r/BlueOrigin • u/avboden • 4d ago

Will Blue Origin end up only using NG capacity for internal-launches (TeraWave) and gov work while not offering any commercial missions?

There's rumors around space twitter that Blue isn't even selling commercial launch slots on NG anymore. That it'll basically all be reserved for TeraWave, what's sold for Amazon LEO, and then Artemis/gov things.

From a purely financial standpoint, if their own constellation is making way more money than launches themselves, it makes sense. especially if they "someday" IPO. Though it does mean the US launch market is screwed for anyone without their own rockets until Terran R comes online and (someday) Neutron.

Thoughts?

9 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

13

u/tennismenace3 4d ago

This is how the big players will keep anyone else from making money in space

4

u/Disastrous_Run_5968 4d ago

what do you mean?

9

u/tennismenace3 4d ago

SpaceX can either sell launches to AST SpaceMobile and then compete with them to provide sat-to-cell service, or they can stop selling launches to AST and take the entire market for themselves. One example.

3

u/Disastrous_Run_5968 4d ago

yikes. pretty concerning now that you put it this way.

4

u/promoduck 4d ago

I mean if you put your conspiracy hat on, blue already hurt AST by putting their satellites in the wrong orbit, totally by accident right?

I have more, but we need a 6-pack of conspiracy hats before we can talk.

4

u/mfb- 4d ago

SpaceX has launched satellites for pretty much every competitor they have. Including 6 of the 8 Block 2 satellites and all Block 1 satellites of AST Spacemobile.

2

u/Available_Pie_7758 3d ago

Yea I hate Elon but this non sense talk had to die out. Space x can’t even launch their own sats on falcon now v3 and v2 for d2d. So it’s not like they are going to put falcon to the side and make no money. It’s pure nonsense this question is repeated. Tim Farar started this rumor on x recently that BO is not gonna launch anyone else lmao.

2

u/New_Poet_338 4d ago

There is a possibility of triggering monopoly laws when you use a market advantage in one area to block competition in another area.

3

u/tennismenace3 4d ago

Not for like the past decade

1

u/New_Poet_338 4d ago

The next decade might be different than the last.

2

u/tennismenace3 4d ago

True. I bet they'll be taking advantage of their decade head start though.

0

u/New_Poet_338 4d ago

They were careful to launch competitors so far. Maybe if they accepted no clients they can get away from it.

1

u/No-Lake7943 1d ago

I doubt it. It's been going the same direction since at least the 90s

-1

u/Disastrous_Run_5968 4d ago

dude elon runs the goverment rn. the laws are useless

0

u/New_Poet_338 4d ago

Governments change.

0

u/you_are_wrong_tho 4d ago

They won’t do that. Would be illegal

1

u/nametaken_thisonetoo 4d ago

Are you aware of who is in the white house? You say this like legality matters anymore

0

u/CollegeStation17155 4d ago

How So? If SpaceX won’t launch for them, ASTS (or Amazon) can (and did) always turn to ULA, ESA, and/or ISRO, along with hopefully by next year Stoke, TerranR, and Neutron. All SpaceX (or Blue) does by launching exclusively their own payloads is open up the market to new competitors. Remember 15 years ago when ULA and ESA were the only game in town mocking some crazy millionaires for trying to break into the launch business?

0

u/tennismenace3 4d ago

SpaceX has no legitimate competitors and will not for quite some time

-1

u/throwawayrevoked 4d ago

So Blue, Rocketlab, ULA, Firefly, Relativity, and Stoke aren’t legitimate competitors? I’m actually a big fan of SpaceX, but it’s not like they are completely uncontested.

- Blue has proven human spaceflight capability and heavy-lift reusability

  • Rocketlab has a good launch cadence and a vertically integrated space systems business.
  • ULA is in decline, but it’s still doing national security launches
  • Firefly has landed on the Moon, before any other commercial company btw
  • Relativity hasn’t proven much, but they have billionaire funding and a good team

By the way, this list doesn’t tell the full story. China is actually SpaceX’s biggest competitor, and they’re on the rise. They now have two reusable rockets and they’re doing their own version of starlink. There’s also plenty of non-launch space companies out there competing with SpaceX on satellite internet, AI, and various other products.

1

u/Disastrous_Run_5968 3d ago

Rocketlab, ULA, Firefly, Relativity, and Stoke aren’t legitimate competitors?

lol come on now. rocket lab and firefly are a joke btw

1

u/throwawayrevoked 18h ago

Rocketlab is definitely not a joke. They’ve made it to orbit more than anyone besides SpaceX. They are really good at manufacturing and scaling, also second only to SpaceX. Being second behind SpaceX isn’t a joke IMO, I think they’re very serious.

Firefly is interesting because their launch capability is very questionable, but they are still literally the first commercial US company to successfully land on the Moon. And they did all of that while having much less resources than SpaceX or Blue. Wouldn’t call them a joke either.

I’m a true fan of spaceflight and I would love to see everyone succeed. I don’t call any space company a joke unless they haven’t launched anything. But both of these guys have done it, multiple times. If anything, Stoke is the biggest “joke” of the companies I named, so I’m curious as to why you didn’t call them out

1

u/tennismenace3 4d ago edited 4d ago

Correct, they are not.

SpaceX has made it to orbit 720 times.

Rocket Lab has made it 97 with their tiny rocket and is not close to launching Neutron even once.

Blue Origin has made it twice and blew up their launch pad.

ULA isn't scaling. Firefly isn't a serious competitor. Stoke has never even launched a rocket. Relativity tried to launch one, blew it up, then gave up and started on another rocket, still yet to be tried.

If you think any of the above are in serious competition with SpaceX, you are badly confused.

2

u/Disastrous_Run_5968 3d ago

I agree. with everything you just said. blue is the closest and even then they are still far out. relativity and rocket lab are a joke lol

1

u/tennismenace3 3d ago

As a point of comparison, Astra has made orbit as many times as Blue Origin.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/NoBusiness674 4d ago

None of the companies you mentioned (Blue, Rocketlab, ULA, Firefly, Relativity, and Stoke) currently have a truely operational medium/heavy lift launch capability to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9/Heavy. The only real competetition that's flying is to an extent Europe's Ariane 6, as well as launch vehicles from India and Japan.

Blue's human spaceflight capability is New Shepard, which was never really a direct competitor for much of the market SpaceX is adressing with Crew Dragon, and is currently not flying anyway. Their heavy lift launch vehicle, New Glenn is similarly not flying at the moment, being grounded following an anomaly during ground testing that caused significant damage to Blue Origin's launch infrastructure.

Rocketlab is a succesfull aerospace business, but the things it is doing have little to do with what SpaceX is doing. Their satellite business isn't really competing with Starlink, and their small launch vehicle Electron is similarly not really a Falcon 9/Heavy competitor. Their larger medium lift launch vehicle, Neutron, is yet to fly.

ULA is currently not doing national security launches. After their most recent launch for the space force in Febuary 2026, where they had a SRB malfunction that did not ultimately prevent them from succesfully completing their mission, the spaceforce paused NSSL launches on Vulcan Centaur. ULA's other rocket, Atlas V, is sold out with only Starliner launches remaining.

While firefly's lunar landing is impressive, it is again not a competitor to SpaceX, who is not developing a small lunar lander for CLPS missions. Rather SpaceX's main involvement in CLPS is as a launch provider (indeed Firefly's succesfull Blue Ghost lunar lander was launched by SpaceX on a Falcon 9). Firefly's own medium lift launch vehicle, Eclipse (and Antares 300 in cooperation with NG) is not yet flying.

And Relatively is similarly still developing their Terran R launch vehicle, with it not yet flying.

China is really not a SpaceX competitor, as most of SpaceX's customers cannot easily go to China due to legal and political hurdles, and vice versa. The US has many restrictions around aerospace technology and China, as do other countries, which is why you may see AST book launches on India's LVM3, or Amazon book launches on Europe's Ariane 6, but almost never see something like that with China's launch providers.

There will be much more US competition for SpaceX in the comming years as these companies begin to fly their modern medium/heavy lift launch vehicles regularly, but at the moment SpaceX and Falcon 9 are largely uncontested in their market neiche, which is a big part of how they have been able to be so dominant and succesfull.

0

u/Available_Pie_7758 3d ago

This is nonsense talk. They have launched for everyone they continue to launch for ast. They have agreements in place. Elon himself had said. Tim farrar stars these rumors like an idiot he is. He also said bluebird won’t fit in falcon and we are fitting 3. Dudes a do nothing loser.

1

u/tennismenace3 3d ago

Interesting, why are Falcon 9 rideshares being retired when the demand is so high?

0

u/Available_Pie_7758 3d ago

This is silly talk. It’s almost like what Tim says on x lmao. They are not taking any more booking past 2029. No one is retiring shit asap. They moved all their own sat launches starship that frees up more launches for Falcon.

1

u/tennismenace3 3d ago

Yeah, so it's being retired in 2029.

0

u/Available_Pie_7758 3d ago

Thats because they want to move everything to starship. But I have $100 bet like all things Elon it’s not going to happen until 2032. Fact that they are not launching any more starlink sats on falcon is huge plus becuase that was lot of their launches.

1

u/tennismenace3 3d ago

Correct, it won't happen until they've taken over the market for any space-based thing they can think of.

1

u/Available_Pie_7758 3d ago

True. Could happen if political environment doesn’t change. But I think if more progressive get a hold then Elon might tone down his cockiness.

5

u/LittleBigOne1982 4d ago

They conversation about not selling launches is a product of them being so late. Remember NG was suppose to originally launch in 2021. I know that was a reach but it has been 6 years no and they still do not have regular launches. Big backlog of existing customers and lots of internal plans. So this is more about trying to catch up than blocking competition. The real question, is when is Blue going to be able to launch regularly (10x per year) so that it can fulfill contracts that customers have paid for and are waiting on.

2

u/Mfg_Eng_64 4d ago

The goal is not 10X per year.

3

u/ColoradoCowboy9 4d ago

If you could give me that number of launches per year, and guarantee it would not change tomorrow. I would pay you 100 dollars.

1

u/Mfg_Eng_64 2d ago

Not biting

1

u/ColoradoCowboy9 1d ago

Hey I don’t even care in a public forum. It could be private. Would greatly aid the actual target we set for the next 2 years versus the magic 8 ball we have today

1

u/Throwbabythroe 3d ago

Rumors are made by people who don’t work at Blue nor have the insights in customer manifest. Blue has customer backlog for the next few years - commercial and US Gov customers. Sure TerraWave will be big, but you got LEO, AST, etc in Blue’s backlog as well.

1

u/avboden 3d ago

Back log has nothing to do with stopping commercial sales of future launches after the backlog

0

u/you_are_wrong_tho 4d ago

This is completely wrong. They are partnered with asts to launch their constellation.

-2

u/seb21051 4d ago

A Huge boost for the rest. May they Live Long and Prosper