Blue Origin announces planned heavy-lift rocket
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.0210097
Washington Post : On 12 September Jeff Bezos announced that his company Blue Origin would be building a heavy-lift rocket named New Glenn. The rocket, which the company hopes to have ready for test flights by 2020, will feature a booster powered by seven BE-4 engines with a total of 3.85 million pounds of thrust at sea level. New Glenn will come in two-stage and three-stage variants. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the New Glenn booster will be designed to return to Earth with a controlled vertical landing. The announcement is a major step for Blue Origin, which is still in the testing phase of its reusable suborbital New Shepard rocket. Both of Blue Origin’s rockets are named for American astronauts—John Glenn and Alan Shepard—and Bezos says that the company’s next project will be named for Neil Armstrong.
