The thinking goes back to the first studies of New Glenn, in the early 2010s. If the reuse of the first floor was hardly in doubt, the fate of the upper floor (named GS2) turned out to be much more complex.
Fifteen years of hesitation
At the time, SpaceX was asking similar questions for the second stage of its Falcon 9. Elon Musk had once considered a fully reusable rocket. Ultimately, the company gave up on recovering the upper floor, and preferred to amortize costs by reusing the first floor and optimizing production. Result: the internal cost of a Falcon 9 launch would have fallen to around $15 million, despite a new second stage on each flight. SpaceX is now focusing its efforts on the full reuse of Starship.
New Glenn operates in another category. 98 meters high and 7 meters in diameter, it greatly exceeds the Falcon 9 (70 meters high, 3.7 meters in diameter), but without reaching the dimensions of Starship. Total reuse promises long-term savings, but at the cost of heavy technical developments.
A little over five years ago, Blue Origin launched “Project Jarvis,” a program to design a reusable stainless steel upper stage. The initiative was abandoned. But a job offer shows the pendulum could swing the other way. Blue Origin is looking for a Director of Development whose mission is to “ gradually develop a reusable upper stage “. It is difficult to see this as a simple theoretical exercise.
On a technical level, New Glenn hit hard. Its maiden flight, in January 2025, went off without a hitch. In November of the same year, during its second mission, the rocket made a spectacular sea landing of its first stage. But this success comes at a cost: manufacturing a first stage would exceed $100 million. That of a higher floor would cost more than 50 million.
If the first stage can be amortized over several launches, the upper stage is today a “consumable”. Blue Origin can produce about a dozen upper stages per year and is commissioning a new facility to increase the rate. The situation would be even more tense with the future “9×4” version of New Glenn, equipped with four BE-3U engines: such an upper stage could approach $100 million alone. There is therefore real economic pressure to reuse this floor.
But now, recovering a stage returning from orbit remains a technological challenge. Blue Origin must accept an expensive but simple upper stage, or invest heavily to try to salvage it. Not easy…
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