Jeff Bezos just revealed his plans for Blue Origin's biggest rocket yet
Say hello to Jeff Bezos' newest addition to Blue Origin's family of rockets: the New Glenn.
Named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, the two-stage New Glenn rocket is designed to be Blue Origin's first orbital-class launcher, expected to bring heavy payloads, such as satellites, and eventually people to orbit from a launch site in Florida.
"We plan to fly New Glenn for the first time before the end of this decade from historic Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida," Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, wrote in a newsletter sent Monday.
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"New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space," Bezos wrote.
Blue Origin is also planning to manufacture a three-stage version of the rocket that should be able to fly payloads beyond Earth's orbit, according to the billionaire founder of Amazon, the online retail giant.
The Monday morning email marks the first big release of new details about the rocket, but it isn't the first time Bezos has teased the company's lofty plans.
During a 2015 event in Florida, Bezos mentioned that Blue Origin was working on a "very big brother" rocket that would fly orbital missions while its New Shepard spacecraft -- which has flown multiple successful uncrewed test flights -- flies paying customers to about 60 miles above Earth and back home again.
That big brother seems to be the New Glenn.
Once the rocket starts flying, it will be one of the most powerful rockets on Earth, according to Blue Origin, with 3.85 million pounds of thrust produced.
For reference, the most powerful rocket flying today, United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy, produces about 2 million pounds of thrust at launch, while SpaceX's future Falcon Heavy rocket should produce about 5 million pounds of thrust when it begins test flights.
Like Blue Origin's New Shepard -- which is named for Alan Shepard, the first American to fly to space -- the New Glenn will also have a reusable first stage. That reusability would allow the company to launch multiple missions with the same hardware, dramatically reducing the cost of flying to space.
And also like the New Shepard, test flights of the New Glenn will likely be slow and methodical.
"Our motto is 'Gradatim Ferociter' -- step by step, ferociously," Bezos said.
"In the long run, deliberate and methodical wins the day, and you do things quickest by never skipping steps. This step-by-step approach is a powerful enabler of boldness and a critical ingredient in achieving the audacious."
But of course, Bezos couldn't help but hint at the company's next big step forward.
"Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step," Bezos said.
"It won’t be the last of course. Up next on our drawing board: New Armstrong. But that’s a story for the future."
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
