To reuse or not reuse—the eternal debate of New Glenn’s second stage reignites
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav Engineers at Blue Origin have been grappling with a seemingly eternal debate that involves the New Glenn rocket and the economics of flying it. The debate goes back at least 15 years, to the early discussions around the design of the heavy lift rocket. The first stage, of course, would be fully reusable. But what about the upper stage of New Glenn, powered by two large BE-3U engines? Around the same time, in the early 2010s, SpaceX was also trading the economics of reusing the second stage of its Falcon 9 rocket. Eventually SpaceX founder Elon Musk abandoned his goal of a fully reusable Falcon 9,…
