Blue Origin expands Florida facilities for New Glenn rocket

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 16 Oct, 15:38 · Archive

Blue Origin is investing $330 million to expand its Florida launch facilities to support multiple New Glenn rocket flights per week by the end of the decade.

Blue Origin announced a major expansion of its Florida launch facilities on Friday, with a $330 million investment in its Rocket Park campus at Cape Canaveral expected to be complete by summer 2027. The company will add two more launch and landing pads for its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, in addition to two already under construction. The expansion will also include a new manufacturing facility to produce up to 150 upper stages annually for a larger variant of the New Glenn rocket, and two additional landing ships to catch and return the first stage.

The company is also building a new customer integration facility with the U.S. Space Force that will feature four payload bays to process multiple missions simultaneously. Ian Richardson, Blue Origin's senior vice president of operations, said the infrastructure was designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade. "These investments are centred on one goal: building the capacity to support more missions, more reliably, and more efficiently," Richardson wrote.

To date, Blue Origin has invested about $3 billion in Florida facilities and infrastructure. The company now has more than 5,000 employees working in Florida and 500 suppliers in the state. Blue Origin is seeking to ramp up its launch cadence as it competes with SpaceX for commercial and government customers. The company is also recovering from a setback in May when one of its New Glenn rockets exploded on the launchpad, and has been working to return New Glenn to flight by the end of 2026.

How it is being reported

• Blue Origin plans $330 million Florida expansion to ramp New Glenn launchesBlue Origin said it's targeting multiple flights per week of its New Glenn rocket by the end of the decade.CNBC · 16 Oct, 15:10
• Blue Origin is going all in on the New Glenn rocketThe infrastructure is designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade.Ars Technica · 16 Oct, 11:00

In this story: Blue Origin · New Glenn · Cape Canaveral · SpaceX · U.S. Space Force · Brevard County · Orange County · Florida

This summary was written by AI from the headlines and standfirsts above, and states as fact only what at least two outlets report. How we use AI · Report a problem