Falcon Heavy vs. New Glenn

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The New Heavy-Lift Era

The global launch market, for years defined by a single, dominant heavy-lift rocket, has just been fundamentally transformed. As of mid-November 2025, what was once a monopoly on reusable heavy-lift capability has officially become a true competition. This new era is not defined by a hypothetical future or a developmental roadmap; it is defined by the 321-foot-tall rocket that thundered into the Florida sky on November 13, 2025, and the massive first stage that returned to Earth, executing a perfect “bull’s-eye” landing on a ship at sea.

For the past seven years, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has been the undisputed veteran. Since its remarkable 2018 debut, where it famously launched a Tesla Roadster into deep space, the rocket has built a formidable flight-proven resume. It has flown 11 times, each mission adding to its reputation for reliability. It has become the “go-to” vehicle for the United States’ most valuable and sensitive payloads. It launched NASA’s high-priority Psyche mission to a metal asteroid. On October 14, 2024, it was trusted to hurl the multi-billion-dollar Europa Clipper – one of the most complex science probes ever built – on its long journey to Jupiter. It is certified to fly the military’s most secret national security satellites. In this class, Falcon Heavy has been the only U.S. option.

Its challenger, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, has been the subject of intense industry anticipation, and no small amount of skepticism, for the better part of a decade. The company, known for its patient “Gradatim Ferociter” – Step by step, boldly – motto, pursued a long, capital-intensive development path. It spent over a decade perfecting its cornerstone BE-4 engine before the rocket even took shape. This methodical, unhurried approach stood in stark contrast to the rapid, iterative design process of its competitors.

The long wait finally ended on January 16, 2025. New Glenn’s maiden flight, NG-1, successfully lifted off from the historic Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral and delivered its payload, a pathfinder for a new orbital system, to its correct orbit. It was a successful first mission. But in the critical test of reusability, the mission fell short. The massive first-stage booster, which was intended to be the first to land propulsively on its custom-built vessel, failed during its descent and was lost.

This left the market in a state of suspended animation. New Glenn had proven it could reach orbit, but its entire economic premise – its 25-mission reusability – was still just a promise. That all changed on November 13, 2025.

New Glenn’s second flight, NG-2, carried its first operational payload for its most important customer: NASA. The rocket flawlessly carried the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, destined for Mars to study its magnetosphere. Then, the real test began. Minutes after separating, the 18-story-tall first stage began its autonomous return. It survived the fiery re-entry, relit its engines, and descended toward its landing platform, the Jacklyn. Onlookers watched as the rocket appeared to adjust its trajectory, sliding sideways to “slide back into the target” before touching down perfectly on the deck. Blue Origin had not just launched a rocket; it had recovered its massive, next-generation booster.

This single event has redefined the heavy-lift landscape. It’s not just a commercial horse race. This second New Glenn flight was also its second certification mission for the U.S. Space Force (USSF). The USSF, as part of its National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, has a foundational strategy: to ensure “assured access to space.” This, by definition, means not being reliant on a single launch provider. The Space Force had already awarded Blue Origin an anticipated multi-billion dollar contract, betting that New Glenn would become a viable, second U.S. provider.

With the successful landing of the NG-2 booster, that bet has paid off. The U.S. government now has two qualified, competing, next-generation heavy-lift vehicles. Falcon Heavy, the established champion, now faces New Glenn, the newly-crowned contender that has just proven its core reusability promise. The competition is no longer theoretical. It is real, and it begins now.

By the Numbers: An Executive Comparison

At first glance, comparing the Falcon Heavy and New Glenn presents a confusing picture. The specifications, while technically accurate, seem to tell a contradictory story. The rocket that is physically much larger appears, on paper, to be significantly less powerful. This “payload paradox” is the single most important, and most misleading, aspect of the entire comparison.

Before diving into the complex nuances of performance, it’s helpful to lay out the high-level “spec sheet” data for both vehicles.

The Falcon Heavy, by contrast, is not a single rocket. It is a composite vehicle, effectively “strapping” three modified Falcon 9 boosters together. This gives it a “width” of 12.2 meters (39.9 feet), but its individual cores are only 3.7 meters (12 feet) wide.

The most confusing part is the payload. The publicly-stated numbers show Falcon Heavy can lift 63,800 kg (140,660 lbs) to Low Earth Orbit, while the much larger New Glenn lifts only 45,000 kg (99,000 lbs). The disparity is even more stark for Geostationary Transfer Orbit, where Falcon Heavy boasts a 26,700 kg (58,860 lbs) capacity versus New Glenn’s 13,600 kg (30,000 lbs).

This is the payload paradox. How can the physically larger, next-generation rocket be so much “weaker” than its established competitor?

The answer lies in the two small parenthetical words in the table: (Expendable) and (Reusable). The Falcon Heavy’s eye-watering 63,800 kg number represents its “expendable” performance, a mode where the entire rocket is thrown away. New Glenn’s 45,000 kg number represents its “reusable” performance, a mode where the rocket saves a large amount of fuel to land its own first stage.

These are not apples-to-apples comparisons. They are, in fact, the key to understanding the two completely different design philosophies and business strategies that define this new era of competition.

Design Philosophy: Two Paths to Heavy Lift

The Falcon Heavy and New Glenn are both “heavy-lift” rockets, but they arrived at their status through two completely divergent strategic paths. One is a brilliant, pragmatic evolution of a proven product. The other is a patient, capital-intensive “clean-sheet” bet on the future. Their physical forms are a direct reflection of the corporate philosophies of the companies that built them.

Falcon Heavy: An Evolved Behemoth

The Falcon Heavy is not a “new” rocket in the traditional sense. It is an “evolved” rocket, a clever and powerful derivative of an existing, proven, and mass-produced vehicle: the Falcon 9. When SpaceX needed to enter the heavy-lift market, it did not go back to the drawing board to design a massive new rocket from scratch. It looked at its factory, which was already efficiently producing Falcon 9 boosters, and asked a pragmatic question: what is the fastest, cheapest way to get to heavy lift using the tools we already have?

The answer was to strap three of these Falcon 9 cores together. The center core is specially modified to handle the extra load and has different separation hardware, but the two side boosters are, with some modifications, standard Falcon 9s. The rocket’s first stage is a “bundle” of three boosters, powered by a total of 27 Merlin 1D engines – nine on each core.

This business logic was brilliant. It saved SpaceX billions of dollars and years of development time, allowing it to corner the heavy-lift market long before any competitor was ready. It was a “brute force” solution that leveraged its existing, highly reliable components.

But this pragmatic decision came with significant engineering trade-offs. As SpaceX’s own leadership has admitted, “slapping a bunch of Falcons together” was not simple. It was, in fact, “really hard.” The rocket has to contend with immensely complex aerodynamics, with air flowing over three distinct cores. The structural forces at liftoff, with 27 engines generating over 5 million pounds of thrust, must be distributed across all three boosters. Then, the separation of the two side boosters mid-flight while the center core continues to burn is an incredibly complex “aerial ballet.”

The Falcon Heavy design represents a clear strategic choice: it trades upfront development costs for long-term operational complexity. Every launch, SpaceX must build, test, and integrate three separate first-stage cores. They must manage the logistics of 27 engines, which means 27 potential points of failure. And, as will be explored, they must attempt to recover and refurbish three separate boosters, each of which has a different and challenging re-entry profile. It is a complex-to-operate rocket that was simple-to-develop (relatively speaking).

New Glenn: A Clean-Sheet Giant

Blue Origin took the precise opposite approach. New Glenn is a “clean-sheet” design. It is not based on a smaller predecessor like the suborbital New Shepard. It was designed from the beginning to be a massive, reusable, 7-meter-diameter rocket. This design reflects the company’s patient, methodical motto. Blue Origin didn’t rush to market. It spent over a decade and billions of dollars developing the foundational technologies, chief among them the new BE-4 engine, before it started building the rocket itself.

This “clean-sheet” approach allowed its engineers to solve problems that Falcon Heavy’s design inherently possesses. Instead of the structural and aerodynamic complexity of three cores, New Glenn has one, massive, and (in theory) simpler core. This monolithic design avoids the problem of mid-air booster separation and complex force distribution.

Instead of 27 smaller engines, New Glenn is powered by just seven powerful, next-generation BE-4 engines. From an operational standpoint, managing seven engines is vastly simpler than managing 27. There are fewer parts to inspect, fewer engines to refurbish, and a simpler plumbing system.

Reusability is not an “add-on” to the New Glenn design; it is the central, organizing principle. The rocket was designed from its inception to be reused for a minimum of 25 flights. The landing gear is permanently built into the vehicle’s structure. The fuel was chosen specifically to make reuse easier.

This, too, was a strategic trade. Blue Origin traded time and upfront cost for (hoped-for) long-term operational simplicity. The company was willing to appear “slow” for a decade, patiently taking on the enormous expense and difficulty of developing a brand-new rocket and a brand-new engine all at once. The “slowness” that was often criticized was a direct consequence of this philosophy.

The gamble is that this new, purpose-built rocket – with its single core, seven engines, and reusability-focused design – will be far cheaper and faster to operate and refurbish in the long run than its 3-core, 27-engine competitor. With the successful flight and landing of NG-2, that gamble now seems poised to pay off.

The Payload Paradox: Understanding Rocket Performance

The most confusing aspect of the Falcon Heavy vs. New Glenn comparison – the “63.8t vs 45t” problem – can only be solved by understanding what a rocket’s “payload” number actually means. It is not a single, fixed number. It is a complex trade-off between the rocket’s destination, its power, and, most importantly, whether or not the rocket is designed to be thrown away after use.

What is an Orbit? LEO, GTO, and Beyond

To appreciate rocket performance, it is important to understand the “destinations” in space. These are not places, but energy levels. Getting a payload to a higher orbit, or one that requires escaping Earth entirely, requires more energy (propellant). As a result, the same rocket can carry a very heavy payload to an “easy” orbit, or a much lighter payload to a “hard” orbit.

The three most common destinations are:

• LEO (Low Earth Orbit): This is the easiest, “lowest” orbit, ranging from 160 to 2,000 kilometers up. It’s the “local delivery” route for a rocket. A satellite in LEO circles the Earth in about 90 minutes. This is the domain of space stations, spy satellites, and the massive internet constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper. Because it’s the “easiest” destination, a rocket’s LEO payload is its maximumpossible lift capacity.
• GTO (Geostationary Transfer Orbit): This is a critical, and much “harder,” destination. GTO is not the final orbit, but an elliptical “park-and-ride” orbit that is the first step to reaching geostationary orbit. A geostationary orbit is a “parking spot” 35,786 km (over 22,000 miles) up, where a satellite orbits at the exact same speed as the Earth’s rotation, making it appear “fixed” over one spot on the equator. This is where large telecommunications and weather satellites live. Getting to GTO takes far more energy than LEO. This is why Falcon Heavy’s stated GTO capacity (26,700 kg) is less than half its LEO capacity (63,800 kg).
• High-Energy (Mars, TLI): These are “escape” trajectories, where the payload isn’t orbiting Earth at all. It is being thrown out of Earth’s gravity well to travel to the Moon (a Trans-Lunar Injection or TLI), to Mars, or to the outer solar system. These are the most energy-intensive missions, reserved for science probes like Psyche, Europa Clipper, and the recently-launched ESCAPADE. The payload capacity for these missions is even lower than for GTO.

Expendable vs. Reusable: The Great Trade-Off

This is the most important concept in modern rocketry. The “payload penalty” of reusability is the key to solving the paradox.

An expendable rocket is a single-use vehicle. It is designed to burn 100% of its propellant to deliver the absolute maximum payload to its target orbit. After its “push” is complete, the rocket’s stages are abandoned, becoming space junk or burning up in the atmosphere. This is the “max performance” mode.

A reusable rocket, by contrast, is like a commercial airliner. Its value is not in its single flight, but in its ability to fly hundreds of times. To do this, it must land itself, which requires two things that are “dead weight” from a performance perspective:

1. Landing Hardware: Legs, grid fins, extra plumbing, and heat shields.
2. Reserved Propellant: The rocket must save a significant portion of its fuel not for the payload, but for itself. It uses this fuel to perform “boostback” and “landing” burns, to slow itself down from hypersonic speeds and gently touch down.

This reserved propellant is the “payload penalty.” It is fuel that, in an expendable rocket, would have been used to push more cargo.

Think of it this way: An expendable rocket is like a car that burns its entire fuel tank to go 500 miles, at which point it is driven off a cliff. A reusable rocket is a car that could go 500 miles, but it must save a quarter-tank of gas to drive back home. This means it can only complete a 375-mile trip. That 125-mile difference is the “penalty” it pays for being reusable.

This penalty is not small. For Falcon Heavy, the numbers are stark. Its expendable GTO capacity is 26,700 kg. Its fully reusable GTO capacity (recovering all three cores) is just 8,000 kg. This is a staggering 70% reduction in payload. That 18,700 kg difference is the “cost” of getting the rocket back.

Falcon Heavy’s Power Profile

Now, the 63,800 kg number for Falcon Heavy can be put in its proper context. This rocket doesn’t have one performance number; it has a “sliding scale” of performance versus cost, offering three distinct launch modes.

1. Fully Expendable:
   • Payload: 63,800 kg to LEO; 26,700 kg to GTO.
   • How it works: All three booster cores are thrown away. This is the “brute force” mode, unleashing the rocket’s absolute maximum power.
   • Use Case: This mode is reserved for one-of-a-kind, “flagship” missions where performance is everything and cost is secondary. These are the multi-billion dollar NASA probes, like the Europa Clipper and Psyche, that need to be sent to the outer solar system. They need every ounce of propellant the rocket has, so reusability is sacrificed. This is not the standard, $97 million launch.
2. Partially Reusable:
   • Payload: Approximately 16,000 kg to GTO.
   • How it works: SpaceX recovers the two side boosters (which are easier to land) but expends the center core (which comes in much hotter and faster).
   • Use Case: This is the “middle ground.” It allows SpaceX to recover two-thirds of the first-stage hardware while still delivering a very heavy payload to GTO, one that is too heavy for the “fully reusable” mode.
3. Fully Reusable:
   • Payload: Approximately 8,000 kg to GTO. LEO payload is estimated to be between 18,000 and 38,000 kg.
   • How it works: SpaceX attempts to recover all three booster cores. The side boosters return to land, and the center core attempts a difficult landing on a droneship.
   • Use Case: This is the most cost-effective, “economy” mode. It suffers the highest payload penalty (a 70% drop in GTO lift) but is the configuration that SpaceX’s $97 million launch price is based on.

New Glenn’s Reusable Baseline

Blue Origin’s strategy is completely different. It is not offering a “sliding scale.” New Glenn has been designed only to be reusable. The company does not advertise an “expendable” option. The 25-mission reuse target is fundamental to the entire business model.

This means that New Glenn’s advertised numbers – 45,000 kg to LEO and 13,600 kg to GTO – already have the payload penalty for landing baked in. That 45,000 kg is the “bring the rocket back” number. This is a strategic decision to simplify their offerings and focus their engineering on a single, efficient, reusable system.

The “Apples-to-Apples” Reusable Comparison

Now the paradox can finally be solved. The public perception that Falcon Heavy is “more powerful” comes from comparing its expendable number (63,800 kg) to New Glenn’s reusable number (45,000 kg). This is a false comparison.

The only way to compare them fairly is to put them in the same configuration: fully reusable.

Apples-to-Apples LEO Comparison:

• New Glenn (Reusable): 45,000 kg
• Falcon Heavy (Reusable): ~18,000 – 38,000 kg (estimated)

In the reusable LEO category, New Glenn is significantly more capable than Falcon Heavy.

Apples-to-Apples GTO Comparison (The most important commercial orbit):

• New Glenn (Reusable): 13,600 kg
• Falcon Heavy (Reusable): 8,000 kg

The difference here is dramatic. In a reusable configuration, New Glenn can deliver over 5,600 kg (more than 12,000 lbs) more payload to GTO than a reusable Falcon Heavy. That is a 70% increase in performance. It’s the difference between launching one very large satellite, and launching that same satellite plus a secondary payload.

The paradox is solved. When comparing the rockets as they are intended to be used – as reusable vehicles – New Glenn is not the weaker rocket. It is, in fact, the more powerful and capable of the two. Falcon Heavy is only the “most powerful operational rocket” when it is flown in its throw-away expendable mode, a niche New Glenn has chosen not to compete in.

The Reusability Equation

While both rockets are reusable, how they achieve reusability is just as different as their design philosophies. One is a complex, three-body logistical challenge. The other is a novel, single-body aerodynamic one. The success of the NG-2 landing has now provided a clear, real-world contrast between the two systems.

Falcon Heavy: A Complex Aerial Ballet

A Falcon Heavy recovery is one of the most complex and spectacular sights in aerospace. It involves recovering three separate, skyscraper-sized boosters. The process highlights both the genius and the weakness of its 3-core design.

The two side boosters, which separate first, have the “easiest” job. They are not moving as high or as fast as the center core. They perform a “boostback burn” with their engines, reversing their course and flying back to Cape Canaveral. They re-enter the atmosphere, deploy grid fins (waffled fins at the top) to steer themselves, relight their engines for a final landing burn, and touch down, often in near-perfect-synchronization, on two concrete pads at Landing Zone 1 and 2. This part of the system is highly reliable, with a 100% success rate (16-for-16) on all boosters that have attempted a landing.

The center core is the Falcon Heavy’s Achilles’ heel for reusability. It burns for longer, pushing the second stage to a much higher and faster separation point. It does not have nearly enough propellant to fly all the way back to the launch site. Its only option is to continue on a ballistic path and attempt to land on a robotic droneship, like Of Course I Still Love You, floating hundreds of miles away in the Atlantic Ocean.

New Glenn: The Single-Booster Return

New Glenn’s reusability is, by contrast, logistically simpler: one core, one landing. Instead of a three-body problem, Blue Origin’s engineers only have to solve a one-body problem. However, the “body” in question is a 7-meter-wide, 57.5-meter (189-foot) tall behemoth, far larger than a single Falcon 9 core.

The challenge for New Glenn is not logistics; it’s aerodynamics. To control this massive stage during its descent, Blue Origin developed a novel solution. The rocket is equipped with “strakes” (wing-like surfaces) at the top of the booster and “actuated aerodynamic control surfaces” (fins) at the bottom. These work together, like the wings and tail of an airplane, to give the booster “lift” and steering authority as it flies through the atmosphere. This is a more complex “aerodynamic” descent, allowing it to “fly” to its landing target with more cross-range capability, as opposed to the more “ballistic” (think “smart dart”) descent of a Falcon booster.

The booster then relights its BE-4 engines and, in a critical design feature, lands on six hydraulically actuated legs. The use of six legs, instead of Falcon’s four, provides a wider, more stable base, making it safer to land on the pitching deck of a moving ship.

This ship is the Jacklyn, a custom-built landing vessel. This entire system was unproven until November 13, 2025. After the NG-1 landing attempt failed in January 2025, the pressure was on. The “crazy” and “perfect” landing of the NG-2 booster, which “slid back into the target,” was a complete vindication of Blue Origin’s novel aerodynamic design. It proved that this 18-story structure can be reliably recovered at sea.

This success instantly validates the rocket’s 25-mission reuse target. It’s no longer a marketing claim; it’s a demonstrated capability.

Engines and Fuel: The Fire That Lifts

At the heart of any rocket are its engines. The choice of engine – and the fuel it burns – is one of the most defining decisions in rocket design. It dictates performance, complexity, and, most importantly, the true cost and difficulty of reusability. Here, the two rockets could not be more different.

Merlin’s Kerosene Legacy

Falcon Heavy is powered by 27 Merlin 1D engines. These engines, mass-produced by SpaceX, are the workhorses of the Falcon family. They run on a “LOX/RP-1” propellant combination: liquid oxygen and RP-1, which is a highly-refined form of kerosene.

This fuel choice was a smart, pragmatic one for the 2010s. RP-1 (kerosene) is a 20th-century “legacy” fuel, but it has a major advantage: it is very “energy-dense.” This means a lot of energy can be stored in a relatively small (and thus lighter) tank. This high-density fuel is a key reason why the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are so slender and lightweight for the performance they achieve.

But kerosene has one, massive drawback for reusability: “coking.”

RP-1 is a long-chain hydrocarbon, much like diesel fuel. When it burns, it does not combust perfectly. It leaves behind a black, sooty residue. This “coking” is the same as the soot that builds up in a car’s exhaust pipe or a chimney. In a rocket engine, this soot gets into the complex plumbing, the injectors, and the turbopumps.

This “coking” problem is the single biggest operational bottleneck for rapid reusability. A “dirty” kerosene-fueled engine cannot be simply refueled and reflown. It must be painstakingly inspected, cleaned, and refurbished – a time-consuming and expensive process. Now, multiply that problem by 27 engines. The refurbishment challenge for a Falcon Heavy is immense.

BE-4 and the Methane Future

Blue Origin, starting with a “clean sheet” a decade later, saw the coking problem and designed its entire rocket to avoid it. New Glenn is powered by seven BE-4 engines. These are “LOX/LNG” engines, burning liquid oxygen and Liquefied Natural Gas, which is primarily methane (CH4).

Methane is the strategic 21st-century choice for reusable rockets. Its advantages are significant.

1. No Coking: Methane is a very simple molecule. When it burns, it burns cleanly. It leaves no soot or residue. This is the “holy grail” for reusability. A methane engine is, in theory, far simpler, faster, and cheaper to refurbish. This design choice, more than any other, shows Blue Origin’s focus on building a rocket for rapid and cheap reuse, learning from the operational challenges of kerosene.
2. Autogenous Pressurization: This is a key technical innovation. All rockets need to “push” their propellants into the engines. Falcon rockets inject high-pressure helium, stored in separate, complex tanks, to do this. The BE-4 taps a small amount of its own methane fuel, heats it into a gas, and pipes that gas back into the tank to “autogenously” pressurize itself. This elegant, self-contained system eliminates the need for a complex and expensive helium system, simplifying ground operations.
3. High Performance: Methane is a “compromise” fuel that offers a better “specific impulse” (the rocket equivalent of “gas mileage”) than kerosene, while being much denser and far easier to handle than liquid hydrogen.

The BE-4 engine is so advanced and so successful that it is the first U.S.-made, oxygen-rich staged combustion engine to fly. It’s so good, in fact, that Blue Origin sells it to its chief competitor, United Launch Alliance (ULA), to power the first stage of their new Vulcan rocket.

Upper Stages: The Final Push

The differences don’t stop at the first stage. The “upper stage” – the smaller second rocket that fires in space to do the final, precise push into orbit – also reveals a major performance gap.

Falcon Heavy’s upper stage is powered by a single Merlin Vacuum engine. Like the first stage, it is a kerosene-fueled workhorse. It is a reliable, proven, and effective system.

New Glenn’s upper stage is a high-performance “thoroughbred.” It is powered by two BE-3U engines. These engines run on a “LOX/LH2” combination: liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

Liquid hydrogen is the most efficient chemical rocket fuel, period. It provides the highest “gas mileage” (specific impulse) possible. By using this extremely high-performance fuel in its upper stage, New Glenn gets a massive performance advantage for its “final kick” to orbit. This is a key technical reason why its reusable GTO payload (13,600 kg) is so much higher than Falcon Heavy’s (8,000 kg). The ultra-efficient upper stage can do more work with less fuel.

Furthermore, the use of two engines provides redundancy. If one engine should fail in orbit, the other can continue to burn, saving the multi-million dollar mission. For high-value NASA and NSSL customers, this redundancy is an incredibly powerful selling point.

The Volume Advantage: Why Size Matters More Than Mass

There is one area of the comparison where the two rockets are not even in the same class. In the modern satellite market, the size of the cargo bay is often more important than the weight of the cargo. It’s here that New Glenn’s design gives it an overwhelming, and perhaps “rocket-proof,” advantage.

This cargo bay is the “payload fairing,” the clamshell-like nose cone that protects the satellite during its ascent through the atmosphere.

The Falcon Heavy’s payload fairing is 5.2 meters (17.1 feet) in diameter. This is the same fairing used on the single-stick Falcon 9, and it is a standard, very usable size.

The New Glenn’s payload fairing is 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter.

This is not a small, incremental difference. Because volume increases with the cube of the diameter, a 7-meter fairing has twice the usable internal volume of a 5.2-meter fairing.

This “volume advantage” is arguably New Glenn’s single greatest competitive weapon. In today’s market, many of the most valuable payloads are “volume-limited,” not “mass-limited.” They are large, bulky satellites with big antennas, solar arrays, or folded-up telescopes. They are like a “bag of feathers” – they “run out of space inside the fairing long before the rocket runs out of lift.”

An analogy makes this clear:

• The Falcon Heavy is like a high-performance pickup truck. In its “expendable” mode, it has a massive towing capacity of 63,800 kg. But its truck bed is only 5.2 meters wide.
• The New Glenn is a massive freight truck. Its “reusable” towing capacity is less, at 45,000 kg. But its cargo bay is 7 meters wide.

If your payload is a small, dense block of gold (like NASA’s Psyche probe, which is heavy for its size), the Falcon Heavy pickup truck is a perfect choice.

But if you are Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and you need to launch a “dispenser” carrying 30 or 40 large, flat-panel satellites at once, they simply will not fit inside the 5.2-meter pickup bed. You must have the 7-meter freight truck. The same is true for the U.S. Space Force’s largest classified spy satellites.

This 7-meter fairing opens up an entire class of payloads that Falcon Heavy cannot physically launch, regardless of its lift capacity. It is no coincidence that the two largest-known customers for New Glenn – Amazon and the U.S. Space Force – are customers who specifically need to launch big things, not just heavythings.

The Customer Manifest: Who is Flying on What?

A rocket is only a useful machine. Its success is ultimately measured by its order book. Here, the veteran champion and the new contender are both entering this new era with extremely healthy, and strategically different, customer manifests.

Falcon Heavy: The Veteran Champion

As the only US heavy-lift rocket of its kind for seven years, Falcon Heavy became the trusted partner for America’s most expensive, one-of-a-kind, and irreplaceable assets. It has built a manifest of “high-prestige, low-cadence” missions. It doesn’t fly often, but when it does, it flies the “crown jewels.”

• NASA: SpaceX has secured a slate of NASA’s most ambitious “flagship” science missions. It launched Psyche. It launched the Europa Clipper. And it is contracted to launch the two foundational elements of the new lunar space station, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), on a single, massive launch.
• National Security: The rocket is fully certified for the NSSL program and has flown multiple, classified payloads for the U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Falcon Heavy’s market position is that of the proven incumbent. It is the vehicle government agencies turn to when a mission absolutely, positively cannot fail.

New Glenn: The New Contender

New Glenn has just completed its second flight, but it is entering the market with an enormous, multi-billion-dollar backlog of contracts. Blue Origin has executed a brilliant three-pronged business strategy to ensure its rocket is “sold out” from day one.

1. The Anchor Tenant (High-Cadence Commercial): New Glenn’s largest customer is Amazon’s satellite internet division, recently rebranded from Project Kuiper to Project Leo. Amazon has secured more than 80 launches across multiple providers, with a massive share going to New Glenn. This “anchor tenant” contract is a masterstroke. It provides a steady, high-cadence manifest of commercial launches, giving the rocket a guaranteed revenue stream and, more importantly, the high flight-rate needed to work out kinks and prove reliability.
2. The High-Margin Customer (Government): Blue Origin was a big winner in the NSSL Phase 3 “Lane 2” procurement. The U.S. Space Force has anticipated $2.3 billion in contracts for New Glenn to launch high-value national security payloads between 2025 and 2029. The NG-2 certification flight was a key step in securing this, and its success solidifies New Glenn’s role as a cornerstone of U.S. national security launch.
3. The Prestige Customer (NASA): The successful NG-2 launch of NASA’s ESCAPADE mission was the “foot in the door.” By proving it can successfully fly a NASA science payload on only its second mission, Blue Origin has demonstrated its capability. It can now begin to compete directly with Falcon Heavy for the next generation of “flagship” science missions.

This three-pronged manifest – high-cadence commercial, high-margin government, and high-prestige science – guarantees that New Glenn will be a dominant force in the launch market for years to come.

Summary

The heavy-lift launch market, a monopoly for seven years, was fundamentally and permanently altered on November 13, 2025. The successful launch of New Glenn’s NG-2 mission and the first-ever recovery of its massive first stage has closed the gap between promise and reality. The industry is no longer defined by one champion; it is now a dynamic competition between two titans with completely different philosophies.

The Falcon Heavy remains the proven, trusted vehicle. Its “evolved” 3-core design, born from the rapidly-iterated Falcon 9, was a brilliant and pragmatic strategy that allowed it to dominate the market. Its unique strength is its “brute force” expendable performance, which remains unmatched and makes it the only choice for the most demanding, highest-energy “flagship” science missions, like NASA’s Europa Clipper. This performance comes with long-term operational complexity. Its “dirty” kerosene-fueled 27-engine system requires extensive refurbishment. Its 5.2-meter fairing, once a standard, is now its main limiting factor in a market that is increasingly demanding more volume.

The New Glenn is the newly-proven challenger, a “clean-sheet” rocket built from the ground up for a single purpose: efficient, rapid reusability. Its patient, decade-long development was a massive bet on operational simplicity. That bet has now been validated. Its “clean-burning” methane-fueled BE-4 engines promise a revolutionary reduction in refurbishment time and cost. Its high-performance, hydrogen-fueled upper stage gives it a powerful “final kick.” And its massive 7-meter fairing gives it an unbeatable volume advantage, allowing it to launch satellites that its competitor physically cannot. Most importantly, its reusable performance is far superior to its rival’s, offering over 70% more payload to the critical geostationary transfer orbit than a reusable Falcon Heavy.

The competition is no longer hypothetical. The market is now defined by a clear choice.

For customers with small, dense, and “priceless” payloads that need the absolute maximum performance, the expendable Falcon Heavy is the king.

For the new generation of customers – like Amazon’s Project Leo and the U.S. Space Force – who need to launch large-volume constellations and massive satellites, and who demand the economics of a truly reusable system, New Glenn has just arrived as a more powerful, purpose-built, and future-proofed solution.