X

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket concept will give you deja vu

Jeff Bezos' rocket company releases new animation of its spaceflight system, and it looks a lot like something another techie billionaire's working on.

Eric Mack Contributing Editor
Eric Mack has been a CNET contributor since 2011. Eric and his family live 100% energy and water independent on his off-grid compound in the New Mexico desert. Eric uses his passion for writing about energy, renewables, science and climate to bring educational content to life on topics around the solar panel and deregulated energy industries. Eric helps consumers by demystifying solar, battery, renewable energy, energy choice concepts, and also reviews solar installers. Previously, Eric covered space, science, climate change and all things futuristic. His encrypted email for tips is ericcmack@protonmail.com.
Expertise Solar, solar storage, space, science, climate change, deregulated energy, DIY solar panels, DIY off-grid life projects. CNET's "Living off the Grid" series. https://www.cnet.com/feature/home/energy-and-utilities/living-off-the-grid/ Credentials
  • Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
See full bio
Eric Mack
2 min read

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space company dropped a new video animation Tuesday briefly showing how its New Glenn launch system will work, and you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a promo video for rival rocket company SpaceX.

New Glenn blasts off, and then the first rocket stage separates and returns for a landing on what sure looks like a drone-ship landing pad at sea, just like those used by Elon Musk's SpaceX to recover a handful of Falcon 9 rockets over the past year.

More on Blue Origin

Of course, we already knew Blue Origin and SpaceX were both working on similar concepts for recovering and recycling rockets.

SpaceX has received more attention, both for its successes and its failures, over the past few years and is further along in developing its business, but it should be noted that Blue Origin technically beat Musk to the punch with the first successful rocket launch and recovery -- on land at its west Texas facility in 2015.

Blue Origin released the new animation Tuesday morning just as Bezos announced at a satellite conference in Washington, DC that France's Eutelsat will be the first New Glenn customer sometime in 2021-2022. The first flight of New Glenn could come a little sooner, in 2020, according to a statement.

On Monday, Bezos tweeted photos of Blue Origin's first big BE-4 engines, which the company says will be ready to go by 2019.

This comes after Bezos essentially kicked off the next round of the ongoing battle of the billionaires for space by detailing his hopes to create a lunar colony, complete with Amazon-style delivery service. Musk and SpaceX have their own grand vision for Mars and recently announced a plan to send two space tourists on a trip around the moon.

Solving for XX: The industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech."

Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.