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New Glenn was racing Falcon Heavy, so now we’re waiting for Starship to lap them
New dick measuring contest ideas:
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First to deploy an orbital payload
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First to launch a paying customer
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First to launch a lunar lander
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First to pull off orbital refueling
New Glenn might win a few of those that aren’t priorities for SpaceX, because they’re already launching hundreds of Falcons.
New Glenn was racing Falcon Heavy
Blue Origin was founded two years before SpaceX, so by some metrics New Glenn was racing (and lost to) Falcon 1 and Falcon 9. Not the same class as New Glenn, but at least they made it to orbit. Starship still hasn’t done that yet, though that’s more out of an abundance of caution rather than a lack of performance.
First to deploy an orbital payload
Since the payload for New Glenn’s maiden flight will stay attached to the 2nd stage, I assume you wouldn’t count this, even if it is orbital?
First to launch a paying customer
Would you classify operational Starlink satellites under “paying customer”, or only non-SpaceX payloads?
Blue Origin switching from a think tank with a worse DC-X to a legacy prime with a big Vulcan makes the start dates hard to compare.
There are a lot of arbitrary cherry-picked stats going around, like “first orbital semi-reusable aluminum-framed Methalox rocket built in Florida by Capricorns” or whatever they’re on about. Not counting Ring Pathfinder because it doesn’t separate is in the spirit of whatever weird “um ackchyually” firsts we’re tracking now.
I could argue that Starship is already commercial because of the HLS development milestones that have been paid out for test flights.
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Blue Origin really does move at a glacial pace, but I do have a higher confidence in their launches than SpaceX. They seem to do things much more methodically.
Not to imply that their development method is better, obviously SpaceX is more successful by virtually every count.
They’d better have a higher chance of success, because that’s how their design process is supposed to work. They already shifted the goalposts themselves by saying landing isn’t a certainty.
A successful first launch can be done. SLS and Vulcan both did it (after countless delays and scrubs).