They simply have to, but it's still an ambitious goal and I think they won't get there as fast as they want.
Eric Berger from Ars Technica breaks the news that earlier this week, he found that Blue Origin posted a "help wanted" ad for an intriguing sounding position. There's a lot of news down this rabbit hole.
“As part of a hardworking team of specialists, technicians, and engineers you will be the Senior Manager of Gen 2.0 Tank Fabrication, and will own the production execution of the most structurally complex and schedule-critical subsystem on the vehicle—the propellant tank,” the job posting states. [NOTE: the original link in the Ars Technica source was rejected by Blue Origin's site. This one I replaced it with was found by searching there for just "Gen 2.0 Tank Fabrication" - SiG]
Quattro is the company’s nickname for a more powerful upper stage for the New Glenn rocket, which will feature four BE-3U engines instead of the two currently powering the booster. Blue Origin revealed plans for this more powerful variant of New Glenn, 9×4 (nine first stage engines, and four upper stage engines), last November.
It is possible this rocket, significantly larger than the 7×2 variant currently flying and necessary for the company’s lunar ambitions as part of NASA’s Artemis program, could make its debut next year.
The job responsibilities include being responsible for executing a “rate ramp” - as in “ramp up” - from the current 12 per year (in somebody's dreams somewhere) to 60/year, and do it by the third quarter of 2028. Sorry, I just realized I ran out exclamation points. After that 60/year, they want a production of 100 upper stages per year by 2029.
For the time being, Blue Origin is still studying whether to pursue a reusable upper stage for New Glenn, so each launch of the vehicle requires a new upper stage. A production rate of 60 a year in 2028 suggests the company is targeting a launch rate of 60 New Glenn 9×4 rockets annually just three years from now. That would be in addition to the 7×2 variant currently flying, which would continue to be used for less demanding missions.
In case you haven't picked up on my sarcasm, I think you're more likely to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than they are to meet these goals. Berger, for example, reminds us that in 2024 Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos told the company he wanted New Glenn to launch eight times in 2025. It ended up flying twice, in January and November. Then he concludes that for a rocket that new and that large, it wasn't a bad accomplishment to get that flight total for '25.
That may or may not be a reasonable conclusion but the first thing that popped into my mind was the failure of the most recent launch's upper stage to place the payload into the desired orbit. Get it to work properly before you put a lot of money into getting it to fly more often. There's no benefit to having more launches that fail in a year.
That said, Bezos has plenty of money to push Blue Origin with, and he has been pushing for more launches for years.
Bezos continues to make major investments in infrastructure in Florida, most recently in an 800,000-square-foot new manufacturing facility known as “Project Horizon.” It is possible that New Glenn second stages could be manufactured at this facility.
This facility is on Merritt Island, where Blue Origin has been building infrastructure for their space hardware for years, now.
A rendering of the 9x4 variant of a New Glenn rocket taking off. Image Credit: Blue Origin
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