origin play a major role in the lunar return, but before that happens the company needs to demonstrate that it can execute on its ambitious, but long-delayed, rocket.
In summary: The new year is nigh, Jeff Bezos is watching to see who is naughty or nice, and the moon beckons. No pressure, Blue.