“Technical debt is a problem most companies have but at Blue it’s just on an incredible scale,” Abrams said. She explained the exodus of top talent from Blue Origin as engineers who “got tired of putting Band-Aids on problems”. On the technical side, Abrams said the company suffers from an immense amount of technical debt–engineering challenges that build up as a result of choosing a quick solution rather than the best solution – and a relentless focus on speed that undermined its ability to properly address problems with its launch vehicles. Photograph: Blue Origin/ReutersĪccording to Abrams, Blue Origin’s troubles have both a technical and cultural dimension. “The engineers really believed that and they try every day to make that a reality despite the leadership’s interventions.”īlue Origin’s New Shepard rocket blasts off near Van Horn, Texas, on Wednesday. “Blue Origin has all the ingredients for success and to become something truly fantastic,” said Ally Abrams, the former head of Blue Origin employee communications who recently wrote a whistleblower essay detailing safety concerns and rampant sexism at the company. By all measures, Blue Origin should be one of the most successful space companies in the world. Bezos, who is worth just south of $200bn, spends $1bn a year out of his own pocket to fund Blue Origin. The company also has access to a virtually unlimited supply of money. How did this happen? Blue Origin employs thousands of the world’s top rocket engineers.
Just two weeks before Bezos flew to the edge of space this summer, Richard Branson completed a suborbital flight in his own spaceplane with Virgin Galactic. Bezos didn’t even get the glory of being the first billionaire to ride his own rocket into space. It was originally meant to fly for the first time last year. Meanwhile, the first flight of the company’s fabled New Glenn rocket, a heavy launch vehicle capable of hoisting nearly 100,000 pounds into low Earth orbit, has also been pushed to late 2022 at the earliest.
#Beyond blue achievements full#
This will make the first flight of the engine a full five years behind schedule. Blue Origin has struggled to hit its stride producing its powerful BE-4 rocket engine and as a result the maiden launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket has slipped to late 2022. It’s seen an exodus of top engineering talent following the lost contract, which has only exacerbated its already considerable delays. It’s now suing the US government to reconsider the award. Earlier this year, Nasa awarded its lunar lander contract to SpaceX, leaving Blue Origin in the lurch. Over the past few years, Blue Origin’s master plan has begun unraveling.
Jeff Bezos and William Shatner in Van Horn, Texas, on Wednesday. The question is: why can’t the second richest man in the world execute on it?
There’s no doubt that Bezos has plenty of vision. It has designed and built one of the most powerful rocket engines ever made and inked contracts with the United Launch Alliance to supply the engine for its next generation Vulcan rocket. His company is building a rocket as powerful as the one that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and has partnered with leading defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper to develop a lunar lander that could bring humans back to the lunar surface. He wants to lay the foundation for an extra-terrestrial economy where thousands of people are living and working in space. Inspired by the late Princeton futurist Gerard K O’Neill, Bezos dreams of moving heavy industry off of Earth and into space to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And unlike Musk, Bezos actually knows what it’s like to ride on his own rocket.īezos founded Blue Origin with visionary goals. While this is not as challenging as bringing a rocket back from orbit – as Musk has taunted Bezos in the past – it was still a major milestone in the history of private space exploration. In 2015, Blue Origin became the first company to send a rocket above the Kármán Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, and land it again. The company was founded by the former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2000, just two years before SpaceX set up shop in California. If there were any rocket company expected to be at a comparable level of technological achievement to SpaceX, it is Blue Origin. Audrey Powers, William Shatner, Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries on the landing pad of Blue Origin’s New Shepard after they flew into space on Wednesday near Van Horn, Texas.
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