With Successful New Glenn Flight, Blue Origin May Finally be Turning the Corner

27 Jan 2025
News
ARS TECHNICA – "This is the very beginning of the Space Age."
If one were to observe that I have written critically about Blue Origin over the last half-decade, they would not be wrong.
The reality is that the space company founded by Jeff Bezos has underperformed. Its chief executive for most of this time, Bob Smith, was poorly regarded by his employees. He brought the worst of "old space" tendencies to Blue Origin from Honeywell. And under Smith's leadership, Blue was litigious, slow, and unproductive.
Frankly, it was a bad look for Bezos. He was pumping something on the order of $2 billion a year into Blue Origin for what, exactly? Lawsuits against NASA? Jokes about BE-4 rocket engine delays?
Ars published critical articles about Blue Origin because the company could be so much more, and the Western spaceflight community desperately wants a second new space contender to challenge SpaceX's increasingly dominant position.
Finally, about 18 months ago, Bezos moved on from Bob Smith. He installed a long-time lieutenant from Amazon, Dave Limp, to get Blue Origin moving forward. Although there were concerns about Limp's background, which included little aerospace experience, it now seems clear that he has taken a strong hand at Blue since he took over the reins in December 2023.
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