Space Race Heats Up: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket launch threatens Elon Musk's SpaceX dominance?

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is set for its maiden orbital voyage with New Glenn rocket. Will this threaten the dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the orbital launch market ?

The Glenn rocket launch initially scheduled for Sunday, 12 January, was pushed back a day due to "unfavourable" sea conditions, Blue Origin said in a post on social media platform X.

The Blue Origin’s rocket, named after a legendary astronaut, is 320 feet (98 meters) tall, roughly equivalent to a 32-story building.

"Pointy end up!" Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp wrote on X alongside photos of the Glenn rocket.

With the mission dubbed NG-1, the Glenn rocket is set to be launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:00 AM (0600 GMT) on Monday.

SpaceX has ruled the orbital launch market for the past many years through its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

Elon Musk’s space company is planning the next orbital test of Starship -- its gargantuan new-generation rocket -- the very next day, upping the sense of high-stakes rivalry.

"SpaceX has for the past several years been pretty much the only game in town, and so having a competitor... this is great," G. Scott Hubbard, a retired senior NASA official, told AFP.

Physically, New Glenn dwarfs the 230-foot Falcon 9 and is designed for heavier payloads.

It slots between Falcon 9 and its big sibling, Falcon Heavy, in terms of mass capacity but holds an edge with its wider payload fairing, ideal for transporting more voluminous cargo.

If all goes as planned, shortly after the launch, Blue Origin will attempt to land the first-stage booster on a drone ship called Jacklyn, in honor of Bezos's mother, stationed about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

Though SpaceX has long made such landings a near-routine spectacle, this will be Blue Origin's first shot at a touchdown on the high seas.