Things May Be Looking Up for Blue Origin

In the aftermath of the first successful orbital flight of the New Glenn, Blue Origin has finally become a real space company.  After all, a widely accepted standard in the space industry is that a rocket company isn't a real rocket company until it reaches orbit.  Now the company which was founded before SpaceX has finally achieved orbit and they feel like a new company.  

That Blue Origin has been far behind the company's goals isn't news, nor is the apparent real reason.  I recall writing about this years ago, wondering if it was too late for Jeff Bezos to save his company.  Blue's CEO at the time, and for most of the company's life by that date in 2021 was Bob Smith, an experienced industry executive who came from Honeywell.  The problem is Smith was too much of an "Old Space" or "Space 1.0" executive and brought much of that arguably obsolete mindset to Blue.  Smith was thought of poorly by his employees. and under his leadership, Blue was litigious, slow, and unproductive.  

In September of '23, Bezos finally took the proper step and brought in a manager from his Amazon days, Dave Limp.  It's worth mentioning that people were concerned he might not be a good choice either, because of little to no experience in aerospace.  I think time has shown he was a fine choice.

Back in May of '19, I did a story on Jeff Bezos' vision for Blue Origin's role in space.  Instead of settling on and colonizing Mars like Musk advocates, Bezos is an advocate of colonies in space.  Not International Space Station style; not even rotating wheel-in-space from the movie 2001-style.  Those are thousands of times too small.  Instead, he envisions "O'Neill Cylinders;" colonies of millions of people living in permanent colonies in space.  About a million people per colony.  This is as much a multi-generational commitment as colonizing Mars and establishing it as the "second home planet" of humanity. 

Apparently, Bezos and Limp have a very realistic view of how to move forward into the future.  The next steps are clear: get better at building engines and rockets while flying New Glenn regularly. 

At times during his remarks, Bezos sounded a lot like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has spoken about "building the machine that builds the machine" over the last decade with respect to both Tesla vehicles and SpaceX rockets.

Asked about Blue's current priorities, Bezos responded, "Rate manufacturing and driving urgency around the machine that makes the machine."

You've probably seen Musk's commitment in the way he refers to the launch towers at Starbase in Texas as being "Stage Zero" of the SuperHeavy.  Not just a launch tower but a properly designed part of the system; that is, anything that can be moved off the Starship to the tower to make the vehicle perform better or to improve its reliability is a target to be moved.  Remember his laws of engineering, like that the best part is no part. A very common mistake during designing a new product is to spend time and money to optimize a part or procedure that could be eliminated. 

It's just kind of rough to compare Blue and their track record to SpaceX.  Blue was founded in September of 2000, before SpaceX in March of 2002.  SpaceX has launched over 450 rockets into orbit; Blue Origin has launched one (in fact, SpaceX's launch number moves so fast, that 450 might not even be right)

It might be an insight to the Blue Origin mindset or approach to doing things is in this organizational motto.  The Latin phrase gradatim ferociter translates as gradually, fiercely.  They say Blue Origin prefers that as step by step, fiercely. 

The long-running joke in the space industry is that we'd all like to see a little less "gradatim" and a little more "ferociter" from Blue Origin. The company's coat of arms—yes, it has one—prominently features two turtles. A turtle logo is also stamped onto a New Shepard spacecraft after every mission. This is a reference to one of Aesop's Fables, "The Tortoise and the Hare," in which the slow and steady tortoise wins the race.

Bezos clearly believes Blue Origin is the tortoise that will win the space race.

Final words to Eric Berger at Ars Technica (which he translates from Latin as "the Art of Technology")

Days after New Glenn's first launch, Bezos attended the inauguration of Donald Trump, standing near Musk. The founder of SpaceX played a major role in getting Trump elected and has been advising him on space policy.

Bezos and Musk, the tortoise and the hare, appeared chatty and friendly in a way that has not been the norm for the rivals. More commonly, they have sniped at one another rather than chummed it up. Perhaps now, they'll team up to help America spread among the stars.

We'll see. Musk is interested in Mars, and Bezos is more fixated on the Moon. Ultimately, Trump may tell them both to follow their hearts, with the US government coming along for the ride.