Early Thursday morning, a Saturn V-sized rocket ignited its seven main engines, a prelude to liftoff from Earth.
But then the New Glenn rocket didn't move.
And yet the engines produced their blue flame, furiously burning methane.
The thrust to the weight of the rocket must have been about 1.0 to 1.2, so the booster had to burn a bit of liquid methane and oxygen before it could start appreciably climbing. But finally, seconds into the mission, New Glenn began to climb. It went slowly, very slowly. But it flew true.
Fly safely
After that, the vehicle performed like a champ. The first stage burned for more than three minutes before the second stage separated at an altitude of 70 km. Then the two BE-3U upper stage engines seemed to perform flawlessly, pushing the Blue Ring pathfinder payload toward orbit. These engines burned for almost ten minutes before shutting down after reaching an orbital speed of 17,800 mph.
For the first time since its founding nearly a quarter century ago, Blue Origin had reached orbit. The long-awaited debut launch of the New Glenn rocket, a superheavy vehicle developed largely with private funding, had arrived. And it became a resounding success.
The only hiccup came a little later when Blue Origin's Ariane Cornell confirmed that the first stage did not successfully return to Earth. “We did lose the booster,” Cornell said during the company's webcast. The drone ship far below in the Atlantic Ocean Jaclyn waited, a lonely and solitary sentinel, without a missile to capture.
