- Over a year after a fiery mishap, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard rocket.
- The 23-year-old company has struggled behind competitors like SpaceX.
Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its New Shepard rocket on Tuesday.
It was the company's first launch in over 400 days, and it will be the first of many more successes to come if founder Jeff Bezos has anything to say about it.
"Blue Origin needs to be much faster, and it's one of the reasons that I left my role as the CEO of Amazon a couple of years ago," Bezos recently said in an interview with Lex Fridman for the "Lex Fridman Podcast."
Since Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, the company has been surpassed by one of its main competitors, SpaceX, which has built multiple rockets that can reach orbit. Blue Origin, by comparison, has yet to complete its first orbital rocket, New Glenn.
Now, with seemingly more time on his hands, Bezos said he's ready to give Blue Origin the reawakening it needs to compete in the 21st-century space race.
A redesigned New Shepard
No one was on the rocket that launched Tuesday. Instead, it carried science experiments from NASA and other institutions and 38,000 postcards from students as part of the company's Club for the Future program.
The New Shepard launch was Blue Origin's first since September 2022, when a mishap caused the uncrewed rocket to go up in flames.
Afterward, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded New Shepard until Blue Origin addressed 21 corrective actions to prevent a similar mishap. They included redesigning some engine and nozzle components.
Bezos said that focusing on Blue Origin will add "some energy, some sense of urgency. We need to move much faster, and we're going to."
Blue Origin vs. SpaceX
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk's biographer, recently said the billionaire wishes Bezos "would get out of his hot tub and yacht more often so Blue Origin can be more successful."
Musk has his own space exploration company, SpaceX, which he started in 2002, two years after Bezos founded Blue Origin. Despite its slightly later start, SpaceX is ahead of Blue Origin in a few ways.
For example, SpaceX, had its first successful orbital launch in 2008 and sent its first reused Falcon 9 rocket into orbit in 2017. Meanwhile, Blue Origin is still working on building its New Glenn rocket for orbital missions.
New Glenn's first launch is scheduled for 2024, according to ArsTechnica. It's a date that Blue Origin has moved several times since 2020.
NASA also chose SpaceX for its lunar lander contract over Blue Origin.
Space is big enough for both of us
Bezos said during the podcast that space is big enough for both companies. "There's room for a bunch of winners, and it's going to happen at all skill levels," he said.
To compete, Blue Origin will "become the world's most decisive company," Bezos said during the podcast. "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."
Earlier this year, NASA finally awarded Blue Origin a contract to build an Artemis lunar lander, a backup for SpaceX's lander.