Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket launched: Congratulations from Elon Musk

After a series of postponements Thursday (16.1205) New Glenn of his Blue Origin company was launched today and made his first flight in orbit. At a height of 98 meters, as long as an apartment building of about 30 stories, the New Glenn rocket successfully took off around 02:03 (local time, 09:03 hour Greece) from Cape Canaveral space base in Florida. The first flight of this powerful rocket of Jeff Bezos’ company is partly reused, while its launch was expected years ago. CORVERSE The mission achieved its “main goal”, i.e. to orbit the second floor of the rocket, Ariane Cornell announced, one of the Blue Origin heads during direct transmission. We did it! Orbital. Great night for Team Blue. On to spring and trying again on the landing. (Here is another view!) — Dave Limp (@davill) ADVERSION That was the firm’s stated ambition. “We did it!”, expressed his joy in X her president and CEO, David Lib. “Anything beyond that is a bonus,” he had stated before launch. Although the company has already been transporting tourists for a few minutes into space with the New Shepard missile, so far no flight has taken place in orbit. BREAKING: 24 years after the company’s founding, Jeff Bezos’ Rocket company, Blue Origin, has just success fully acquired orbit with its own Rocket for the first time ever. The company’s 320-foot-tall New Glenn Rocket successfully lifted off from Florida tonight for the first… — Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) Elon Musk: Congratulations Multibillionaire Elon Musk, head of SpaceX company which currently dominates the market with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missiles, rushed to congratulate his opponent Jeff Bezos. “Congratulations for reaching orbit at the first try!”, wrote Elon Musk on his platform, X, addressing Bezos. “Thank you,” this latter replied. Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) These two Silicon Valley personalities founded in the 2000s each of their own space operations, but Blue Origin went much slower than SpaceX. With New Glenn’s new, much stronger missile, Jeff Bezos nevertheless aspires to enter the new market of launches in a commercial and military satellite orbit, as well as spacecraft and astronauts, and thus compete with SpaceX. Elon Musk’s operation, however, is developing the largest and most powerful missile ever built, Starship, which, by chance or not, is due to take a seventh test flight later today. In addition to putting New Glenn in orbit, Blue Origin estimated to attempt during this first flight to recover the first floor of her rocket, the thruster, making him come down in a controlled way on a barge at sea – a complex maneuver similar to those carried out by SpaceX, which however did not succeed with the first. A few minutes after the launch, Ariane Cornell confirmed that the company’s teams “lost the thruster”. “You can see on the map how close it was to the landing,” he added, however. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the New Glenn rocket is designed to be partially reused. Following this successful test, other New Glenn flights are expected to follow in 2025.