Blue Origin, the space company that is owned by Jeff Bezos, completes around 10 percent of his workforce, according to an e -mail that was sent to the staff on Thursday and was viewed by the New York Times.
The cutbacks, which can influence around 1,000 roles, follow several years of rapid growth and the successful launch of New Glenn last month, the enormous reusable rocket of the company.
The Chief Executive of Blue Origin, Dave Limp, said in the e -mail that the company had been blown up and that the cutbacks would be in engineering, research and development, project management and general management layers.
He added that the leaders of Blue Origin had established that their priority before 2025 and then “our production output could be scaled and launching cadence with speed, decisiveness and efficiency for our customers.”
Blue Origin does not reveal how many employees it has, but the workforce is generally estimated at more than 10,000 people.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has cast billions in blue origin. He has long described a vision to set up human colonies in space and said that it was crucial to launch the costs of launching freight to space. But his company has left in the development of the private space company of Elon Musk, SpaceX.
At the end of 2023, Mr Bezos hired Mr Limp, a former senior Amazon director, to run Blue Origin and to apply it with a sense of urgency. The company, Flush of Money of Mr. Bezos, had been in a perpetual research and development cycle, said Chad Anderson, a start-up investor at Space Capital.
“If you have an unlimited amount of money, you don't have the same feeling of scarcity and necessity,” said Mr Anderson.
Employees had been detained for dismissals for some time. At the end of Wednesday they received an invitation for a virtual meeting at 7 am on Thursday. Mr Limp announced the cutbacks in the eight -minute session. At 7:10 he followed a company -wide e -mail that confirmed the dismissals.
Mr Limp said in the e -mail that the company would still “hire hundreds of positions.”
During a appearance on Wednesday at the Commercial Space Conference in Washington, DC, Mr Limp was cheerful about Blue Origin and he did not hint that he was about to say goodbye to one in 10 employees.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us, but in the past year we have made a lot of progress in the foundations and act quickly and turn into a world -class production company,” Limp said. “I think we have made some progress. We also have a lot to do this year. “
The speed of the production of the BE-4-engines used for the new Glenn Rocket from Blue Origin and the Vulcan Rocket built by United Launch Alliance-has changed to about one a week. “And by the way, that will double or triple for the next 12 to 18 months,” he added.
Blue Origin is on track for launching a lander to the moon this year, Mr. said. Limp. Although this will only wear charge, not people, the technologies will test that will be used for a larger land that develops Blue Origin for NASA and his Artemis program.
“We have hit all our milestones,” said Mr. Limp. “We are still on schedule, subject to Artemis schedule.”
Limp said that even this smaller lander would be larger than everything else that had landed on the moon, including the landers used by NASA astronauts during the Apollo program.
Mr Limp was also Bullish about the space plans of the Trump administration, even if those space plans are not yet clear. “The increased focus on the room just in the first month of this administration is great to see,” he said. “We are clearly big fans.”
Even if NASA drives his attention from the moon to Mars – Mr's preferred destination. MUSK – The technologies of Blue Origin will also be suitable for that longer journey. “You can treat them a bit like LEGO stones,” said Mr. Limp. “It appears that a manned mission to Mars or a freight mission for Mars reuse the vast majority of this.”
