New Glenn vs. Vulcan Centaur

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2025: The Year the Rivals Took Flight

The heavy-lift launch industry, long-dominated by a few established players, was re-written in 2025. After years of development, towering new rockets from two of America’s most prominent aerospace companies have finally moved from factory floors and test stands to the launch pad. Both Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur have now flown, marking the start of a new, high-stakes rivalry. As of November 2025, both vehicles have tasted space, but they have achieved two very different, and equally important, victories.

For Blue Origin, the validation was fresh. On November 13, 2025, the company’s second New Glenn rocket, known as NG-2, thundered to life from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The mission, which followed several days of delays due to both terrestrial weather and a severe solar storm, was a watershed moment for the company. The 321-foot-tall rocket performed flawlessly, carrying its primary payloads – NASA’s twin ESCAPADE Mars probes – on the first leg of their journey to the Red Planet. The mission also successfully deployed a demonstration payload for Viasat, designed to test a new telemetry relay service for NASA.

But the main event happened minutes after liftoff. After separating from the second stage, the massive 188-foot-tall first-stage booster, nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds”, executed a perfect propulsive descent, landing vertically on the company’s autonomous landing platform, Jacklyn, waiting several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic. Cheers erupted in Blue Origin’s mission control as the booster settled onto the ship’s deck, a feat the company had failed to achieve on its maiden flight in January 2025. With this single flight, New Glenn not only accomplished its first interplanetary mission for NASA but also proved its foundational, long-term economic model: full-booster reusability.

While Blue Origin was proving its revolutionary technology, its rival, ULA, had spent the year proving its operational reliability. ULA’s milestone came months earlier. On August 12, 2025, a Vulcan Centaur rocket in its “VC4S” configuration – meaning it flew with four strap-on solid rocket boosters – lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41. This wasn’t a test; it was Vulcan’s first operational mission for its most important customer: the U.S. Space Force.

The mission, designated USSF-106, was a complex one. It carried the Space Force’s critical Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) and other payloads. The Vulcan rocket performed exactly as designed, delivering the satellites directly into a high-energy geosynchronous orbit. The flight was a clear demonstration of Vulcan’s power and precision, and it cemented the rocket’s status as a fully certified provider for the nation’s most sensitive National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions.

The last 11 months have set the stage for a new duopoly. One company, ULA, has methodically checked the boxes, earned its government certification, and is now operationally serving its anchor tenant. The other, Blue Origin, has just passed its own critical flight test, demonstrating a technically ambitious reusability model that could one day upend the market’s economics. These two rockets, which are now competing head-to-head for the most lucrative contracts in the world, were born from two completely different philosophies.

A Tale of Two Philosophies: Why They Were Built

To understand the differences in the hardware, one must first understand the fundamental “why” behind their creation. New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur are not just competitors; they are answers to two entirely different questions. One rocket was built to create a new, visionary future in space. The other was built to pragmatically solve a set of urgent, real-world problems.

New Glenn is the physical manifestation of a long-term, private vision. It is the vehicle Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos believes is necessary to achieve his goal of “millions of people living and working in space”. In this framework, New Glenn is not the end-product; it’s the “road to space,” the heavy-lift transport system required to make the vision possible.

The rocket’s entire design is dictated by the massive projects it is intended to support. Its development is directly tied to Blue Origin’s other major programs, for which it will serve as the launch vehicle. The first of these is the Blue Moon lunar lander. Blue Origin is under a major NASA contract to develop this lander to support the Artemis program, and the New Glenn is specifically designed to launch the Blue Moon Mk.1 lander in a single flight. The rocket is also the intended launcher for a future commercial space station, once known as Orbital Reef.

These internal, “sister” projects explain New Glenn’s ambitious design choices. It needs a massive payload fairing to hold a wide lunar lander. It needs to be fully reusable to dramatically lower the cost of launching the dozens of modules needed for a space station. Its name, honoring John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, is a deliberate statement of its human spaceflight ambitions. New Glenn exists to enable a new space-faring economy that its parent company intends to build.

Vulcan Centaur, by contrast, was born from a pragmatic mandate. It was developed by United Launch Alliance, the long-standing joint venture of aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing. ULA has been the U.S. government’s most trusted launch provider for decades, but it was facing a trio of existential threats, and Vulcan was designed to solve all three.

First, ULA needed to replace its own aging and expensive fleets. For years, ULA operated two different rocket families: the Atlas V and the Delta IV. Maintaining two separate launch systems, with their own supply chains and ground crews, was inefficient. Vulcan was designed to be a single, modular rocket that could replace both the Atlas V and the powerful, triple-bodied Delta IV Heavy, consolidating ULA’s operations into one, more cost-effective system.

Second, and most urgently, ULA had to solve a pressing national security vulnerability. Its workhorse rocket, the Atlas V, was powered by the highly reliable Russian-made RD-180 engine. After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the U.S. Congress mandated that the military end its reliance on Russian propulsion for its national security launches. Vulcan’s development was a direct response to this mandate. By using American-made engines, Vulcan ensures ULA can provide a sovereign launch capability for the U.S. Space Force. The successful USSF-106 mission in August 2025 was hailed by officials as the moment that “officially end[ed] our reliance on Russian-made engines”.

Third, ULA had to start competing on price. Its legacy rockets, while perfect in their reliability, were prohibitively expensive and could not compete in the new commercial market being defined by SpaceX. Vulcan was designed to be significantly cheaper to manufacture and operate, allowing ULA to secure its role as a primary NSSL provider while also bidding for commercial contracts.

These origin stories define the rockets. New Glenn is a visionary’s tool, built big and reusable to create a new market. Vulcan is a pragmatist’s solution, built to be modular, reliable, and politically sound to protect an existing, high-stakes market. This fundamental difference in philosophy is visible in every aspect of their design, starting with their shared, beating heart.

The Shared Heart: A Rival’s Engine Powers Both

One of the most complex and fascinating relationships in modern industry is at the base of both rockets. In an unprecedented example of “co-opetition,” both Vulcan and New Glenn are powered by the same engine, the BE-4, which is designed, manufactured, and sold by Blue Origin. This single piece of hardware has created a deeply tangled supply chain that puts ULA in the unique position of being dependent on its direct competitor for its primary propulsion.

The BE-4, or Blue Engine 4, is a powerhouse of modern rocketry. It is the most powerful liquefied natural gas (LNG) fueled engine ever developed and the first oxygen-rich staged combustion engine made in the United States. It’s fueled by liquid methane and liquid oxygen, a propellant choice favored by modern rocket designers. Methane burns much cleaner than the rocket-grade kerosene used by rockets like the Atlas V or Falcon 9, leaving behind less soot, or “coking.” This lack of residue makes the engines easier to refurbish and reuse, a key consideration for New Glenn. Each BE-4 engine is capable of producing 550,000 pounds of thrust at sea level.

While both rockets use this engine, they do so in very different ways. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur uses a pair of two BE-4 engines on its main booster stage. Blue Origin’s New Glenn, in contrast, uses a massive cluster of seven BE-4 engines on its first stage. It is this seven-engine cluster that gives New Glenn its thunderous liftoff thrust of over 3.8 million pounds, which was on full display during its recent November launch.

This arrangement is the result of a high-stakes decision ULA made in 2018. To solve its Russian engine problem, ULA held a competition for a new, American-made engine. It selected Blue Origin’s BE-4 over a competing offer from legacy engine-maker Aerojet Rocketdyne. This decision locked ULA into a strategic gamble. On the one hand, it secured a path away from the RD-180 and allowed Vulcan’s development to proceed. On the other, it made ULA’s entire business model – its 38-launch contract with Amazon’s Project Kuiper, its multi-billion-dollar NSSL contract – completely dependent on Blue Origin’s engine factory.

For ULA, this is a significant strategic risk. The company’s desired launch cadence, which it hopes to ramp up to support its massive manifest, is captive to Blue Origin’s BE-4 production rate. Every single Vulcan rocket that rolls out to the pad needs two BE-4 engines, and ULA can’t build them itself. Any production delays or priority conflicts at Blue Origin’s factories in Kent, Washington, and Huntsville, Alabama, could ground the entire Vulcan fleet.

For Blue Origin, the deal was a masterstroke.

First, it gained a paying customer that helped fund the engine’s final development. Second, it gained invaluable “flight heritage” for its new engine on its competitor’s rocket. The BE-4 engine’s first-ever space flight was not on a New Glenn, but on ULA’s Vulcan Centaur in January 2024. Blue Origin effectively used ULA as a test program, gathering priceless data on how its engines perform in a real launch environment before it ever had to risk its own booster. Third, it now has a direct, real-time line of sight into its competitor’s production flow and launch schedule.

This creates a serious production-priority question. ULA needs a steady-stream of two-engine sets to feed its high-cadence expendable rocket factory. Blue Origin needs a large up-front batch of seven engines for each reusable booster it builds. How Blue Origin manages its engine production line – and whose rocket it prioritizes when demand inevitably outstrips supply – will be one of the defining business dramas of the next few years.

The Tale of the Tape: Comparing Physical Stature

The rivals’ opposing philosophies are most obvious in their physical size. A non-technical comparison of their dimensions reveals that one is a giant built for volume, while the other is a more traditional, modular vehicle.

New Glenn is an absolute behemoth. Standing 98 meters (321-322 feet) tall, it’s a massive rocket, towering over its competitor. Its most defining feature is its 7-meter (23-foot) diameter. This diameter is uniform from the base of its 7-engine cluster all the way to the top of its payload fairing.

This 7-meter-wide “garage” is New Glenn’s main selling point. Blue Origin claims this fairing offers “twice the volume of… five-meter class” rockets. This feature is about more than just lifting heavy payloads; it’s about lifting big payloads. It gives satellite and spacecraft designers an enormous amount of space to work with, allowing them to design probes, landers, and station modules that are wide and bulky, rather than being forced to “fold” them like origami to fit inside a narrower, 5-meter-class fairing. This volume is precisely what is needed to launch the wide, squat Blue Moon lunar lander or large-diameter modules for a future space station.

Vulcan Centaur, on the other hand, is a more traditional workhorse. It’s significantly shorter than New Glenn, with a height that varies depending on which payload fairing the customer needs. Its “standard” configuration stands 61.6 meters (202 feet) tall, while its “long” fairing configuration reaches 67.3 meters (221 feet).

Its diameter is a uniform 5.4 meters (18 feet). This is an industry-standard size, directly inherited from the design lineage of the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. Vulcan’s 5.4-meter-diameter fairing comes in two lengths: the 15.5-meter (51-foot) standard and the 21.3-meter (70-foot) long version. This provides a “room-sized closet” of payload volume – more than enough for the vast majority of commercial satellites and the national security payloads it was specifically designed to carry, but it doesn’t offer the revolutionary, “warehouse-sized” volume of its 7-meter competitor.

These physical differences are a direct reflection of their intended markets. Vulcan’s 5.4-meter diameter is an evolutionary, proven size that serves its core government customers perfectly. New Glenn’s 7-meter diameter is a revolutionary, ambitious size, built to serve a future market of in-space construction that its parent company is trying to create.

Power and Performance: The Great Payload Paradox

A simple look at the rockets’ specifications reveals one of the most interesting and counter-intuitive facts about this new rivalry. As the data in Table 1 shows, the New Glenn is a much larger rocket and, as expected, it can lift significantly more mass to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). But for missions to higher, more distant orbits, the smaller Vulcan Centaur actually comes out on top. This is the great payload paradox, and it’s a perfect illustration of their different design priorities.

New Glenn, with its massive first stage powered by seven BE-4 engines, is a “bulk hauler”. Its raw power is optimized for lifting immense amounts of mass to Low Earth Orbit. Its stated LEO capacity is 45,000 kg, or 45 metric tons. This absolutely dwarfs the LEO capacity of Vulcan, which, even in its most powerful configuration, can lift 27,200 kg (27.2 metric tons).

This 45-ton-to-LEO capability makes New Glenn the ideal vehicle for building out massive satellite constellations, such as its contracted flights for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, or for hauling the heavy modules needed to construct a space station in orbit. For sheer bulk, New Glenn is the clear winner.

But Vulcan’s design is more nuanced. Its first stage, with only two BE-4 engines, is less powerful on its own, but it was designed to be a modular, “dial-a-rocket” system. ULA can augment the rocket’s thrust by attaching solid rocket boosters (SRBs) to the side of the main core. Customers can choose a configuration with zero, two, four, or six SRBs, allowing ULA to tailor the rocket’s performance (and price) to the specific needs of the mission. This modularity is a core part of its business model: a customer launching a lighter payload doesn’t have to pay for the “wasted” performance of a rocket that’s too big for its needs.

It’s when Vulcan is in its most powerful configuration, with six SRBs (a version known as the “VC6”) that the paradox becomes clear.

• To Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO): Vulcan (VC6) can lift up to 15,300 kg. New Glenn’s max GTO payload is 13,600 kg.
• To Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI): Vulcan (VC6) can lift up to 12,100 kg. New Glenn’s max TLI payload is just 7,000 kg.

How can the smaller rocket lift a heavier payload to these more difficult, high-energy orbits?

Part of the answer lies in New Glenn’s reusability. The payload numbers published for New Glenn (45t to LEO, 13.6t to GTO) assume a reusable flight where the first stage saves a significant amount of propellant to perform its landing burns. An expendable New Glenn (which the company says it doesn’t plan to fly) would have higher performance, but it would violate the company’s core business model.

But the most important reason for this paradox – Vulcan’s “secret weapon” – is not its first stage. It’s the rocket’s second stage.

The Upper Stage: A Battle of Thrust vs. Efficiency

The “Great Payload Paradox” is solved by looking at the top half of the rockets. An upper stage is the smaller, secondary rocket that ignites in the vacuum of space, after the main booster has finished its job and fallen away. It’s this “finishing” stage that performs the final, precise push to get a satellite from its initial “parking orbit” into its final, complex destination, whether that’s a geosynchronous slot 22,000 miles up or a path to another planet. The design philosophies of the Vulcan and New Glenn upper stages are a study in contrasts: one is a hyper-efficient “marathon runner,” the other is a powerful “sprinter.”

ULA’s Vulcan Centaur uses the Centaur V upper stage. This is a modern, 5.4-meter-diameter version of the legendary Centaur, a stage with a storied, 60-year history of success. It’s one of the most reliable and highest-performing upper stages in the world, having sent probes to every planet in the solar system.

The Centaur V is powered by two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engines. This engine is famous in the aerospace community for one thing above all else: efficiency. It uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellants, which is the most efficient, highest-energy chemical combination possible in rocketry. Engineers measure this “gas mileage” as “specific impulse,” and the RL10 is a champion.

This hyper-efficiency means the engine can create a large amount of “push” (or change in velocity) while using very little propellant mass. While the RL10 engines are not very powerful in terms of raw thrust – the two on Vulcan combine to produce about 48,000 pounds of force – they can sip their fuel and burn for a very long time.

This allows the Centaur V to perform multiple, long, gentle burns in orbit. It doesn’t just shove a payload into a basic transfer orbit; it can coast for hours, re-ignite, and precisely sculpt a trajectory. This is what allowed Vulcan, on its USSF-106 mission, to deliver its payloads directly to a geosynchronous orbit, a much more difficult task than dropping them in a “transfer” orbit. This high-energy, high-precision capability is exactly what ULA’s core NSSL customers need for their priceless, irreplaceable satellites. The Centaur V is a “marathon runner,” and it’s why Vulcan wins the high-energy performance race.

New Glenn’s second stage, called the GS2, is a completely different animal. It is powered by two Blue Origin BE-3U engines. Like the RL10, the BE-3U also uses the same efficient liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. The difference is thrust.

The BE-3U is a “sprinter.” It is incredibly powerful. The two BE-3U engines on New Glenn’s upper stage combine to produce over 350,000 pounds of thrust (1,600 kN). This is more than seven times the thrust of Vulcan’s upper stage.

This design choice means the New Glenn upper stage can complete its mission very, very quickly, with a short, powerful burn. This brute-force approach can be an advantage, as it minimizes the time the rocket spends “fighting” Earth’s gravity (a factor engineers call “gravity drag”), which can be very effective for LEO missions.

Here is the complete solution to the payload paradox. Vulcan’s “marathon runner” (Centaur V) is a hyper-efficient, low-thrust stage. It sips its fuel, allowing its lightweight design to push heavier payloads to distant destinations like GTO and the Moon. New Glenn’s “sprinter” (GS2) is optimized with high thrust, which works well with its massive LEO-hauling first stage, but it isn’t as efficient as the Centaur V in the long-distance, high-energy marathon. ULA chose heritage and an almost-magical efficiency to serve its high-value government customers. Blue Origin chose raw power to get its big payloads to LEO quickly.

Reusability: A Fundamental Split in Strategy

If the upper stages show a difference in engineering, the reusability plans show a fundamental split in company-wide philosophy. New Glenn was designed from its inception to be fully and rapidly reusable. Vulcan was designed to be expendable, with a reusability plan being developed as a future add-on. As of November 2025, one of these plans has just been proven to work; the other has yet to fly.

New Glenn’s “all-in” approach is core to its identity. The rocket was designed from the ground up for “operational reusability,” with a goal of flying the same first-stage booster (GS1) a minimum of 25 times. The reusability method is propulsive landing, the same high-risk, high-reward method pioneered and perfected by SpaceX.

The process is an engineering marvel. After separation, the 18-story booster, traveling at hypersonic speed, must flip itself around, perform a series of engine burns to slow its descent through the atmosphere, and then land itself vertically, with pinpoint precision, on the deck of the moving Jacklyn landing platform.

This ambitious plan has been put to the test twice in 2025, with dramatically different results.

• NG-1 (Maiden Flight, Jan 2025): The rocket’s first launch was a success in getting to orbit, but the booster landing failed. Telemetry was lost during the descent, and the booster, which had been nicknamed “Jarvis,” was lost to the Atlantic.
• NG-2 (Second Flight, Nov 2025): After a 10-month investigation and corrective action, Blue Origin tried again. This time, it was a spectacular success. The “Never Tell Me The Odds” booster descended from the edge of space and touched down perfectly on the Jacklyn. This was a massive technical validation, making Blue Origin only the second company in history to propulsively recover an orbital-class booster.

Vulcan’s approach to reusability, in contrast, is far more conservative and, as of late 2025, remains entirely theoretical. Every Vulcan rocket that has flown so far – all three of them – has been 100% expendable. The entire booster, including its valuable BE-4 engines, was treated as disposable hardware and was destroyed upon re-entry.

ULA’s plan for reusability is called SMART (Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology). This plan is not to recover the entire 180-foot booster. ULA believes that is too complex. Instead, their plan is to recover only the most expensive part: the engine module, which houses the two BE-4 engines. ULA has stated that this engine section represents about two-thirds of the booster’s total cost.

The planned recovery method is completely different from New Glenn’s. After the booster’s job is done, the engine module will separate from the fuel tanks, deploy an inflatable heat shield to survive re-entry, and then deploy a parachute. It would then be recovered, either from the ocean or, in a more ambitious version, by a helicopter snagging the parachute in mid-air.

The status of the SMART program in November 2025 is that it’s still in development. It is not operational. ULA has completed component-level tests and critical design reviews. The company has indicated that it hopes to begin implementing the first experimental recovery hardware on flights starting sometime in 2026, but no firm date has been set.

These two strategies reveal everything about the companies’ core philosophies. Blue Origin took a high-risk, high-reward gamble. Developing propulsive landing is incredibly difficult, but by succeeding, they have unlocked a path to rapid, “airplane-like” reuse and the dramatic cost-per-launch reductions that come with it. ULA is taking a lower-risk, more pragmatic path. The SMART system is a “bolt-on” solution designed to save some of the cost without a fundamental, and expensive, redesign.

But the gap in progress is now undeniable. Blue Origin has already solved the propulsive landing problem, a feat that took its competitor years. ULA has not yet even test-flown its simpler, engine-only recovery system. This gives New Glenn a significant long-term advantage in the all-important race to lower launch costs.

On the Launch Pad: A 2024-2025 Flight Log

As of November 2025, both rockets are still in their infancy, with only a handful of flights between them. Their early launch manifests show their different paths to “operational” status. Vulcan, with a slight head start, has already graduated to flying for its primary customer, while New Glenn has just completed its critical demonstration phase.

Vulcan’s Path to Flight (Operational):

ULA’s Vulcan Centaur first flew nearly two years ago, in January 2024. Its path to operational status has been methodical.

• Flight 1 (Cert-1), January 8, 2024: This was the maiden flight of Vulcan. It flew in the VC2S configuration (two solid boosters). Its primary payload was Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. The launch itself was a 100% success for ULA, with Vulcan placing the lander on a perfect trans-lunar trajectory. The Peregrinelander, unfortunately, suffered a critical malfunction hours later and failed to reach the Moon, but its failure was in no way related to the Vulcan rocket, which had done its job perfectly.
• Flight 2 (Cert-2), Late 2024: ULA needed a second successful flight to complete its certification for the Space Force. This second flight, Cert-2, flew in late 2024. It also completed all its objectives, despite an anomaly on one of its solid rocket boosters. The rocket’s systems detected the problem and compensated, proving the vehicle’s “robustness” to the satisfaction of its government customer.
• NSSL Certification, March 2025: With two successful test flights in the books, the U.S. Space Force officially certified the Vulcan Centaur for National Security Space Launch missions in March 2025.
• Flight 3 (USSF-106), August 12, 2025: This was Vulcan’s first operational mission, and its first for its newly secured NSSL customer. The successful delivery of the NTS-3 satellite proved Vulcan was no longer a test vehicle, but a fully operational, government-certified heavy-lift rocket.

New Glenn’s Debut (Demonstration Phase):

New Glenn’s flight history is shorter, having only begun in January 2025.

• Flight 1 (NG-1), January 16, 2025: This was the rocket’s maiden flight. It was a partial success. The rocket did successfully reach orbit and deploy its payload, a prototype of Blue Origin’s “Blue Ring” in-space logistics vehicle. However, the all-important booster landing failed, and the first stage was lost.
• Flight 2 (NG-2), November 13, 2025: This was the make-or-break flight. After a 10-month gap, New Glenn flew again. This time, it achieved 100% mission success. It successfully deployed NASA’s ESCAPADE probes and, most importantly, it successfully landed its booster. This flight is also a key part of New Glenn’s own NSSL certification process.

This flight log shows that Vulcan is, as of today, the more mature vehicle. It has three-for-three successful launches and is already flying operational missions. New Glenn is one step behind, having just completed its “final exam” demonstration. It has proven all its systems work, and must now transition from testing to operations.

The Main Event: Carving Up the Market

Rockets, at their core, are tools. They are built to win contracts and serve a market. For New Glenn and Vulcan, their development has been a race to capture two of the largest launch contracts in history: Amazon’s massive Project Kuiper constellation and the U.S. government’s lucrative National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. Both rockets have secured a major piece of both.

Project Kuiper (Amazon’s Constellation):

Amazon is in the process of building Project Kuiper, a mega-constellation of 3,276 satellites in low Earth orbit designed to provide global broadband internet access, in direct competition with SpaceX’s Starlink. To launch this many satellites in just a few years, Amazon went on the largest commercial launch-buying spree in history.

It “spread its bets,” booking dozens of launches across three different rocket families. The breakdown of this massive deal is:

• United Launch Alliance (ULA): 38 launches on the Vulcan Centaur. This is the largest single block of contracts awarded.
• Blue Origin: 12 launches on the New Glenn, with options for 15 more, for a total of 27 possible flights.
• Arianespace: 18 launches on Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket.

While waiting for these new rockets to come online, Amazon has also been using ULA’s retiring Atlas V and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to launch its initial prototype and “protoflight” batches of satellites throughout 2025. Vulcan is expected to take over this contract soon, with each of its flights capable of carrying 45 Kuiper satellites at a time.

This manifest reveals a fascinating and seemingly paradoxical business decision. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, also happens to be the founder of Blue Origin. Yet his own rocket company, Blue Origin, did notreceive the largest share of the launch contract from his other company, Amazon. ULA’s Vulcan did.

This is a clear indicator of market realities. Amazon, the customer, had to be pragmatic. It is in a cutthroat race with Starlink and has binding regulatory deadlines from the FCC to deploy its constellation. It could not afford to bet its entire business plan on its sister company’s rocket, which, at the time the contracts were signed, was still years from flying. Amazon had to book launches on the rockets it believed were most credible and had the highest chance of being ready first. That ULA’s Vulcan won the lion’s share is a massive vote of confidence in ULA’s new vehicle.

However, Blue Origin still benefits from every single one of those ULA launches. Thanks to the BE-4 engine deal, every time ULA launches a batch of Kuiper satellites on a Vulcan rocket, Blue Origin sells ULA two engines. In the Kuiper deal, Bezos has guaranteed that his companies win, no matter which of the two American rockets flies.

National Security Space Launch (NSSL):

This is the “crown jewel” of the U.S. launch market. These are the contracts to launch the Department of Defense’s and intelligence agencies’ most critical, expensive, and sensitive satellites. This market prizes reliability and capability above all else.

Vulcan was built for this market. It is the direct, purpose-built successor to the Atlas V and Delta IV, which had a 100% success record in this role. ULA’s entire strategy was validated in March 2025, when, after its two certification flights, the Space Force officially certified the Vulcan Centaur for NSSL missions. ULA is a certified “Lane 2” provider, the designation for the most critical heavy-lift launches. And it has already begun work, with the successful USSF-106 mission in August 2025. In this market, Vulcan is the established, operational, and trusted provider.

Blue Origin is the challenger. New Glenn is also competing for this lucrative business. The company has already won a “Phase 3 Lane 2” NSSL contract, which makes it an eligible provider, but it cannot be assigned a mission until it is fully certified. The two flights in 2025 were key steps in that certification process. The successful NG-2 mission, in particular, which flew a NASA (government) payload and recovered its booster, is a giant leap toward that certification. New Glenn is now one step closer to being cleared to fly its first mission for the Space Force, but as of today, Vulcan is the only one of the two rivals actually doing so.

Beyond these two main customers, both rockets are building a healthy manifest. Vulcan is contracted to launch the first flights of the Sierra Space Dream Chaser, a reusable spaceplane that will ferry cargo (and eventually, crews) to and from the International Space Station. New Glenn, in addition to its internal Blue Moon customer, has signed contracts with major commercial satellite operators, including Eutelsat, JSAT, and Telesat.

Cost and Cadence: The Path Forward

With both rockets now flying and their initial manifests secured, the long-term competition will be fought on two fronts: cost and cadence. How much does a launch cost, and how many can you fly per year?

The price tag is the first battleground.

• Vulcan: The starting price for a Vulcan Centaur launch is estimated to be around $110 million. This price is variable; adding more solid rocket boosters for a high-energy mission will increase the cost. While this is a significant improvement over its $400-million-plus Delta IV Heavy predecessor, it is still a high price for an expendable rocket.
• New Glenn: Projections for New Glenn are more aggressive, with an estimated price in the $68 million to $110 million range. The entire business model is based on reusability. If Blue Origin can successfully and cheaply refurbish its boosters, it should be able. to offer launches at the low end of that range, in the $60M-$90M bracket. The $18 million NASA paid for the ESCAPADE launch was almost certainly a heavily discounted, introductory price to win a key government customer, but the long-term potential for a sub-$100-million heavy-lift rocket is clear.

This creates the central long-term economic conflict: a fully reusable New Glenn, with its $70M-$80M potential, is vastly cheaper than a $110M expendable Vulcan. This puts immense, existential pressure on ULA to make its “SMART” reusability plan a reality. If ULA can successfully recover and reuse its BE-4 engines, it can slash the cost of its own rocket. If it can’t, it will be in the unsustainable position of selling a premium, single-use product in a market dominated by a reusable competitor.

The second battle is cadence. Both companies are now under pressure to ramp up their launch rates.

• Vulcan: ULA has a massive backlog of 38 Kuiper launches and a steady stream of NSSL missions. It must move from flying once or twice a year to flying once or twice a month. The company has been preparing for this, building up an inventory of Vulcan boosters and BE-4 engines and investing in new ground infrastructure, like a second Vertical Integration Facility (VIF-A), to process two Vulcan rockets at once. Its stated goal of 20 launches in 2025 was not met, but the pressure to achieve a high flight rate in 2026 is enormous.
• New Glenn: Blue Origin’s reusability is the key to its cadence. If it can “wash, rinse, and repeat” its boosters quickly, it can achieve a high launch rate without a massive production factory; it just needs an efficient “flight-line.” After the success of NG-2, Blue Origin’s CEO and Vice President both stated that the team’s primary focus is now on “increasing our cadence and working through our manifest”.

This defines the race ahead. In the short term, ULA has the advantage. Its rocket is certified, its launch processing is proven, and it is already flying for paying customers. In the long term, New Glenn’s technology gives it a powerful advantage. It has just proven its reusable architecture works, unlocking a far superior economic model. The race is on: can Blue Origin ramp up its cadence before ULA can figure out reusability?

Summary

After years of development, 2025 has proven to be the year that two new titans of spaceflight finally arrived. Both Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan Centaur have now reached orbit, each securing a critical, strategic victory that solidifies its role for the next decade.

Vulcan Centaur stands as the pragmatic successor to America’s most reliable launch heritage. It was a rocket forged by necessity: to replace an aging fleet, to end the nation’s reliance on Russian engines, and to keep ULA competitive. Its modular “dial-a-rocket” design and its hyper-efficient Centaur V upper stage make it a high-performance specialist, perfectly tailored for the complex, high-energy orbits demanded by its core national security customers. Having been certified by the Space Force in March 2025 and having already flown its first operational mission in August, Vulcan is, as of today, the proven and trusted workhorse.

New Glenn represents a more ambitious, long-term vision. It is a “bulk hauler,” a giant built not just to serve the existing market but to create a new one. Its defining features are its massive 7-meter-wide fairing, which offers twice the volume of its competitors, and its “all-in” reusable design. Its successful booster landing in November 2025 – after a stinging failure on its first attempt – is a massive technical achievement that validates its long-term economic model. New Glenn is not just a rocket; it is the foundational transport for a future of lunar landers and private space stations.

These two rivals, now battling for the same lucrative NSSL and Project Kuiper contracts, are also inextricably linked. They share a “heart” – the Blue Origin BE-4 engine – in one of the most complex supplier-competitor relationships the industry has ever seen. For the first time in a generation, the United States has two new, capable, American-made heavy-lift rockets. One is the reliable specialist of today. The other is the potential economic powerhouse of tomorrow. Their competition will define the road to space for the next decade.

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