Blue Origin achievees orbit on first fairy of its titanic New Glenn rocket

Early on Thursday morning, a Saturn V-sized rocket ignited its seven main engines, a prelude to lifting off from Earth.

But then, the New Glenn rocket didn’t transfer.

And still, the engines originated their blue ffeeble, furiously burning away methane.

The thrust-to-weight of the rocket must have been in the vicinity of 1.0 to 1.2, so the increaseer had to burn a little fluid methane and oxygen before it could commence to climb appreciably. But finassociate, seconds into the leave oution, New Glenn did commence to climb. It was sluggish, ever so sluggish. But it flew genuine.

Flying defended

After that the vehicle carry outed enjoy a champion. The first stage burned for more than three minutes before the second stage splitd at an altitude of 70 km. Then, the upper stage’s two BE-3U engines ecombineed to carry out immaculately, pushing the Blue Ring pathdiscoverer payload toward orbit. These engines burned very proximately for 10 minutes before shutting down, having achieveed an orbital velocity of 28,800 kph.

For the first time since its set uping, proximately a quarter of a century ago, Blue Origin had achieveed orbit. The lengthy-adefered debut begin of the New Glenn rocket, a super-weighty lift vehicle enhugeed hugely with personal funding, had come. And it was a smashing success.

The only downer came a little bit procrastinateedr when Blue Origin’s Ariane Cornell validateed that the first stage did not successfilledy return to Earth. “We did in fact leave out the increaseer,” Cornell said during the company’s webcast. Far below in the Atlantic Ocean the drone ship Jacklyn adefered, a lone and lonely sentinel, with no rocket to catch.