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No, really, they might!
After the roaring success of Blue Origin’s second New Glenn flight, which not only reached orbit and recovered its booster but also launched two probes to Mars (take note, SpaceX, this is how you design a rocket!), they are taking things up a notch with the New Glenn 9x4. This is a recently announced “super heavy” variant of the New Glenn, and its silly name comes from its engine configuration, as its booster has nine rocket engines, and its upper stage has four. This is a sizeable upgrade over the standard New Glenn, whose booster has seven engines, and its upper stage has two. However, this upgrade is a much bigger deal than you might think, as it is set to make SpaceX’s infamous Starship completely obsolete. Let me explain.
New Glenn
I have already covered the standard New Glenn rocket (read more here), and it is damn impressive. Like a Falcon 9, it is partially reusable, with the booster landing back on Earth. It can take 45 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 13 tons to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), which is five tons more than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, and seven tons to Tran Lunar Injection (TLI, equivalent to payload to the lunar surface). While launch costs for New Glenn are not publicly known, they have been estimated at between $55 million and $68 million, which is about…