What Blue Origin is Up To

[Yazata]

It's starting to look like Orbital Reef has run aground. Blue Origin is devoting its attention to its Blue Moon lander, while Sierra Space (Blue's partner on Orbital Reef) is concentrating on its Dream Chaser space plane. The Orbital Reef website hasn't been updated in a year and now there's talk that the two companies are trying to unwind their joint program and go their own ways.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/28/blue-ori...limbo.html

But even if Orbital Reef doesn't happen, Axiom and several other companies like Vast are working on their own private space station plans.

[Yazata]

What appears to be a New Glenn first-stage test tank has rolled out at Cape Canaveral, for tank pressure tests I assume.

Photo by Nasaspaceflight.com

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[confused2]

^^^ Nicely painted. Kind of aspirational - Elon just blows 'em up without bothering to paint them first.

[Yazata]

A complete New Glenn rolled out to Blue's Cape Canaveral launch pad today for fueling and pressure tests. This is a test article and not a flight article, though they do hope to fly one later this year.

Blue Origin photos

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I'm guessing the guy on the right in the photo below is Jeff Bezos. New Glenn is a big rocket, some 98 meters tall.

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[Yazata]

Cryo-testing of the fully-stacked New Glenn is occurring as I write this - frost on the vehicle and vapor visible around it.

[Yazata]

It's starting to look like Orbital Reef has run aground.

Or maybe not.

Blue recently published an article in Nature in which they provided more information about their Orbital Reef space station.

I think that Blue has given Orbital Reef a low priority while they devote their attention to New Glenn and to their Artemis lander. But Orbital Reef is still in their plans for further down the line when the ISS is retired.

Unfortunately, along with so many European webpages, Nature won't let people look at its content unless they accept all of its marketing cookies. They say that by clicking 'accept' you agree to them sharing your data with their marketing customers. Like hell I do. So I couldn't read the article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-024-00363-x

But people who did read it have posted comments:

"For the first time, specific components and features of the station are known. Notably, Orbital Reef can host 10 astronauts at a time, and has 91% the pressurized volume of the ISS, equivalent to a Boeing 777 cargo.

In addition, there is a 2 floor research module to conduct various types of science, with external payload capability."

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