Musk vs Bezos: Upcoming Blue Origin New Glenn and SpaceX Starship launch

Coming soon to American launch pads: the competition of the heavy lifters as Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn and Elon Musk’s Starship may take to the skies within a very close timespan.

Both Blue Origin’s New Glenn and SpaceX’s Starship are posed for an upcoming launch − both possibly lifting off within days or even hours of each other.

While Blue Origin has officially announced the inaugural launch attempt for New Glenn from Cape Canaveral as soon as 1 a.m. on Friday, SpaceX has yet to make an announcement regarding its next Texas flight for Starship. However, the Federal Aviation Administration approved the upcoming Texas Starship Flight Seven back on Dec. 17, and SpaceX has been hinting that the flight will occur soon.

If successful, New Glenn will signal the entry of Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, into the orbital payload market; that’s a market heavily dominated by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. New Glenn will also provide a means for Bezos to accelerate Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet satellite effort, which will compete with Musk’s Starlink.

Meanwhile, launching from Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX is currently seeking to prefect its Starship design to become its next generation rocket and spacecraft. The company eventually hopes to bring Starship to the Space Coast.

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New Glenn and Starship

Poised to liftoff from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, Blue Origin’s 320-foot-tall New Glenn is seeking to perform a fully operational mission. If successful, the rocket will be certified to carry Department of Defense missions. It is also on tap to send NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars as early as Spring 2025, as well as Amazon’s Kuiper internet satellites.

Best place to see New Glenn launch: Where to look to see a launch in Florida: How to see Blue Origin New Glenn, SpaceX, or ULA

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s 397-foot-tall Starship has been launching from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas on experimental flights. Each time the company launches a Starship, the design is analyzed and improved. SpaceX is currently working towards not only perfecting the design, but also being able to fully reuse the Super-Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft.

Here’s a look into what we can expect from these upcoming major launches.

Blue Origin New Glenn inaugural launch date

When it launches from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, the multi-stage New Glenn, which is named for John Glenn, will be the first Blue Origin rocket to send a payload to orbit. The payload for this upcoming inaugural launch: a pathfinder, or simulator, of the company’s Blue Ring platform. Blue Ring will be the first of its kind, acting as an orbiting host for spacecrafts and satellites.

The Blue Ring, which is still in development, has been described as a multi-mission space mobility platform, which can host and deliver 6,613.8 pounds of payloads or spacecraft across 13 onboard ports. Some of the destinations it can send payloads to include geosynchronous orbit, around the moon, and between other planets in the solar system. The company eventually plans to use the technology for Department of Defense missions.

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Currently led by CEO Dave Limp, Blue Origin has already successfully launched and landed its single-stage New Shepard rocket multiple times in Texas. Named for Alan Shepard, that rocket has carried payloads and paying passengers on short suborbital rides to space.

Now Blue Origin aims to land its New Glenn’s first-stage booster on this first flight − on a seafaring platform named Jacklyn in honor of Jeff Bezos’ mother. This is something SpaceX has perfected with their Falcon 9 over the years. A SpaceX Falcon 9 landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean and being reused is becoming a normal occurrence, yet SpaceX is the only space company currently able to do that.

Blue Origin has projected confidence in their design, even naming this first-stage booster flying on the upcoming flight So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance. Blue Origin stated in an email to media: “Our key objective is to reach orbit safely. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious—but we’re going for it.”

“This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it,” Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Glenn said. “But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket. It’s time to fly. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”

SpaceX Starship seventh flight upcoming

Meanwhile, SpaceX is about to launch their seventh fully stacked Starship flight from Texas, during which the company claims “excitement still guaranteed.”

Starship had a major milestone in October 2024 during Flight Five, when the Super Heavy booster returned to the launch pad and was successfully caught by the tower arms commonly referred to as the “chopsticks.”

SpaceX launched its xixth fully stacked Starship from Texas on Nov. 19, but did not attempt a repeat of the dramatic booster return. Company officials stated maximizing public safety as the reason. SpaceX recently revealed that the sensors on the tower chopsticks were damaged during that launch, and was the reason the booster was diverted offshore to the Gulf of Mexico, landing straight up before tipping over into the water. Reinforcement has been added for this flight to prevent that damage from occurring.

SpaceX flew its first Starship payload on that mission: a two-meter plush banana. This flight coasted for more than 45 minutes, and saw the first Starship engine relight in space. The company also utilized Starlink tiles on the top of the ship, which streamed live views of the flight via Starlink.

On the upcoming seventh fully stacked flight, SpaceX hopes to once again repeat that dramatic booster catch seen in October. It will also have an improved payload on the spaceship: 10 Starlink simulators (mockups), which will be deployed from the Starship.

Some of the other objectives for this flight include:

Reuse of an engine from booster 12 − which was caught during the sixth flight.
Relight of one of the ship’s raptor engines in space.
Active cooling heat tiles.
Back up tiles in certain areas for redundancy.
Removal of multiple tiles to assess stress placed on the vehicle structure during flight.
Use of 25 percent more propellant.
Different Starship flap size and orientation to deflect heat of reentry.
An improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors.
New radar sensors on the chopstick arms to improve accuracy of a catch.
Live video from Starlink panels.

This Starship is known as Ship 14 and the Super Heavy is known as Booster 33. After coasting in space, the Starship will once again land in the Indian Ocean.

While SpaceX already lands and reuses their Falcon 9 boosters right here in Cape Canaveral, Starship is a much larger rocket with larger goals. These include: acting as a lunar lander for NASA Artemis astronauts, providing rapid transportation for the U.S. Department of Defense, and eventually taking humans to Mars.

Starship coming to Cape Canaveral

The Cape Canaveral FAA and Space Force environmental review processes are expected to be completed this year, paving the way for Starship to launch from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A in coming years. A Starship launch tower already stands at the historic Florida launch pad.

The company has repeatedly stated hopes to launch an uncrewed Starship to Mars in 2026, when the planet makes it next closest approach to Earth. According to SpaceX, once successful, crewed flights will follow. Getting humans to Mars is a major goal for Musk, and also a long-term goal of NASA’s Artemis program.

These goals are definitely ambitious. SpaceX has many more test flights of their Starship before its fully operational and can launch from Florida. Meanwhile, New Glenn could soon be flying NASA’s ESCAPADE mission off to Mars.

Either way, this year promises to be one to keep an eye on these two heavy lifters.

Be sure to follow the FLORIDA TODAY Space Team at FloridaToday.com/Space for the latest from the Space Coast.

Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or on X: @brookeofstars.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: New Glenn and Starship launch date could occur days, even hours, apart

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