News: 0177990621

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Second New Glenn Launch Slips Toward Fall As Program Leadership Departs (arstechnica.com)

(Tuesday June 10, 2025 @03:38AM (BeauHD) from the change-of-plans dept.)


Blue Origin is falling far short of its goal to launch the New Glenn rocket eight times in 2025, with its second flight [1]now delayed until at least mid-August . Key leadership changes were also announced, including the departure of the New Glenn program head, as the company faces pressure to increase launch cadence and compete with SpaceX for federal contracts and [2]Amazon's Project Kuiper deployments . Ars Technica reports:

> The mission, with an undesignated payload, will be named "Never Tell Me the Odds," due to the attempt to land the booster. "One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster," [chief executive of Blue Origin, Dave Limp] [3]wrote . "This will take a little bit of luck and a lot of excellent execution. We're on track to produce eight GS2s this year, and the one we'll fly on this second mission was hot-fired in April."

>

> In this comment, GS2 stands for "Glenn stage 2," or the second stage of the large rocket. It is telling that Limp commented on the company tracking toward producing eight second stages, which would match the original launch cadence planned for this year. This likely is a fig leaf offered to Bezos, who, two sources said, was rather upset that Blue Origin would not meet (or even approach) its original target of eight launches this year. One person familiar with the progress on the vehicle told Ars that even a launch date in August is unrealistic -- this too may have been set aggressively to appease Bezos -- and that September is probably the earliest the rocket is likely to be ready for launch. Blue Origin has not publicly stated what the payload will be, but this second flight is expected to carry the ESCAPADE mission for NASA.

>

> On May 28, a couple of days after Limp's all-hands meeting, the chief executive emailed his entire team to announce an "organizational update." As part of this, the company's senior vice president of engines, Linda Cova, was retiring. Multiple sources confirmed this retiring was expected and that the company's program to produce BE-4 rocket engines is going well. However, the other name in the email raised some eyebrows, coming so soon after the announcement that New Glenn's cadence would be significantly slower than expected. Jarrett Jones, the senior vice president running the New Glenn program, was said to be "stepping away from his role and taking a well deserved year off" starting on August 15. It is unclear whether this departure was linked to Bezos' displeasure with the rocket program. One company official said Jones' sabbatical had been planned, but the timing is curious. A search for internal and external candidates to fill his role is ongoing.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/06/second-new-glenn-launch-slips-toward-fall-as-program-leadership-departs/

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/0435203/amazon-launches-first-kuiper-internet-satellites

[3] https://x.com/davill/status/1932113352714825833



Re: (Score:2)

by gtall ( 79522 )

It depends upon what the Pentagon and what's left of NASA do with space launches. Last I heard, both were being encouraged to develop alternatives to SpaceX now that Elmo has been declared dog-dootie. It may also depend upon how long la Presidenta keeps Elmo squirming, he may decide that Elmo is better inside the alleged administration than outside. Elmo will accept anything since he's greedy and has no moral compass, so he's a natural for being inside the alleged administration.

Old Space is boring (Score:2)

by greytree ( 7124971 )

Give me nutty Elon's Fail Early, Fail Often any day.

Although I am led to believe that they might not be doing this just to entertain us.

Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks. They all got out of the car:
The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."