A reusable first-stage booster was projected to fly a suborbital trajectory, taking off vertically like the booster stage of a conventional multistage rocket. Both stages will also use autogenous pressurization.Launches of the New Glenn are planned to be made from The main assembly of the New Glenn launch vehicle will occur in the Tooling and equipment for the factory began to be ordered and built in 2015. Further plans for an The vehicle itself, and the high-level specifications, were initially publicly unveiled in September 2016. After initiating the development of an orbital rocket system prior to 2012, and stating in 2013 on their website that the first stage would do a powered vertical landing and be reusable, Blue Origin publicly announced their orbital launch vehicleintentions in September 2015. A full-power test of the thrust chamber for Blue Origin Design work on the vehicle began in 2012, with the beginning of BE-4 engine development. After completing its mission in orbit, the Space Vehicle was designed to reenter Earth's atmosphere and land under parachutes on land, to be reused on future missions.Engine testing for the (then named) Reusable Booster System (RBS) launch vehicle began in 2012. In January 2016, Blue Origin indicated that the new rocket would be many times larger than New Shepard even though it would be the smallest of the family of Blue Origin orbital vehicles. The first-stage booster was to be refueled and relaunched to reduce costs of access for humans to space.The booster rocket was projected to lift Blue Origin's biconic Space Vehicle capsule to orbit, carrying astronauts and supplies. Blue Origin publicly released the high-level design o… New Glenn was described as a 7-meter-diameter (23 ft), Blue explained in the 12 September 2016 announcement that the rocket would be named New Glenn in honor of the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, In March 2017, Jeff Bezos showed graphics of the New Glenn which had two large By March 2018 the launch vehicle design had changed. This is different from how dual-launch manifested contracts have been traditionally handled by (A single BE-3 engine is being used in the suborbital New Shepard rocket.In October 2018, the Air Force announced Blue Origin was awarded $500 million for development of New Glenn as a potential competitor in future contracts, including In January 2019, the three stage booster variant was announced as no longer planned to be offered as an option.By February 2019, multiple launches for New Glenn had been contracted: five for The New Glenn is a 7-meter-diameter (23 ft) two-stage orbital launch vehicle with a reusable first stageThe first stage is designed to be reusable for up to 100 missions,Both stages will use orthogrid aluminum tanks with welded aluminum domes and common bulkheads. It was announced that the New Glenn second stage will now be powered by two vacuum versions of the flight proven BE-3 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine (BE-3U) with a single BE-3U engine for the third stage deep space option. Following stage separation, the upper stage would continue to propel astronauts to orbit while the first-stage booster would descend to perform a powered vertical landing similar to its New Shepard suborbital vehicle. After initiating the development of an orbital rocket system prior to 2012, and stating in 2013 on their website that the first stage would do a powered vertical landing and be reusable,Blue Origin began developing systems for orbital human spacecraft prior to 2012. In July 2018, the build of the largest device, a 16-meter-tall (51 ft) × 41-meter-long (136 ft) × 13-meter-wide (43 ft) Blue will offer both single-payload dedicated flights and, after the fifth launch, dual-manifesting of large All contracted launches from the start will feature a By 2018, Blue Origin had contracts in place with four customers for New Glenn flights.