Engineers at Blue Origin have been grappling with a seemingly eternal debate that involves the New Glenn rocket and the economics of flying it.
The debate goes back at least 15 years, to the early discussions around the design of the heavy lift rocket. The first stage, of course, would be fully reusable. But what about the upper stage of New Glenn, powered by two large BE-3U engines?
Around the same time, in the early 2010s, SpaceX was also trading the economics of reusing the second stage of its Falcon 9 rocket. Eventually SpaceX founder Elon Musk abandoned his goal of a fully reusable Falcon 9, choosing instead to recover payload fairings and push down manufacturing costs of the upper stage as much as possible. This strategy worked, as SpaceX has lowered its internal launch costs of a Falcon 9, even with a new second stage, to about $15 million. The company is now focused on making the larger Starship rocket fully reusable.
