section_path: Description and technical specifications
section_name: Description and technical specifications
paragraph_text: Description and technical specifications
  
  New Glenn is a 7 m (23 ft) diameter two-stage orbital launch vehicle with a reusable first stage and an expendable second stage. An optional third stage was envisaged with a single BE-3U engine, and was planned as of October 2018.
  
  The first stage (GS1) is designed to be reusable for a minimum of 25 flights, and will land vertically, a technology previously developed by Blue Origin and tested in 2015–2016 on its New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle. The second stage (GS2) will share the same diameter and is, "roughly 88 feet (26.8 meters) tall" and will be expendable. Both stages will use orthogrid aluminum tanks with welded aluminum domes and common bulkheads. Both stages will also use autogenous pressurization.
  
  The first stage is powered by seven BE-4 methane/oxygen engines—designed and manufactured by Blue Origin—producing 17,000 kN (3,800,000 lb) of liftoff thrust. Its liquid oxygen propellant tank has a volume of 30,000 cu ft (850 m 3) while the fuel tank can store almost 25,000 cu ft (710 m 3) of liquid methane. The second stage will be powered by two BE-3U vacuum optimized engines, also designed and manufactured by Blue Origin, using hydrogen/oxygen as propellants.
  
  The company stated in 2019 that the planned full operational payload capacity of the two-stage version of New Glenn would be 13,000 kg (29,000 lb) to GTO and 45,000 kg (99,000 lb) to a 51.6° inclined LEO, though the initial operating capability could be somewhat lower. As of 2018, dual-satellite launches were intended to be offered after the first five flights.
  
  Launches of New Glenn are made from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) leased to Blue Origin in 2015 in support of the New Glenn program. As of 2023, Blue Origin and the U.S. Space Force plan to give New Glenn polar orbit capabilities through building a West Coast launch facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, to be called Space Launch Complex 9 (SLC-9).
  
  New Glenn will also be available for space tourism flights, with priority given to customers of New Shepard. The first stage boosters of New Glenn are intended to be reusable, and were originally intended to be recovered downrange on the Atlantic Ocean via their landing platform ship Jacklyn, which would have acted as a floating movable landing platform. The hydrodynamically stabilized ship would have increased the likelihood of successful recovery in rough seas. That ship was scrapped, and a new landing barge named Landing Platform Vessel 1, also nicknamed Jacklyn, was commissioned and became operational in 2024.