Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Blue Origin is finally getting ready to launch the second New Glenn rocket, and this moment matters a lot more than most people realize. The company has spent almost nine years developing this vehicle, pouring billions of dollars into it, and the industry has been watching closely because New Glenn isn’t some small test rocket — it’s a 98-meter-tall heavy-lift launcher that was supposed to compete directly with rockets like Falcon Heavy. But it didn’t play out that way. The rocket was announced back in 2016 with a promised launch date of 2020, and here we are more than four years past that deadline. What held everything back wasn’t the size of the rocket, or the factory, or even the fairing. The biggest roadblock was the engine.
New Glenn uses seven BE-4 engines on its first stage, each producing about 550,000 pounds of thrust. That means the booster lifts off with around 3.85 million pounds of total thrust. But these engines took much longer to develop than Blue Origin expected. In 2017, the company confidently said the BE-4 was almost ready, but by 2019 they were still struggling with turbopump failures. In 2021, engineers were dealing with combustion instability. In 2022, two engines failed during full-duration tests. And even when the engines were finally delivered, ULA admitted publicly that Blue Origin had missed multiple deadlines. Every time an engine broke during testing, the entire New Glenn schedule slipped by months. This is why the rocket kept being delayed year after year.
Blue Origin is finally getting ready to launch the second New Glenn rocket, and this moment matters a lot more than most people realize. The company has spent almost nine years developing this vehicle, pouring billions of dollars into it, and the industry has been watching closely because New Glenn isn’t some small test rocket — it’s a 98-meter-tall heavy-lift launcher that was supposed to compete directly with rockets like Falcon Heavy. But it didn’t play out that way. The rocket was announced back in 2016 with a promised launch date of 2020, and here we are more than four years past that deadline. What held everything back wasn’t the size of the rocket, or the factory, or even the fairing. The biggest roadblock was the engine.
New Glenn uses seven BE-4 engines on its first stage, each producing about 550,000 pounds of thrust. That means the booster lifts off with around 3.85 million pounds of total thrust. But these engines took much longer to develop than Blue Origin expected. In 2017, the company confidently said the BE-4 was almost ready, but by 2019 they were still struggling with turbopump failures. In 2021, engineers were dealing with combustion instability. In 2022, two engines failed during full-duration tests. And even when the engines were finally delivered, ULA admitted publicly that Blue Origin had missed multiple deadlines. Every time an engine broke during testing, the entire New Glenn schedule slipped by months. This is why the rocket kept being delayed year after year.
