Blue Origin New Glenn vs SpaceX Starship Flight 7: Showdown of Giant Rockets

Blue Origin and SpaceX are ready to launch their giant rockets – New Glenn and Starship Flight 7. These two companies are now prepared for a major showdown for their new space launch vehicles featuring the latest technologies.

New Glenn

Blue Origin has announced that the first New Glenn flight will happen on January 10 from Florida. This integrated launch vehicle has two stages and its booster is designed to fly up to 25 times.

The entire rocket is 320 ft tall including a seven-meter fairing to host large payloads. The upper stage uses two BE-3U, generating 160,000 lbf of vacuum thrust with in-space restart capabilities.

The launch vehicle has four actuated aerodynamic control surfaces for altitude adjustment during the first stage’s descent and landing.

Blue Origin New Glenn (Source – Blue Origin)

On the other hand, its wing-like strakes provide lift and cross-range during descent and maintain its trajectory. After the final burn, the first stage uses six hydraulically-actuated legs to secure touchdown and land on a droneship.

New Glenn will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload to test its core flight, ground systems, and operational capacity. The objective of this flight is to reach the orbit and try to land the first stage offshore in the Atlantic.

Starship Flight 7

The Starship launch vehicle is still under development and its 7th edition could achieve major milestones for its technological advancements.

Starship is a two-stage integrated super large space launch vehicle with a total height of 121 meters. Its first stage comprises 33 Raptor engines using sub-cooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen to generate 7,590 tf of thrust at liftoff.

The super heavy booster is the largest ever flying object with such thrust capability and future iterations will have more improvements in the full engine power.

Flight 7 will attempt to catch the booster with the launch tower arm after an attempt failed during the previous test mission.

SpaceX Starship Stacked on the Launch Mount at Starbase, Texas (Source – SpaceX)

On the other hand, the second stage hosts the payload. The company will use the Starlink satellite simulator to test Starship’s satellite deployment capability.

Furthermore, SpaceX has made some new changes in the upper stage of the heat shield and thermal system as well as the forward flaps to test them during the reentry phase. These new changes could make Starship more stable and perform better while enduring the descent heat.

Eventually, the Ship will perform a vertical splashdown in the Indian Ocean to wrap up the test mission. If everything goes right, SpaceX could attempt to land the second stage on the launch site with the next flight.

Showdown

SpaceX is expected to launch its Starship Flight 7 on January 10 but the company has not shared any official insight on this matter, amid that, there’s a huge chance New Glenn will eventually show us an exciting maiden flight against SpaceX’s Starship.