SYDNEY — Blue Origin plans to significantly increase the launch rate of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle and is weighing the addition of new spaceports.
Speaking at the Global Spaceport Alliance’s International Spaceport Forum here Sept. 28, Phil Joyce, senior vice president for New Shepard at Blue Origin, said the company expects to increase its launch cadence to weekly in the next couple of years as it adds vehicles to its fleet.
That growth, he said, is driven by customer demand. “The demand is really strong,” Joyce said. “We’re continuing to see sales every week, every day.” Blue Origin’s backlog currently stretches more than a year.
The company is now launching nearly monthly, with seven New Shepard flights completed this year. Joyce suggested the next flight is imminent, noting he would leave the International Astronautical Congress here this week early to support it.
Blue Origin’s goal is to scale up to “approximately weekly” launches, enabled by three new New Shepard vehicles that will enter service starting next year. Those vehicles will join the two currently flying crewed missions.
Joyce said the new vehicles will feature upgrades for easier and more frequent operations. “We have a system that was designed years ago that is very expensive to operate. It’s very high maintenance,” he said. “We have basically upgraded all of the systems.”
That includes a new version of the BE-3 engine that powers New Shepard. “We’ve made an investment in the next generation of that engine,” Joyce said, making it “much more manufacturable and operable than the engine we have today.”
The new version of New Shepard, he added, will look different than the current one. The differences won’t be major, but he declined to go into details.
Weekly flights, he noted, would “max out” the capacity of Blue Origin’s existing facility, Launch Site One in West Texas. “We’ve done a number of trades about whether to expand that launch site or to look elsewhere,” he said.
The company is leaning toward a new site rather than expanding the existing one. “We think looking elsewhere makes sense from a number of perspectives,” Joyce said. While Blue Origin is not ruling out another U.S. location, the primary focus is international. “We think there’s possibilities elsewhere around the globe. We think it makes sense to provide this service elsewhere.”
Joyce said customers have not explicitly asked to fly from other locations, but convenience could be a factor. “A lot of our target customer base, ultra-high net worth individuals, don’t want to spend a day and a half getting to the destination, so that’s a consideration,” he said.
Blue Origin would look for a partner to develop any new launch site. “We’re trying to find a partner that’s willing to invest,” Joyce said. “We’re just thinking about where we can get the best partner that adds to the diversity of it.”