CAPE CANAVERAL, Jan 13, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A quarter century after its 
founding, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is finally ready for its maiden orbital 
voyage with a brand new rocket the company hopes will shake up the commercial 
space race.

Named New Glenn after legendary astronaut John Glenn, it stands 320 feet (98 
meters) tall, roughly equivalent to a 32-story building, and is set to blast 
off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in a launch window that opens at 
1:00 am (0600 GMT) Monday.

"Pointy end up!" the company's CEO, Dave Limp posted on X alongside photos of 
the gleaming white behemoth.

With the mission, dubbed NG-1, billionaire Amazon founder Bezos is taking aim 
at the only man in the world wealthier than him: Elon Musk, whose company 
SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market through its prolific Falcon 9 
rockets, vital for the commercial sector, the Pentagon and NASA.

"SpaceX has for the past several years been pretty much the only game in 
town, and so having a competitor... this is great," G. Scott Hubbard, a 
retired senior NASA official, told AFP.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is planning the next orbital test of Starship -- its 
gargantuan new-generation rocket -- this week, upping the high-stakes 
rivalry.

- Landing attempt -

Soon after launch, Blue Origin will attempt to land the first-stage booster 
on a drone ship named Jacklyn, in honor of Bezos's mother, stationed about 
620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

Though SpaceX has long made such landings a near-routine spectacle, this will 
be Blue Origin's first shot at a touchdown on the high seas.

Meanwhile, the rocket's upper stage will fire its engines toward Earth orbit, 
reaching a maximum altitude of roughly 12,000 miles above the surface.

A Defense Department-funded prototype spaceship called Blue Ring will remain 
aboard for the roughly six-hour test flight.

Blue Origin has experience landing its New Shepard rockets -- used for 
suborbital tourism -- but they are much smaller and land on terra firma 
rather than a ship at sea.

Physically, New Glenn dwarfs the 230-foot Falcon 9 and is designed for 
heavier payloads.

It slots between Falcon 9 and its big sibling, Falcon Heavy, in terms of mass 
capacity but holds an edge with its wider payload fairing, capable of 
carrying the equivalent of 20 moving trucks.

- Slow v fast development -

Blue Origin has already secured a NASA contract to launch two Mars probes 
aboard New Glenn. The rocket will also support the deployment of Project 
Kuiper, a satellite internet constellation designed to compete with Starlink.

For now, however, SpaceX maintains a commanding lead, while other rivals -- 
United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Rocket Lab -- trail far behind.

Like Musk, Bezos has a lifelong passion for space. But whereas Musk dreams of 
colonizing Mars, Bezos envisions shifting heavy industry off-planet onto 
floating space platforms in order to preserve Earth, "humanity's blue 
origin."

He founded Blue Origin in 2000 -- two years before Musk created SpaceX -- but 
has adopted a more cautious pace, in contrast to his rival's "fail fast, 
learn fast" philosophy.

If New Glenn succeeds, it will give the US government "dissimilar redundancy" 
-- valuable backup if one system fails, said Scott Pace, a space policy 
analyst at George Washington University.

Musk's closeness to President-elect Donald Trump has raised concerns about 
potential conflicts of interest, especially with private astronaut Jared 
Isaacman -- a business associate of Musk -- slated to become the next NASA 
chief.

Bezos, however, has been making his own overtures, paying respect to his 
former foe during a visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, while Amazon has 
said it would donate $1 million to the inauguration committee.