New Glenn vs. Falcon 9

The Philosophies of SpaceX and Blue Origin

The world is witnessing the construction of two colossal, reusable rockets: the Falcon 9 and the New Glenn. These aren’t just comparable machines; they are the physical embodiments of two radically different visions for the future of humanity, championed by two of the wealthiest and most driven individuals of the modern era. To understand the rockets, one must first understand the philosophies that forged them. The engineering decisions, from the choice of fuel to the shape of the landing fins, are a direct reflection of their founders’ ultimate goals.

The Falcon 9 is the signature creation of SpaceX, a company founded by Elon Musk. New Glenn is the flagship of Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos. These two launch vehicles are poised to dominate the commercial and government launch market for the next decade, but they were built to serve two very different masters. One is a pragmatic workhorse designed to fund a mission of human expansion; the other is a heavy-lift foundation for a new industrial economy in Earth’s orbit. Their competition is not just about market share; it’s a clash of ideologies about why humanity should go to space in the first place.

SpaceX: The Mission to Mars

SpaceX was founded in 2002 with a singular, audacious belief: that humanity’s future depends on “making life multiplanetary.” This vision, articulated by Elon Musk, is not a metaphor. The company’s explicit, long-term goal is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. This objective informs every strategic and engineering decision SpaceX makes. The company’s culture is one of aggressive timelines, rapid iteration, and a relentless, singular focus on this ultimate goal.

In this context, the Falcon 9 rocket is best understood as a means to an end. It is not the final vehicle in SpaceX’s roadmap; that designation belongs to the Starship, the fully reusable transportation system designed to carry the first colonists and cargo to Mars. The Falcon 9 and its larger sibling, the Falcon Heavy, are the economic engines. Their primary purpose, beyond serving a growing list of commercial and government customers, is to generate the massive revenue and technical expertise required to fund the development of Starship.

This explains SpaceX’s entire development philosophy. The company’s approach has been characterized by “learning in public.” It pushed rockets to their limits, experienced dramatic and public failures, analyzed the data, and flew again in a matter of weeks. This rapid, iterative, hardware-rich development cycle is what allowed SpaceX to solve orbital-class booster reusability years ahead of any competitor. The Falcon 9’s market dominance, with a launch cadence that eclipses all other private companies and most nations, is a byproduct of its need to be ruthlessly efficient, cheap, and reliable. It is the pragmatic, revenue-generating machine funding a visionary, almost science-fiction-like goal. It is the workhorse paying the bills for the dream of a new world.

Blue Origin: Building the Road to Space

Blue Origin was founded in 2000, two years before SpaceX, but operated in near-total secrecy for its first decade and a half. Its philosophy, championed by Jeff Bezos, is encapsulated in its vision: “enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in space for the benefit of Earth.” This is a significant and fundamental difference from the SpaceX mission. Blue Origin’s goal is not to leave Earth, but to save it.

Jeff Bezos envisions a future where heavy industry and resource extraction are moved off-planet, allowing Earth to be preserved as a “garden” for human civilization. This requires a vast, self-sustaining industrial and economic infrastructure in orbit and on the Moon. Blue Origin’s role is to build the “road to space” – the heavy-lift transportation and in-space systems necessary for this new economy to exist.

This philosophy is reflected in the company’s motto, Gradatim Ferociter, Latin for “Step by Step, Ferociously.” Blue Origin’s approach is methodical, patient, and deliberate. Where SpaceX iterated in public with its orbital Falcon 9, Blue Origin spent years perfecting its sub-orbital New Shepard rocket, a smaller vehicle designed for space tourism. It successfully flew and landed New Shepard many times, mastering the physics of propulsive landing in a controlled environment before scaling up to the massive, orbital-class New Glenn.

The New Glenn rocket is the first piece of this grand infrastructure. It’s not just a launch vehicle; it’s the heavy-lift truck designed to build the factories, solar-power arrays, and habitats of this future space-based economy. This long-term vision explains the company’s “glacial pace” that has been a source of external criticism. Blue Origin wasn’t just building a rocket to compete in the 2020s satellite market; it was taking the time to develop next-generation engine technology (the methane-fueled BE-4) designed to be the foundation for decades to come. This patient, infrastructure-first approach extends to their future plans, such as the Blue Alchemist program to create solar cells from lunar regolith and the concepts for an even larger rocket, New Armstrong. New Glenn is the cornerstone of that vision.

The Reigning Champion: A Profile of the Falcon 9

The SpaceX Falcon 9 is not just a rocket; it’s the undisputed standard against which all other commercial launch vehicles are measured. For the better part of a decade, it has operated in a class of its own, systematically capturing the majority of the global launch market through a combination of relentless reliability, high-cadence operations, and a price point made possible by its revolutionary reusability. It is the reigning champion, the workhorse that redefined an industry, and the benchmark that New Glenn must now confront.

Its current dominance was not a foregone conclusion. It was earned through a high-risk, high-speed development process that saw the company evolve from a scrappy startup to the world’s most prolific launch provider. The story of the Falcon 9 is a story of iteration, engineering pragmatism, and the successful operationalization of a concept – propulsive landing – that many in the industry had long dismissed as impractical.

From Falcon 1 to Block 5: A Story of Iteration

SpaceX’s journey to orbit began with the Falcon 1, a small launch vehicle. Its first three launch attempts, between 2006 and 2008, all ended in failure. For a young company, this was a perilous position. The fourth launch in 2008 was a make-or-break moment, and it succeeded, becoming the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit. This early experience forged the company’s DNA: fail, learn, fix, and fly again – fast.

The company immediately scaled up its ambitions to the Falcon 9, a much larger, medium-lift rocket designed from the outset to one day carry astronauts. The rocket’s name derives from its first stage, which is powered by nine Merlin engines. This vehicle, like its predecessor, went through a series of rapid upgrades. The Falcon 9 v1.0, which first flew in 2010, was a different vehicle from the v1.1 that followed. The v1.1 introduced more powerful engines, stretched tanks, and the first “flyback” experiments with its first stage, attempting controlled descents over the ocean.

This iterative process, marked by both stunning successes and high-profile failures (like the in-flight loss of the SpaceX CRS-7 mission in 2015), culminated in the Falcon 9 Block 5. This final, current variant was introduced in 2018. It was the product of all the lessons learned over the previous decade, designed specifically for high reusability and rapid refurbishment. The Block 5 is the mature, final form of the rocket, the one that has flown hundreds of times, setting records for booster reuse and launch cadence that have given SpaceX its unassailable market position.

Falcon 9 by the Numbers

To understand its capabilities, its physical specifications provide a clear baseline. The Falcon 9 is a two-stage orbital launch vehicle that has become the global standard for medium-to-heavy lift.

• Height: 70 meters (229.6 feet)
• Diameter: 3.7 meters (12 feet)
• Mass: 549,054 kilograms (1,207,920 pounds)
• Payload to Low Earth Orbit (LEO): 22,800 kilograms (50,265 pounds)
• Payload to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO): 8,300 kilograms (18,300 pounds)

These numbers place it firmly in the heavy-lift class, capable of launching large satellite constellations, heavy national security payloads, and NASA’s SpaceX Dragon 2 capsules carrying cargo and crew to the International Space Station.

The Technology of a Workhorse

The Falcon 9’s design reflects SpaceX’s philosophy of pragmatic, cost-effective, and reliable engineering. It’s built around mass production and operational simplicity.

The rocket’s first stage is powered by nine Merlin 1D engines, all manufactured in-house by SpaceX. The choice of nine engines is a key design feature. This architecture provides “engine-out capability,” meaning the rocket can safely complete its mission even if one, or in some cases two, engines shut down prematurely. This redundancy is a major factor in the rocket’s reliability. The second stage is powered by a single Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine, which has an extendable nozzle optimized for the vacuum of space.

Both stages of the Falcon 9 use a propellant combination of Liquid Oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer and RP-1, a highly refined form of kerosene, as the fuel. This “kerolox” combination is a classic in rocketry. It’s dense, meaning the fuel tanks don’t have to be excessively large, and it’s far easier and safer to handle than cryogenic liquid hydrogen. It’s also relatively cheap and well-understood.

This choice of kerosene comes with one significant trade-off, especially for a reusable rocket. Kerosene burns “dirty.” The combustion process, particularly in a fuel-rich engine like the Merlin, produces a soot-like residue known as “coking.” This residue builds up on the engine components, especially the turbopump. For a reusable rocket, this is a serious challenge. Every Falcon 9 booster that lands must undergo a significant cleaning and refurbishment process to deal with this coking. This is a time-consuming and labor-intensive part of the turnaround process.

This trade-off is central to the Falcon 9 story. SpaceX didn’t wait to invent the “perfect” clean-burning reusable engine. It chose a “good enough” engine and propellant, got to market a decade ahead of everyone else, and solved the reusability problem despite the challenges of kerosene. It accepted the high refurbishment cost in exchange for market dominance, mastering the operational logistics of cleaning its rockets instead of waiting to solve the chemistry problem from the start.

The Reusability Revolution

The Falcon 9’s single greatest contribution to aerospace is its proven, operational reusability. On December 21, 2015, a Falcon 9 first stage successfully landed at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station after sending its payload to orbit. This event changed the industry forever. What was once a theoretical concept was now a demonstrated reality.

Since that day, SpaceX has turned this remarkable feat into a routine. As of late 2025, the company has successfully landed its boosters over 530 times in more than 540 attempts, a staggering success rate. These landings occur either on land at “Landing Zones” or, more frequently, on autonomous droneships stationed hundreds of miles offshore in the ocean. This reusability is the main driver of the Falcon 9’s low launch price, as the first stage booster constitutes the majority of the rocket’s manufacturing cost.

This capability is enabled by several key technologies. The booster’s descent is controlled by four “hypersonic grid fins,” the distinctive “waffle-iron” style fins at the top of the booster. These fins can be independently articulated, allowing them to steer the rocket with incredible precision as it plummets through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds. This “dart-like” descent profile is highly stable and allows the booster to target a landing spot just a few dozen meters wide. The final landing is handled by re-igniting a subset of the Merlin engines for a “landing burn” that brings the vehicle to a soft, powered touchdown, much like the sub-orbital New Shepard, but at an orbital-class scale.

The Falcon 9 Block 5 was designed for 10 flights with minimal refurbishment and over 100 flights with more significant overhauls. The company has blown past these original goals. As of 2025, a total of 51 different boosters have flown multiple missions, and one single booster, B1067, has successfully flown and landed a record 31 times. This has enabled SpaceX to achieve a launch cadence that is unmatched, at times launching a Falcon 9 rocket every three days. This isn’t just a rocket; it’s a mature, assembly-line-like space transportation system.

The Heavy-Lift Challenger: A Profile of the New Glenn

For a decade, the Falcon 9’s dominance was so complete that it operated without a true peer. Other rockets were either smaller, more expensive, or expendable. That entire market dynamic has now changed. After years of development, Blue Origin’s New Glenn has arrived, not as a “paper rocket” or a future promise, but as a flight-proven, operational vehicle.

The New Glenn is a direct, next-generation challenger to the Falcon 9. It is not an “also-ran” competitor; it is a heavy-lift launch vehicle designed from the ground up to “leapfrog” the Falcon 9’s technology. It is bigger, more powerful, and built upon a different technological foundation. Its debut in 2025, particularly its successful second flight, has signaled the end of the Falcon 9’s monopoly and the beginning of a true heavy-lift competition.

A Decade in Development

The New Glenn rocket, named in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, has been a decade in the making. This long development cycle is a direct reflection of Blue Origin’s “Step by Step, Ferociously” motto. The company spent years developing and perfecting the rocket’s core technology, most notably its powerful BE-4 methane engines. This patient approach stood in stark contrast to SpaceX’s rapid, iterative style and was a frequent source of criticism and doubt from industry observers.

That doubt began to evaporate in 2025. The inaugural launch of New Glenn, designated NG-1, took place in January 2025 from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The launch was a partial success. The rocket’s first and second stages performed well, successfully placing a test payload into orbit. However, the first-stage booster, attempting its first propulsive landing on the company’s landing platform ship Jacklyn (named after Jeff Bezos’s mother), failed to make a successful recovery. This outcome was not unexpected; SpaceX also lost many boosters before perfecting its landings. The key takeaway was that the rocket worked and had successfully reached orbit on its first try.

The true breakthrough occurred on November 13, 2025. The second New Glenn launch, NG-2, lifted off carrying a pair of NASA-funded satellites for the ESCAPADE mission, which are now on their way to Mars. Minutes after a successful launch and stage separation, the 188-foot-tall first-stage booster, nicknamed “Never Tell Me The Odds,” descended through the atmosphere and executed a “picture-perfect,” on-target landing on the Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean.

This single event changed the market overnight. With that landing, Blue Origin became only the second company in history to propulsively land an orbital-class rocket booster. The New Glenn was no longer a competitor in theory; it was a competitor in fact. It had demonstrated its core design, including its reusable first stage, was viable.

New Glenn by the Numbers

The New Glenn is in a different physical class than the Falcon 9. It is, by every metric, a much larger rocket.

• Height: Approximately 98 meters (320 feet)
• Diameter: 7 meters (23 feet)
• Payload to Low Earth Orbit (LEO): Approximately 45 metric tons (45,000 kilograms)
• Payload to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO): Approximately 13 metric tons (13,000 kilograms)
• Payload Fairing: 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter

The comparison to the Falcon 9 is stark. New Glenn stands nearly 30 meters taller and is almost twice as wide. Most importantly, it’s designed to lift roughly twice the mass to Low Earth Orbit (45,000 kg vs. 22,800 kg). This places it in a category of its own, far above the Falcon 9 and competing directly with SpaceX’s far-less-frequently-flown Falcon Heavy.

Next-Generation Technology

Blue Origin’s “leapfrog” strategy is most evident in its technology choices, particularly its engines and propellants. The company’s long development cycle was largely focused on solving complex chemistry and engineering problems that the Falcon 9’s designers had deliberately sidestepped.

The New Glenn first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines, designed and built by Blue Origin. These are powerful, advanced “staged-combustion” engines, a more complex and efficient design than the “gas-generator” cycle of the Falcon 9’s Merlin engines. The BE-4 is a significant achievement in its own right; it is also the engine that powers the first stage of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, a partnership that ended America’s reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines.

The most important feature of the BE-4 is its fuel: it burns Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), which is primarily methane. This “methalox” propellant choice is the core of New Glenn’s reusability strategy. Unlike the Falcon 9’s kerosene, methane burns completely clean. It leaves no “coking” or soot residue. This is a game-changer for reusability. It means that, in theory, a BE-4 engine can be reused with minimal refurbishment, potentially allowing for a much faster, cheaper, and more “airline-like” turnaround between flights. Methane also has other advantages: it’s denser than hydrogen and its liquid boiling point is close to that of LOX, which simplifies the rocket’s tank and plumbing design. The fact that SpaceX also chose methane for its own next-generation rocket, Starship, serves as a powerful validation of Blue Origin’s decision.

The “leapfrog” continues with the rocket’s second stage. It is powered by two BE-3 engines, which are powered by LOX and Liquid Hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most efficient, highest-performance rocket fuel available. It provides the most “push” for its weight, giving it a high specific impulse. By using methane on the first stage (good for reusable thrust) and hydrogen on the second stage (best for in-space performance), New Glenn employs a “best of both worlds” approach. This high-performance upper stage is what enables New Glenn to excel at high-energy missions, like sending heavy satellites to GTO or launching interplanetary missions like ESCAPADE directly to Mars.

A Different Approach to Reusability

New Glenn’s physical design for reusability also differs significantly from the Falcon 9. The booster is designed for a minimum of 25 missions. It lands on six actuated landing legs, which are integrated into the rocket’s body, a design some see as “cleaner” and more robust than the Falcon 9’s four deployable legs.

The most obvious difference is the guidance system. Instead of grid fins, New Glenn features four large aerodynamic surfaces, or strakes, near the top of the booster. These strakes function like wings, providing aerodynamic lift and stabilization as the booster descends. This allows the booster to “glide” on its way back from space, covering a much longer distance as it flies back. This “glider” approach is fundamentally different from the Falcon 9’s “dart” landing. The aerodynamic lift generated by the strakes may be more efficient, potentially avoiding the need for the fuel-heavy “re-entry burn” that Falcon 9s use to slow down. If this proves true, it means New Glenn can use more of its fuel to push the payload and less to save the booster, theoretically increasing its payload capacity even further.

There is also a subtle but important stability advantage. The Falcon 9 is 3.7 meters wide and 70 meters tall, giving it the slender profile of a “pencil.” The New Glenn is 7 meters wide and 98 meters tall, giving it a much more “soda can”-like ratio. This wider base, combined with the low-slung weight of its seven massive BE-4 engines, gives the New Glenn booster an innate stability. It is simply less prone to tipping over, a quality that is highly desirable when trying to land a 20-story building on a moving platform in the middle of the ocean.

Head-to-Head: A Direct Comparison

With New Glenn now an operational vehicle, the launch industry has, for the first time, a true head-to-head competition for the heavy-lift reusable market. The Falcon 9 represents the proven, mature, and dominant first generation of reusable rockets. The New Glenn represents the larger, more powerful, and technologically advanced second generation. Their differences in design, capacity, and economics will define the launch market for the coming decade.

Power, Size, and Payload

The most direct comparison comes from lining up their specifications. The Falcon 9 is the established workhorse, but New Glenn is simply in a different class of vehicle, a fact that becomes clear when they are viewed side-by-side.

The table makes the mass advantage clear: New Glenn offers roughly double the payload capacity to LEO. But the real differentiator, and the one that has satellite manufacturers most excited, is the payload fairing. The fairing is the nose cone that protects the satellite during launch. The New Glenn’s 7-meter-diameter fairing has twice the internal volume of the Falcon 9’s 5.2-meter fairing.

This is a critical distinction. For many modern missions, especially the “mega-constellations” for internet and Earth observation, or for large national security satellites, the limiting factor isn’t weight; it’s size. Satellites are often bulky and oddly shaped. Launch customers “cube out” – they fill up the available space inside the fairing – long before they “mass out” – hit the rocket’s weight limit. The Falcon 9 is a powerful rocket, but its 5.2-meter fairing is a hard constraint. New Glenn was purpose-built to solve this exact problem, offering a cavernous payload bay that can accommodate larger satellites or, more importantly, deploy more satellites in a single launch.

A fair question is how New Glenn compares to SpaceX’s other rocket, the Falcon Heavy. The Falcon Heavy can lift even more mass (63.8 metric tons) than New Glenn. However, the Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 first stages strapped together. It’s a complex, expensive system that is difficult to integrate and launch, which is why it has only flown 11 times in its history, compared to the Falcon 9’s 500+. New Glenn’s market proposition is to offer Falcon Heavy-class mass (or close to it) and superior volume, all in a single-stick rocket that is designed for high-cadence, Falcon 9-style reusability.

Economics: Price Per Launch

Ultimately, the commercial market is driven by price. The Falcon 9 revolutionized the industry by lowering the price of launch. According to SpaceX’s own figures, a standard Falcon 9 launch has a sticker price of approximately $70 million.

New Glenn’s pricing is projected to be in the $60 million to $100 million range, placing it in direct competition. The $20 million that NASA reportedly paid for the ESCAPADE mission on NG-2 was almost certainly a deep, one-time discount to secure a prestigious customer for a certification flight. The true commercial price will likely settle near the high end of that range, at least initially.

On the surface, the sticker prices look comparable. But this is misleading. The true economic battle is fought over price-per-kilogram and price-per-cubic-meter. If New Glenn costs $100 million but delivers 45,000 kg to LEO, its price-per-kilogram is roughly $2,222. If a Falcon 9 costs $70 million but delivers 22,800 kg, its price-per-kilogram is roughly $3,070.

This is New Glenn’s core economic argument. It can offer the market a 28% discount on a per-kilogram basis, and it’s throwing in double the payload volume. For a customer like Amazon’s Project Kuiper, the ability to launch twice as many satellites for a similar price is a compelling proposition.

Reusability and Refurbishment

This economic argument hinges on one important variable: reusability. The Falcon 9 has proven a booster can fly more than 30 times. New Glenn is designed for 25 flights. Both are reusable, but their operational models are based on two different bets.

The Falcon 9’s reusability is a proven, but operationally intensive, system. Its “dirty” kerosene engines require a high-touch refurbishment process involving extensive cleaning and inspection. SpaceX has become incredibly good at this; it’s a “known known.” It has a high, but manageable, cost and time.

Blue Origin’s “clean fuel” bet is that its methane-fueled BE-4 engines will, as designed, require almost no internal cleaning. The bet is that a New Glenn booster can land, be inspected, refueled, and flown again, much like an airplane. This would dramatically reduce the time and cost of refurbishment. Falcon 9 is a proven system with high, but optimized, refurbishment. New Glenn is a new system designed from the ground up for low refurbishment. The company that can get its boosters back to the pad faster and cheaper will win the long-term economic war.

The Battlefield: The Commercial Launch Market

The Falcon 9 and New Glenn are two highly advanced tools. Their competition will be decided in three primary markets, or “battlefields,” that have a combined value of tens of billions of dollars: the Low Earth Orbit constellation market, the high-value National Security market, and the traditional Geostationary satellite market. New Glenn’s 2025 debut has now made it a credible player in all three.

What is Low Earth Orbit?

Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, is the primary arena for the new space economy. For a non-technical audience, LEO can be thought of as the “on-ramp” to space. It’s an area that extends from about 300 kilometers to 2,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. It’s the easiest and cheapest-to-reach orbital destination, requiring the least amount of energy (and rocket fuel) to get to.

For decades, LEO was used for things like the International Space Station and Earth-observation satellites. Its key advantage for communications is its proximity. A satellite in LEO is close enough to the ground to provide very low “latency,” or lag time. This is the delay it takes for a signal to travel from you, to the satellite, and back. Low latency is what enables real-time services like streaming, online gaming, and video calls.

But LEO has a trade-off. To stay in orbit at that low altitude, a satellite must travel incredibly fast – around 17,000 miles per hour. It will circle the entire planet in about 90 minutes. This speed means that from any point on the ground, a LEO satellite is only overhead for a few minutes before it speeds over the horizon. To provide continuous, unbroken service (like for an internet connection), you can’t use just one satellite. You need a “constellation” of hundreds, or even thousands, of satellites that are networked together, “handing off” the signal from one satellite to the next as they fly overhead.

This is the physics that dictates the business model. The need for thousands of satellites created a massive demand for a rocket that could launch often and cheaply. The Falcon 9, with its reusability and high launch cadence, was the only rocket on Earth that could build these massive constellations. This is the market it dominates. New Glenn now enters this market not by trying to match Falcon 9’s cadence, but by offering to launch more satellites per launch in its massive fairing, achieving the same result through volume.

The Constellation Wars: Starlink vs. Kuiper

The biggest customer in the LEO market is, ironically, SpaceX itself. A majority of the Falcon 9 launches over the past several years have been dedicated to deploying its own Starlink internet constellation. SpaceX is its own best customer, using its own rockets to build a global utility that generates even more revenue.

The most direct competitor to Starlink is Project Kuiper, a rival satellite internet constellation being built by Amazon – Jeff Bezos’s other company. Project Kuiper plans to deploy a constellation of 3,236 satellites. To do this, it needs rockets. A lot of them. In the largest commercial launch-procurement in history, Amazon booked a massive fleet of launches: 12 New Glenns (with an option for 15 more), 38 Vulcan Centaur launches, and 18 Ariane 6 launches. New Glenn, with its 7-meter fairing, is a key part of this deployment plan.

This created one of the most ironic and telling situations in modern business. By 2024, Project Kuiper was falling behind schedule. It had satellites ready to fly but was waiting for its new, unproven rockets (New Glenn, Vulcan, Ariane 6) to be ready. Facing a critical FCC deadline to deploy its satellites, Amazon’s back was against the wall. It had to launch, and it had to launch now.

The only available, reliable, high-capacity rocket on the planet was the Falcon 9. In a stunning move, Amazon signed a contract with its chief rival, SpaceX, for three Falcon 9 launches to deploy Project Kuiper satellites. These launches took place in 2025. This “Amazon-SpaceX Anomaly” was the most powerful possible illustration of the Falcon 9’s absolute market dominance. It was the kingmaker, so dominant that it was launching satellites for its direct competitor’s founder. This situation also provided the starkest possible motivation for Blue Origin to get New Glenn operational, a goal it finally achieved in late 2025.

The Government Customer: National Security Space Launch

The second major battlefield is the high-value government market. The U.S. Space Force procures launches for its most sensitive and expensive payloads – such as GPS satellites, missile-warning satellites, and classified spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office – through the National Security Space Launch program.

These are “must-go” missions where failure is not an option. The National Security Space Launch Phase 3 contracts, awarded in 2024, are for heavy-lift, high-performance, and complex missions, often to difficult-to-reach orbits. To foster competition, the U.S. Space Force awarded “Indefinite-Delivery” contracts to three providers: SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin.

But this contract was just an invitation to compete. To actually win these lucrative, billion-dollar mission orders, a rocket must be certified by the U.S. Space Force. This certification process is long, arduous, and requires a minimum of two successful orbital launches.

This is the strategic and economic payoff for New Glenn’s November 2025 flight. The NG-1 launch in January 2025 was its first certification flight. The successful NG-2 launch in November was its second. With this flight, New Glenn is now clearing the final hurdles for National Security Space Launch certification.

This is a seismic shift in the national security market. For years, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy have been chipping away at the monopoly once held by ULA. Now, the U.S. Space Force has a third, highly capable, heavy-lift provider. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will now face real, head-to-head competition for the Federal government of the United States’ most critical payloads from a vehicle with a massive fairing (which the National Reconnaissance Office is known to value) and next-generation engines.

Beyond LEO: The GTO Market

The third, and most traditional, rocket market is for Geostationary Transfer Orbit. This is a specialized “parking orbit” used to place large satellites in Geostationary Orbit (GEO).

GEO is a very high-altitude orbit, 35,786 kilometers (about 22,236 miles) above the equator. In this specific orbit, a satellite’s speed perfectly matches the rotation of the Earth. From the ground, it appears to “hover” over one single spot. This is incredibly useful for large, traditional communications satellites (like those that beam TV signals) and for weather satellites that need to constantly watch the same region.

Rockets don’t fly directly to GEO. They drop the satellite off in Geostationary Transfer Orbit, which is a highly elliptical “transfer orbit.” The satellite then uses its own small engines to circularize its orbit and settle into its final GEO slot.

This is a high-value market where performance is key. The Falcon 9 can lift about 8,300 kg to Geostationary Transfer Orbit. The New Glenn can lift 13,000 kg. This 56% increase in mass is a significant competitive advantage. But the real advantage is New Glenn’s high-performance, hydrogen-fueled upper stage. This efficient upper stage can push the payload farther and more accurately. It can deploy the satellite into a “better” transfer orbit, one that requires the satellite to use less of its own precious onboard fuel to get to its final destination. Since a satellite’s lifespan is often limited by how much fuel it has for “station-keeping,” a better launch from New Glenn could directly translate into a longer, more profitable life for the satellite, making it a very attractive option for this high-value market.

Summary

The commercial space industry has fundamentally changed in 2025. The era of the Falcon 9’s effective monopoly on reusable, cost-effective launch is over. The competition is no longer theoretical, and the market now has a clear, powerful alternative.

The Falcon 9 remains the established incumbent, a marvel of engineering and operational efficiency. It revolutionized the industry by proving reusability was possible and then scaling it to an “airline-like” cadence. It is a mature, data-rich, and highly reliable workhorse. Its position is built on a foundation of over 500 flights and the mastery of a rapid refurbishment process. It is a system built on last-generation kerosene technology, and its 5.2-meter fairing creates a hard limit on the size of the payloads it can carry, a limitation that became glaringly obvious as the market shifted to mega-constellations.

The New Glenn has now arrived as the first true, next-generation challenger. After a long and patient development, its successful launch to orbit and, most importantly, its first booster landing in November 2025, have proven its core design. It is a vehicle built from the ground up to address the Falcon 9’s specific weaknesses.

New Glenn’s competitive advantages are twofold. First, its clean-burning methane-fueled BE-4 engines are designed for easier, faster, and cheaper refurbishment, a hypothesis that will now be tested in real-world operations. Second, and more immediately, its massive 7-meter fairing offers double the payload volume of the Falcon 9. This isn’t just an incremental improvement; it’s a step-change in capability that unlocks new satellite designs and allows for far more efficient constellation deployment.

With New Glenn now flight-proven and on the verge of National Security Space Launch certification, the commercial and government launch markets have, for the first time, a genuine, heavy-lift, reusable competitor to SpaceX. This new duopoly will reshape the industry, introducing choice, driving down the price-per-kilogram, and accelerating the development of the Low Earth Orbit economy that both Blue Origin and SpaceX envision, even as they pursue their respective long-term destinies on the Moon and Mars.