
Blue Origin announces orbital rocket called New Glenn - Aaronn
https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/775324124935778304
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Aaronn
Text from Jeff Bezos's email:

Our mascot is the tortoise. We paint one on our vehicles after each successful
flight. Our motto is “Gradatim Ferociter” – step by step, ferociously. We
believe “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” In the long run, deliberate and
methodical wins the day, and you do things quickest by never skipping steps.
This step-by-step approach is a powerful enabler of boldness and a critical
ingredient in achieving the audacious. We’re excited to give you a preview of
our next step. One we’ve been working on for four years. Meet New Glenn:

Introducing New Glenn: Reusable, vertical-landing booster, 3.85 million pounds
thrust (A high-resolution version of this image is available at
www.blueorigin.com/gallery)

Building, flying, landing, and re-flying New Shepard has taught us so much
about how to design for practical, operable reusability. And New Glenn
incorporates all of those learnings.

Named in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, New Glenn is
23 feet in diameter and lifts off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from
seven BE-4 engines. Burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, these are
the same BE-4 engines that will power United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan
rocket.

The 2-stage New Glenn is 270 feet tall, and its second stage is powered by a
single vacuum-optimized BE-4 engine. The 3-stage New Glenn is 313 feet tall. A
single vacuum-optimized BE-3 engine, burning liquid hydrogen and liquid
oxygen, powers its third stage. The booster and the second stage are identical
in both variants.

We plan to fly New Glenn for the first time before the end of this decade from
historic Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. New Glenn is designed
to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space. The 3-stage
variant – with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage – is capable of
flying demanding beyond-LEO missions.

Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is
a very important step. It won’t be the last of course. Up next on our drawing
board: New Armstrong. But that’s a story for the future.

Gradatim Ferociter!

Jeff Bezos

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kristianp
_Our vision is millions of people living and working in space_

This captures my imagination more than the idea of going to Mars. Orbital
habitats for example.

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dasmoth
This is quite a beast -- definitely bigger than I'd anticipated, and looks
like it's really targeting planetary missions.

Timing seems suspiciously close to Elon Musk's Mars architecture announcement
which is apparently planned for the IAC conference in a couple of weeks.

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charlesdenault
I'm most surprised that they're skipping a smaller orbital rocket before
jumping to the massive scale of the New Glenn. Seems that there would be a lot
to learn from that as well, with the potential of flying revenue generating
payloads to LEO.

