Bezos vs Musk: How Blue Origin’s New Glenn 9×4 aims to challenge SpaceX’s dominance

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has unveiled plans to build a bigger, more powerful variant of its New Glenn reusable rocket, giving customers more options, and capable of competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other launch companies.

The New Glenn 9×4 – so-called because of its nine first stage BE-4 and four BE-3U second stage rocket engines – will form part of a family of launch vehicles “giving customers more launch options for their missions, including megaconstellations, lunar and deep-space exploration, and national security imperatives such as Golden Dome” according to Blue Origin.

In contrast, the original New Glenn has seven first stage and two second stage engines. Including a planned engine upgrade – which gives each BE-4 engine an extra 387 kiloNewtons of thrust, and the BE-3U an extra 178kN – the additional two engines per stage on the New Glenn 9×4 gives a total first stage thrust of 25,621kN, capable of lifting a 70 tonne payload into Low Earth Orbit.

The expanded 8.7m-wide fairing has increased capacity by 70% to 820 cubic metres.