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The Legend and the Challenger

On November 13, 2025, in a control room at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a new chapter in spaceflight was written. The tension was palpable. Blue Origin’s first-ever operational mission for a customer, its second flight of the New Glenn rocket, had successfully lifted off, deploying NASA’s twin ESCAPADE probes on their long journey to Mars. But the primary mission was only half complete. The real test, the one that defined the rocket’s entire economic premise, was happening miles downrange in the Atlantic.

The 188-foot-tall first stage booster, nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds,” was plummeting back to Earth at hypersonic speed. After a series of complex maneuvers – re-igniting three engines to slow down, deploying aerodynamic fins for steering, and finally re-igniting a single BE-4 engine for a gentle landing burn – the building-sized rocket settled itself with astonishing precision onto the deck of its recovery vessel, the Jacklyn. It was, as observers noted, a picture-perfect landing. On only its second attempt, a booster of this immense scale had been successfully recovered, an event a company executive confirmed had “never before in history” been achieved.

Contrast this high-definition, commercially-driven moment with the grainy, black-and-white television footage that defined the previous age of giants. On July 16, 1969, the world watched as a different colossus, the Saturn V, ignited its five F-1 engines at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39. That machine, 363 feet tall and weighing over six million pounds, shuddered the very ground for miles as it began its ascent. Its mission wasn’t for a commercial customer; it was the singular focus of a nation, a geopolitical instrument designed to carry three astronauts – and the ambitions of the Western world – to the Moon.

These two rockets, the Saturn V and the New Glenn, are the perfect bookends for two distinct ages of spaceflight. They are separated by more than half a century, and the significant differences in their design, their fuels, their manufacturing, and their missions tell the complete story of humanity’s evolving relationship with space.

The Saturn V was a disposable instrument of national will, an expendable marvel of engineering built for a single, glorious purpose. It was the product of a time when cost was a secondary concern to winning a race. New Glenn is a reusable, commercial workhorse, the product of a new era driven by private capital and market competition. It was built not to win a race, but to create a sustainable, economic “road to space.”

This isn’t a story about which rocket is “better.” The Saturn V remains the most powerful rocket ever to successfully fly, a vehicle that accomplished one of the greatest feats in human history. This is a story about why they are so different. The design of each rocket is a direct, unadulterated reflection of the economic and geopolitical ecosystem that created it. The Saturn V is the pinnacle of the “cost-plus,” government-funded, expendable model. New Glenn is the product of a privately-funded, fixed-price, services-based commercial market. Every nut, bolt, engine, and fuel choice is a direct consequence of this fundamental divide.

Part 1: The Benchmark of an Era: The Saturn V

To appreciate the revolution that New Glenn represents, it is important to understand the legend it’s measured against. The Saturn V wasn’t just a rocket; it was the rocket. For the generation that watched it fly, it was a machine of such immense scale and power that it bordered on the mythical. It was the gold standard, the historical benchmark for heavy-lift launch, and its development and flawless service record remain a marvel of engineering.

A Singular Mandate: The Apollo Program

The Saturn V was not built to service a market, open a new line of business, or satisfy a diverse customer base. It was built to win a race. In the geopolitical landscape of the early 1960s, the launch pad was a battlefield in the Cold War. The Soviet Union’s early successes – Sputnik, the first animal in orbit, the first man in space – were seen as existential threats, proof of a technological and ideological gap.

President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 challenge, to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth “before this decade is out,” was a direct response. It was an act of national will, a mobilization of resources on a scale not seen since wartime. The Saturn V was the tool forged for this specific, singular mandate.

The rocket’s design was locked in by a single, momentous decision made in 1962: the selection of the “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous” (LOR) mission profile. Instead of building an impossibly massive, single ship to fly directly to the Moon and back, LOR involved a “mothership” that would orbit the Moon while a smaller, separate “lander” would descend to the surface and return. This profile was lighter and more efficient, but it still required a single, massive rocket to hurl the entire three-part Apollo spacecraft – the Command Module, the Service Module, and the Lunar Module – on a direct path to the Moon. That single, massive rocket was the Saturn V.

The rocket’s service record is a testament to the program’s rigor. It flew thirteen times from 1967 to 1973. Its record was flawless. Every mission objective for the launch vehicle itself was 100% successful.

This perfect record began with the test flights. Apollo 4, on November 9, 1967, was the first-ever launch of the Saturn V. It was an “all-up” test, meaning that for the first time, NASA tested all three stages of the rocket at once, a gamble that paid off spectacularly. Apollo 6, in April 1968, was the second and final uncrewed test. While it experienced significant problems, including engine failures and a “pogo” oscillation, the rocket’s robust guidance system muscled through, and NASA’s engineers were able to identify and fix the flaws, ultimately clearing the vehicle for a crew.

Then came the nine crewed missions, a rapid-fire succession of flights that defined an era. Apollo 8, in December 1968, was a daring, last-minute change of plans that sent the first humans to orbit the Moon. Apollo 9 tested the Lunar Module in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 was the final “dress rehearsal,” flying the lander down to within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface.

And then, Apollo 11. The Saturn V performed its task perfectly, placing Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins on their trajectory for history. It would repeat this performance six more times for the subsequent landings: Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Even on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, the Saturn V was a portrait of perfection. The catastrophic failure occurred in the Apollo spacecraft; the rocket itself had already done its job, flawlessly delivering the crew into space.

The rocket’s coda, its 13th and final flight, came on May 14, 1973. This was the only non-Apollo mission. A modified two-stage Saturn V, designated the Saturn V-INT-21, lifted the Skylab space station into Earth orbit. The station itself took the place of the rocket’s third stage. It was the last time the thunder of the F-1 engines would be heard.

The Saturn V’s retirement was a direct consequence of its specialized design. Its singular purpose had vanished with the cancellation of the later Apollo missions. It was simply too large, too specialized, and far, far too expensive to be a “workhorse booster” for the envisioned, but never materialized, Apollo Applications Program. Its perfection was, in the end, its obsolescence.

Anatomy of the Moon Rocket

The sheer scale of the Saturn V is difficult to comprehend. It stood 363 feet tall, 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. With a diameter of 33 feet, its first stage was wide enough to hold a small house. Its fully-fueled liftoff weight was over 6.2 million pounds, equivalent to the weight of about 400 elephants.

It was a “three-stage-to-escape” vehicle, a design philosophy essential for its lunar mission. The concept of a multi-stage rocket is based on two simple principles. The first is dropping “dead weight.” As the rocket burns fuel, the massive tanks that held it become empty, useless mass. By dropping these empty tanks – the first stage – the smaller, lighter second stage has less work to do. The second principle is thrust tailoring. The immense 7.5 million pounds of thrust needed to lift the fully-loaded rocket off the pad would be far too powerful for the nearly-empty vehicle in the thin upper atmosphere; the acceleration would destroy the rocket and its crew. Staging allows the rocket to use smaller, more efficient engines as it gets higher and faster.

The S-IC (First Stage)

Built by The Boeing Company, the S-IC first stage was the brute-force component. Standing 138 feet tall, its sole job was to lift the entire 6.2-million-pound vehicle off the ground and push it to an altitude of about 40 miles and a speed of over 6,000 mph. It was a simple, powerful, and utterly massive stage.

The S-II (Second Stage)

Built by North American Aviation, the S-II was, for its time, a high-performance technological marvel. It was powered by five J-2 engines and was responsible for the next phase of the flight, pushing the vehicle to the edge of space, accelerating it to near-orbital velocity.

The S-IVB (Third Stage)

Built by the Douglas Aircraft Company, the S-IVB was the “brain” of the launch vehicle and the key to the entire lunar mission. Powered by a single J-2 engine, this stage had a unique and essential capability: it could be restarted in space. Its flight profile was a ballet of orbital mechanics. It would fire once for several minutes to push the Apollo spacecraft into a stable “parking orbit” around the Earth. It would then coast, sometimes for hours, as the crew and mission control performed final checkouts. Then, at the precise moment, over the Pacific Ocean, the J-2 engine would re-ignite. This was the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) burn – a six-minute, full-throttle push to accelerate the spacecraft to 25,000 mph, the “escape velocity” needed to break free of Earth’s gravity and begin the three-day coast to the Moon.

This three-stage design also tells a deep, elegant engineering story through its fuel choices. The S-IC first stage burned RP-1, a highly refined form of kerosene, and liquid oxygen (LOX). RP-1 is a dense fuel; it packs a lot of energy into a small volume. This makes it an excellent choice for a first stage, where you need maximum thrust and brute force to punch through the thick lower atmosphere, and where the physical size of the tanks is a primary design driver.

The S-II and S-IVB upper stages, by contrast, burned liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen. Liquid hydrogen is the opposite of RP-1. It’s not dense at all; in fact, it’s the lightest element in the universe, which requires massive, heavily-insulated tanks to hold it. But it is supremely efficient. It has a very high “specific impulse,” which is the rocket-science equivalent of gas mileage. It provides more thrust for every pound of fuel burned per second than any other chemical fuel.

This two-fuel architecture was a brilliant optimization. The Saturn V used a “brute-force” dense fuel for the initial climb, then switched to a high-efficiency, lightweight fuel for the final, high-velocity push to the Moon. It was the perfect solution for its time.

The Power of F-1

The heart of the Saturn V’s power, the source of its ground-shaking thunder, was its first stage propulsion. The S-IC was powered by a cluster of five Rocketdyne F-1 engines, the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engines ever developed.

The numbers are staggering. Each F-1 engine, standing 19 feet tall and 12 feet wide at its nozzle, generated 1.5 million pounds of thrust. The cluster of five gave the Saturn V a total liftoff thrust of 7.5 million pounds. That’s more power than 85 Hoover Dams. In its two-and-a-half-minute burn, the S-IC’s five engines consumed 4.5 million pounds of propellant, pumping it at a rate of 42,500 gallons per minute.

The F-1 engine used a “gas-generator” cycle. This is a rugged, relatively straightforward design where a portion of the propellants are burned in a separate, smaller combustion chamber (the “gas generator”) to create hot gas. This gas is then used to spin the massive turbopumps that force the main propellants into the engine’s combustion chamber. The (inefficient, sooty) exhaust from this generator is then simply dumped overboard, which is why launch footage shows two smaller exhaust pipes next to the main F-1 nozzle. It’s not the most efficient design, but in the 1960s, it was the most reliable way to build an engine of this scale.

The F-1’s development was famously perilous. It was plagued by a phenomenon known as “combustion instability,” a violent, uncontrolled vibration that could, and did, destroy engines in milliseconds. It’s like a deafening, continuous explosion, and it was the single greatest technical barrier to building large rocket engines.

This is where the Saturn V’s success is thrown into its sharpest relief. The Soviet Union, in its race to the Moon, was developing its own moon rocket, the N1. The Soviets, brilliant rocket engineers, never solved the problem of combustion instability in a large engine. They couldn’t build their own F-1. Their solution was to bypass the problem: instead of five large, stable engines, they would cluster thirty smaller, less stable engines on the N1’s first stage. The plumbing, controls, and vibration dynamics of such a complex system, managed with 1960s-era computers, were a recipe for disaster. All four uncrewed N1 launch attempts ended in catastrophic failure, with one explosion completely vaporizing the launch pad.

The fact that Rocketdyne’s engineers in America did solve the F-1’s instability – ultimately by installing a series of precisely designed copper “baffles” inside the injector plate, much like dividers in a showerhead, to break up the “screaming” – was one of the single greatest, and least-heralded, engineering victories that put Americans on the Moon.

Building the Giant: A 1960s Manufacturing Miracle

How do you build a rocket 33 feet in diameter in an era before advanced robotics and automated manufacturing? The answer is: with an army of skilled craftsmen, an immense amount of manual labor, and a collection of custom-built tools the size of buildings.

The S-IC stages were manufactured at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, a government-owned facility operated by Boeing. The massive propellant tanks were not built from composites or milled from single pieces of metal. They were constructed, piece by piece, from massive aluminum alloy panels. The enormous, curved domes at the end of each tank were assembled from “eight pie-shaped gores and a polar cap,” all of which had to be manually fusion-welded together with perfect precision. The cylindrical skin panels were then welded to these end domes, a process that required massive, custom-built vertical assembly towers to hold the components in place as welders did their work.

This was an artisanal process, performed on an industrial scale. It was slow, incredibly expensive, and its success depended entirely on the precision and skill of the human welders and inspectors. This 1960s-era manufacturing style is a key reason the Saturn V was a “monument” and not a “product.” It could not be mass-produced. The industrial base created to build it was just as specialized as the rocket itself, a workforce and a set of tools dedicated to a single project. When the Apollo program ended, this industrial base was largely dismantled. The plans and knowledge were saved, but the physical capability to build a Saturn V simply evaporated.

The Cost of the Moon

The Saturn V was the ultimate expression of a “cost-plus,” government-funded national project. It was not a commercial venture. NASA was not a customer; it was the manager of a national mobilization. This was reflected in its budget. At the height of the Apollo program in the mid-1960s, NASA’s budget consumed over 4% of the entire U.S. federal budget.

The total cost of Project Apollo, from 1960 to 1973, is estimated to be $257 billion, when adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars. It was a staggering investment.

Of that, the “Launch Vehicles” portion of the budget – which included the development of the Saturn I, the Saturn IB, and the mighty Saturn V – cost approximately $96 billion in 2020 dollars. Other analyses, focusing just on the Saturn V project itself, place its development cost at around $50 to $54 billion.

The result of this investment, combined with the artisanal, single-use manufacturing process, was a per-launch cost that is almost incomprehensible today. Each Saturn V launch is estimated to have cost approximately $1.4 billion in today’s money.

This cost must be understood in context. It was for a single-use, disposable product. On every flight, the entire 363-foot-tall, 6.2-million-pound vehicle was discarded. The S-IC first stage was dropped in the Atlantic Ocean. The S-II second stage was also destroyed during re-entry. The S-IVB third stage was either sent crashing into the Moon to provide data for seismometers or, in later missions, flown into an orbit around the sun.

This economic model was only acceptable, or even thinkable, because the goal was geopolitical. The Saturn V was the most expensive, powerful, and successful one-time-use tool ever built by humanity.

Part 2: The Commercial Contender: New Glenn

Fifty-two years after the last Saturn V launched Skylab, the age of the expendable, government-funded colossus has given way to a new era. This new age is defined not by a single national race, but by a competitive, commercial market. And it’s in this new landscape that the second titan of this story, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, has just, in November 2025, become fully operational.

A New Philosophy: Launch, Land, Repeat

At 322 feet tall and 23 feet in diameter, New Glenn is an undeniable “heavy-lift” rocket. It is shorter than the Saturn V, and its 23-foot (7-meter) diameter is narrower than the Saturn’s 33-foot girth. But it is still a giant of the modern age. It’s a two-stage rocket, and like the Saturn V, its upper stage is a high-performance hydrogen-fueled machine.

But that is where the similarities end.

The entire design, philosophy, and business model of New Glenn is built around one, central idea: the first stage, the single most expensive part of the rocket, must be reusable. It is not an experiment. It is not an add-on. It is the core economic imperative. The New Glenn first stage is designed to fly, return to Earth, and fly again for a minimum of 25 flights.

This philosophy dictates its mission profile. After lifting off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, the first stage burns for several minutes before separating. While the second stage continues to orbit with the payload, the first stage booster performs a 180-degree flip and begins its journey home. It uses a set of aerodynamic surfaces – wing-like “strakes” and four steerable “fins” – to guide itself through the atmosphere. It then re-ignites a-subset of its engines for a series of burns to slow down, ultimately performing a gentle, propulsive landing on a custom-built, moving recovery ship named Jacklyn, stationed hundreds of miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. This is done to “drastically reduce launch costs” and change the economics of spaceflight from one-off, expensive events to a more routine, airline-like model.

This new, economics-driven philosophy is evident in every part of New Glenn’s design. The most obvious is its payload fairing, the nose cone that protects the satellite during launch. At 7 meters (23 feet) wide, it is massive, offering “twice the volume” of its 5-meter class competitors. This wasn’t designed to hold a single, custom-built Apollo spacecraft. It was designed as a “freight truck,” optimized for the modern commercial market: it can launch the largest, most powerful national security satellites, or it can be packed full of dozens of commercial satellites at once, such as those for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation.

The reusability is what allows Blue Origin to compete on price, and the 7-meter fairing is what allows it to compete on capability. This design philosophy is the complete inverse of the Saturn V’s. Saturn V was built for maximum performance, with cost as an afterthought. New Glenn is built for maximum economics, sacrificing some of the raw, expendable performance of its predecessor to achieve a sustainable business model.

The BE-4 Engine: Methane and Reusability

The heart of New Glenn is its engine, the Blue Origin BE-4. The first stage is powered by a cluster of seven of these engines, while the second stage uses two BE-3U engines.

The BE-4 is a powerhouse in its own right. It is, as of 2025, the “most powerful liquefied natural gas (LNG)-fueled” engine ever flown. LNG is simply a purified, liquid form of methane (CH4). Each BE-4 engine produces 550,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. The cluster of seven gives New Glenn a total liftoff thrust of 3.85 million pounds. While this is about half the thrust of a Saturn V, it’s a staggering amount of power and places New Glenn firmly in the heavy-lift category.

The BE-4 also uses a more advanced and efficient engine cycle than the F-1’s gas-generator. It employs an “oxygen-rich staged combustion” cycle. This is a complex design where a portion of the propellant is burned in a pre-burner to spin the turbopumps, but unlike the F-1, that hot, oxygen-rich gas is then fed back into the main combustion chamber. It’s a “closed cycle” that ensures all propellants are fully burned for thrust, leading to higher efficiency.

But the single most important technological choice in the entire rocket, the one that defines its “new” philosophy, is its fuel. The BE-4 runs on methane.

This choice is the key to the entire reusability model, and the reasoning is a perfect example of economics driving engineering.

1. The business model demands reusability.
2. Reusability only makes money if the refurbishment between flights is fast and cheap.
3. The Space Shuttle, for example, failed at this. Its main engines were reusable, but they required thousands of man-hours of costly, time-consuming inspection and repair between every flight.
4. One of the major problems for reusability is the fuel. RP-1 (kerosene), the fuel used by the Saturn V and by SpaceX’s Falcon 9, is a complex mix of hydrocarbons. When it burns, especially in a fuel-rich way, it doesn’t burn completely. It produces soot and oily, tar-like carbon deposits, a phenomenon called “coking.”
5. This coking fouls the engine, clogging injector passages and building up on turbine blades. Cleaning it is a dirty, time-consuming, and expensive part of the refurbishment process.
6. Methane (CH4), by contrast, is a very simple, pure molecule. When it burns with liquid oxygen, it burns cleanly, producing mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor.
7. The BE-4’s methane fuel, simply, does not “coke.” It leaves no sooty residue.

The choice of methane isn’t just a different fuel; it’s the enabling technology for the entire business model. It’s what allows Blue Origin to design for a 25-flight-minimum life, with rapid, airline-style refurbishment. The F-1’s kerosene fuel was fine for a disposable rocket. The BE-4’s methane fuel is the “clean-burning” fuel of a new, reusable era.

Interestingly, while the first stage is revolutionary, the second stage is evolutionary. The two BE-3U engines on the New Glenn upper stage burn liquid hydrogen, the same high-efficiency fuel used by the Saturn V’s upper stages 60 years ago. This shows that after all this time, liquid hydrogen remains the undisputed champion for in-space propulsion, where its high “gas mileage” is needed to place heavy payloads into high-energy orbits.

Building the Giant: A 2020s Manufacturing Revolution

The contrast between the two rockets is just as stark in their manufacturing. The Saturn V’s 33-foot-wide aluminum tanks were built by armies of skilled welders, a manual, artisanal process. New Glenn’s 23-foot-wide structures are built by robots.

Instead of heavy aluminum alloys, New Glenn’s large structures, like its payload fairing, are built from advanced, lightweight composite materials. The manufacturing process for these components is borrowed directly from the 21st-century aerospace industry, like the production of the Boeing 787’s composite fuselage.

The key technology is Automated Fiber Placement (AFP). This is a robotic process where a machine arm, fed by spools of carbon fiber “tape,” lays down thousands of these thin-as-a-human-hair strands onto a massive mold in precise, software-guided patterns. The robot essentially “3D-prints” the rocket’s structure. As the fibers are laid down, they are heated to adhere, forming a single, seamless, and incredibly strong-yet-lightweight component.

This is the 2020s equivalent of the Saturn V’s 1960s welding. But where the Saturn’s manufacturing was manual, heavy, and slow – a process for “building a monument” – New Glenn’s is automated, light, and fast. It’s a process for “building a product.” This modern manufacturing approach allows Blue Origin to build its rockets lighter, faster, and cheaper, making a 25-flight reusable fleet an economically feasible reality.

The Price of Access: A Commercial Business Model

The most dramatic difference between the two titans is their economics. The Saturn V was funded by the U.S. taxpayer through a “cost-plus” contract model, where the government paid for all development and manufacturing costs, plus a fee for the contractor.

New Glenn was built on the opposite model. It was privately funded, with its founder, Jeff Bezos, investing at least $2.5 billion of his own capital into its development. Blue Origin, not the government, bore the financial risk of development.

This new model leads to a staggering difference in price. Where a single Saturn V launch cost an inflation-adjusted $1.4 billion, the commercial, fixed-price cost for a single New Glenn launch is projected to be between $68 million and $110 million.

This isn’t an incremental improvement; it’s a 95% reduction in cost. It is a complete paradigm shift. This 95% drop is the direct, tangible result of the entire philosophy: the private funding, the reusable first stage, the clean-burning methane engines, and the automated composite manufacturing. It’s the economic payoff for 60 years of technological advancement.

The Road to Flight: A New Titan is Operational

For years, New Glenn was a “paper rocket,” a collection of ambitious plans and test hardware. But in 2025, it became a reality. This is the latest information, the news that frames its position as a new, operational titan.

The maiden flight of New Glenn, NG-1, took place on January 16, 2025. It was a partial success, but a hugely important one. The rocket “achieved orbit on its first attempt,” a feat that is exceptionally rare and difficult. It successfully delivered its pathfinder payload, a prototype of its Blue Ring orbital-transfer vehicle, into its intended orbit. The landing of the booster, nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” was described as an “ambitious goal” for a first flight, and the booster was ultimately lost to the sea.

The pressure was on for the second flight. A second failure could be a major setback. But the NG-2 mission, on November 13, 2025, was a “full mission success” from start to finish.

• The Launch: At 3:55 PM EST, the seven BE-4 engines ignited, lifting the rocket majestically from Launch Complex 36.
• The Payloads: The mission’s primary objective was to deploy NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars probes, which it did perfectly. The probes are now in a “loiter orbit,” awaiting their 2026 window to begin their journey to Mars. The rocket also successfully deployed a secondary communications payload for Viasat.
• The Landing: About ten minutes after liftoff, the booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” executed its complex re-entry and landing sequence, touching down for a “picture-perfect landing” on the Jacklyn.

This November 2025 flight was the inflection point. It was the moment New Glenn ceased to be a developmental project and became an operational, viable, and proven launch vehicle. The CEO of Blue Origin, Dave Limp, highlighted the achievement: “never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try.” It proved the reusability model, and as a Blue Origin commentator announced during the broadcast, “We are open for business, baby, on New Glenn!”

Part 3: Head-to-Head: Two Philosophies of Flight

Comparing the Saturn V and New Glenn directly requires more than just looking at a spec sheet. It requires comparing two different philosophies. One was designed for maximum, one-time performance. The other is designed for maximum, long-term economics.

Performance and Power: A Specification Showdown

On paper, the Saturn V looks like the undisputed champion. It was, and is, a “super heavy-lift” vehicle. New Glenn is a “heavy-lift” vehicle. A look at their payload capacities tells this story clearly.

• To Low Earth Orbit (LEO): The Saturn V could launch between 118,000 and 140,000 kg (about 260,000 to 310,000 lbs) to LEO. New Glenn, in its reusable configuration, can launch 45,000 kg (about 99,000 lbs).
• To the Moon (Trans-Lunar Injection, TLI): The Saturn V could send an astonishing 43,500 to 47,000 kg(about 96,000 to 103,000 lbs) all the way to the Moon. This was the entire, fully-fueled Apollo spacecraft and lander. New Glenn, in its reusable configuration, can send 7,000 kg (about 15,000 lbs) to that same trajectory.

A surface-level look shows the Saturn V was three times more powerful to LEO and nearly seven times more powerful to the Moon. This is the “payload fallacy” – it’s a true statement, but it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.

The Saturn V’s numbers are for a fully expendable rocket, where every drop of fuel and every piece of hardware is used to get the payload to its destination. The New Glenn’s numbers are for a reusable rocket. This means New Glenn must pay a massive “reusability penalty.” It has to carry the “dead weight” of landing legs, aerodynamic fins, and thermal-protection systems for its entire flight. More importantly, it must reserve a large portion of its first-stage propellant not for the payload, but for the “fly-back” and landing burns.

This penalty is what cuts into the raw payload performance. The Saturn V didn’t have to save fuel for the trip home.

The real comparison for New Glenn is not its 1960s predecessor, but its 2020s competitors. Its main rival, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, can lift about 30,000 kg to LEO in its reusable configuration. New Glenn’s 45,000 kg reusable capacity is significantly larger. It’s not designed to be a Saturn V; it’s designed to beat the Falcon Heavy and make expendable rockets like the Ariane 6 and Vulcan Centaur economically uncompetitive.

Engines and Propellants: Kerosene vs. Methane

The engine comparison tells the whole story in miniature.

The F-1 (Kerosene) was the perfect engine for the 1960s. Its RP-1 fuel was dense, well-understood by engineers, and provided the massive sea-level thrust needed for a vehicle of the Saturn V’s weight. Its relatively simple “gas-generator” cycle was reliable enough for a single-use rocket. The fact that it burned “dirty” and produced soot and “coking” was completely irrelevant. The engines were just going to be dumped in the ocean. The F-1 was all about maximum expendable power.

The BE-4 (Methane) is the perfect engine for the 2020s. Its “staged combustion” cycle is more complex but more efficient. Its methane fuel is the key. The clean-burning nature of methane is the enabling technology that makes cheap, rapid reusability a practical reality. The 60-year-old F-1 is still more powerful on a per-engine basis, but the BE-4’s design – its fuel, its cycle, its reusability – makes it part of a sustainable business, which the F-1 could never be.

Expendable vs. Reusable: The Great Economic Divide

This is the central, defining difference between the two titans. The Saturn V’s economic model was simple: 13 rockets were built, and 13 rockets were destroyed. The entire, staggering cost of manufacturing the vehicle was borne by a single launch.

New Glenn’s economic model is that of a modern airline. Blue Origin will build a fleet of boosters, and the goal is to fly each of those boosters 25 times or more. The high, fixed cost of manufacturing the booster is not a “launch cost”; it’s a “capital investment.” That cost is then amortized over those 25+ flights, drastically lowering the cost of each individual launch.

This explains the payload trade-off. The business case for New Glenn is that total payload capacity is not the only metric that matters; cost per kilogram is what defines the modern market. By launching 25 times, New Glenn’s fixed costs are so low that it can deliver its 45,000 kg to LEO for a fraction of what an expendable rocket would cost. This, Blue Origin is betting, will make it a market leader.

Part 4: The New Heavy-Lift Landscape

To truly understand New Glenn, it’s not enough to compare it to its 1960s predecessor. As an aerospace analyst, it’s essential to situate it within its actual competitive landscape as of late 2025. Its successful NG-2 mission and booster landing did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in a crowded, aggressive, and rapidly evolving market for launch services.

The Crowded Market: New Glenn’s Competitors

As of November 2025, New Glenn is the “new kid on the block,” entering a heavy-lift market dominated by SpaceX, with legacy providers like United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Arianespace in a state of transition, and a new “super heavy” rocket, Starship, looming on the horizon.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy

This is New Glenn’s most direct and immediate competitor. The Falcon Heavy is also a partially-reusable, heavy-lift rocket, built by clustering three Falcon 9 boosters. In its most common, reusable configuration (recovering all three boosters), the Falcon Heavy can lift about 30,000 kg to LEO.

This is where New Glenn’s design gives it an edge. Its reusable 45,000 kg payload capacity is significantly higher than the Falcon Heavy’s. Furthermore, its massive 7-meter fairing offers far more volume than the Falcon’s 5.2-meter fairing, a key advantage for launching large, complex satellites. SpaceX has the massive advantage of a long and proven flight history, but with its successful Nov 2025 landing, New Glenn is now positioned as the more capable reusable heavy-lift option on the market.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS)

The SLS is the spiritual successor to the Saturn V. It is a government-funded, non-reusable, “cost-plus” rocket, built with a combination of new hardware and legacy hardware from the Space Shuttle program. It is the only rocket currently flying that is in the “super heavy-lift” class, and it is the rocket that is currently launching NASA’s crewed Artemis missions to the Moon.

SLS and New Glenn represent the two warring philosophies of the 2020s. SLS is the Saturn V model: incredibly powerful, incredibly expensive (at over $2 billion per launch), and tied to a single government program. New Glenn is the commercial model: cheaper, reusable, and flexible. They do not compete for the same commercial contracts.

SpaceX Starship

This is New Glenn’s existential competitor. Starship, which is still in its flight testing phase in 2025, is a “super heavy” vehicle designed to be fully reusable (both the booster and the upper stage). If it works as planned, its 150+ tonne payload capacity will dwarf even the Saturn V, and its operational model could make New Glenn’s “partially reusable” design look obsolete.

However, as of November 2025, Starship is still deep in development, having yet to complete a fully successful orbital mission and recovery. New Glenn, by contrast, has just successfully landed its booster from an operational, payload-delivering mission for a NASA customer. New Glenn is here now. It is a proven, operational rocket, while Starship remains a developmental prospect.

New Glenn’s Diverse Manifest

This is New Glenn’s greatest strength and the direct, strategic opposite of the Saturn V’s fatal weakness. The Saturn V had one customer (NASA) and one mission (Apollo). When that one customer canceled that one mission, the rocket program was finished.

New Glenn, by contrast, has been built from the ground up to serve a diversified “book of business” across multiple market sectors. This diverse manifest makes it a resilient, long-term enterprise that isn’t dependent on a single program.

Commercial (The Anchor Tenant)

The cornerstone of New Glenn’s manifest is the massive contract with Amazon for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation. Blue Origin has 12 firm launches booked, with options for 15 more. This is the perfect “anchor tenant.” It provides a stable, long-term revenue stream that will allow Blue Origin to ramp up its manufacturing and launch cadence. New Glenn also has contracts with other commercial operators, such as AST SpaceMobile, to launch their large broadband satellites.

National Security (The Prestige)

New Glenn is also being certified to fly high-value missions for the U.S. Space Force under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. The successful NG-2 flight was, in fact, its second NSSL certification flight. This is a highly lucrative, stable, and high-prestige market. The rocket’s 7-meter fairing is a key selling point, as it’s one of the only vehicles capable of launching the next generation of large, complex national reconnaissance (spy) satellites.

NASA & Exploration (The Future)

With the NG-2 flight, New Glenn is now a proven partner for NASA, opening the door to a deep and integrated future with the agency.

• Science: It has just successfully launched its first NASA science mission, ESCAPADE, to Mars.
• Artemis: This is the most significant part of its future. Blue Origin holds a $3.4 billion NASA contract to develop and build the Blue Moon lunar lander, which will be the vehicle that transports Artemis astronauts from lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon. New Glenn is the designated launch vehicle for this lander.

This creates a “full-stack,” vertically-integrated business model that is the new paradigm for 21st-century spaceflight. Blue Origin is using its own rocket (New Glenn) to launch its own lunar lander (Blue Moon) to fulfill its NASA contract (Artemis). This is a level of integration that defines the new commercial era, a stark contrast to the 1960s model of NASA managing a vast web of separate, independent contractors.

Summary

The story of the Saturn V versus New Glenn is not a simple comparison of thrust and payload. It is the story of two entirely different eras in human history, reflected in the magnificent machines they produced.

The Saturn V was a magnificent, expendable colossus. It was the pinnacle of 1960s technology, a “cost-plus” project forged by a nation at the peak of its industrial and political will. Its mandate was not commercial; it was geopolitical. It was built to achieve a singular, monumental goal: to walk on the Moon. It was a perfect, disposable tool, and its $1.4 billion-per-launch adjusted cost was the price of victory in the Cold War. It was, and remains, a testament to what a government-funded, mission-focused program can achieve. It had one job, it did that job 13 times perfectly, and then it was retired to museums.

New Glenn, which as of November 2025 has just proven its full, reusable capabilities, is the product of a new, more sustainable philosophy. It’s a reusable, commercial workhorse, built not by a government to win a race, but by a private company to serve a market. Its methane-fueled BE-4 engines, its robotically-built composite structures, and its $68 million price tag are not just technological upgrades; they are the enablers of a new economic model. Its success is measured not in singular “flags and footprints” but in launch cadence, cost-per-kilogram, and the resilience of its diverse manifest – from Amazon’s Kuiper to national security and NASA’s Artemis program.

The Saturn V was a brilliant dead end. It opened the door to the Moon but was too specialized and expensive to let anyone else follow. New Glenn is not a replacement. It is a “road to space,” a heavy-lift freight service designed to lower the cost of entry for an entire industry, built on the revolutionary, and now-proven, idea that the most expensive and powerful parts of the rocket should come home and fly again.

Last update on 2025-12-19 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API