section_path: History/Development
section_name: Development
paragraph_text: Development
  
  Design work on the vehicle began in 2012, with the beginning of BE-4 engine development. Further plans for an orbital launch vehicle were made public in 2015. In mid-2016, the launch vehicle was briefly referred to publicly by the placeholder name of " Very Big Brother ". It was stated to be a two-stage-to-orbit liquid-propellant rocket, with the launcher intended to be reusable. In early 2016, Blue Origin indicated that the first orbital launch was expected no earlier than 2020 from the Florida launch facility, and in September 2017 continued to forecast a 2020 debut. In a February 2016 interview, Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson referred to engine development and orbital launch vehicle milestones.
  
  The vehicle itself, and the high-level specifications, were initially publicly unveiled in September 2016. New Glenn was described as a 7 m (23 ft) diameter, two- or three-stage rocket, with the first and second stages being liquid methane / liquid oxygen (methalox) designs using Blue Origin engines. The first stage is planned to be reusable and will land vertically, just like the New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle that has been flying suborbitally since the mid-2010s. Although these plans would subsequently change, the 2016 plans called for the first stage to be powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 single-shaft oxygen-rich staged combustion liquid methane /liquid oxygen rocket engines, the second-stage to be powered by a single vacuum-variant of the BE-4 (BE-4U) and the third stage to use a single BE-3 hydrolox engine. In 2016, the first stage was planned to be designed to be reused for up to 100 flights. Blue Origin announced that they intended to launch the rocket from Launch Complex 36 (LC-36), and manufacture the launch vehicles at a new facility to be built on nearby land in Exploration Park. Acceptance testing of the BE-4 engines was also announced to be planned for Florida.
  
  Blue Origin explained in the 12 September 2016 announcement that the rocket would be named New Glenn in honor of the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, with an inaugural flight planned no earlier than 2020. Three weeks of wind tunnel testing of a scale model New Glenn were completed in September 2016 in order to validate the CFD design models of transonic and supersonic flight.
  
  In March 2017, Jeff Bezos showed graphics of the New Glenn which had two large strakes at the bottom of the booster. In the September 2017 announcement, Blue Origin announced a much larger payload fairing for New Glenn, this one 7 m (23 ft) in diameter, up from 5.4 m (18 ft) in the originally announced design.
  
  By March 2018, the launch vehicle design had changed. It was announced that the New Glenn second stage would now be powered by two vacuum versions of the flight proven BE-3 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine (BE-3U) with a single BE-3U engine for the third stage deep space option. The three-stage booster variant was subsequently cancelled completely in January 2019. By mid-2018, the low-level design was not yet complete and the likelihood of achieving an initial launch by 2020 was being called into question by company engineers, customers, industry experts, and journalists. In October 2018, the Air Force announced Blue Origin was awarded US$500 million for development of New Glenn as a potential competitor in future contracts, including Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Phase 2. The October 2018 award was terminated in December 2020 after Blue received US$255.5 million of the US$500 million.
  
  By February 2019, several launches for New Glenn had been contracted: five for OneWeb, an unspecified amount of Telesat, one each for Eutelsat, mu Space Corp and SKY Perfect JSAT. In February 2019, Blue Origin indicated that no plans to build a reusable second stage were on the company's roadmap. In the event, by July 2021, Blue Origin was again evaluating options for getting to a reusable second-stage design: Project Jarvis.
  
  In August 2020 the Air Force announced that New Glenn was not selected for the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 launch procurement. Due to this, in February 2021 Blue Origin announced that the first flight would slip to no earlier than late 2022.
  
  By December 2020, Blue Origin indicated that the BE-4 engine delivery to United Launch Alliance (ULA) would slip to summer 2021, and ULA disclosed that the first launch of the New Glenn competitor ULA Vulcan Centaur would now be no earlier than 4Q 2021. Blue Origin announced a further schedule slip for the first launch of New Glenn in March 2021 when the company said New Glenn "would not launch until the fourth quarter of 2022, at the earliest".
  
  By 2021, Blue had changed the published reuse specification for New Glenn to a minimum of 25 flights, from the previous design intent of 2016 to support up to 100 flights.
  
  In March 2022, the expected first launch of New Glenn slipped to no earlier than Q4 2023.
  
  In January 2024, the first stage of New Glenn was being transported at Kennedy Space Center from the factory to the launch complex in preparation for a 2024 launch.
  
  In February 2024, a boiler plate of both the first and second stages of New Glenn had been erected on launch pad LC-36 for the first time. This test vehicle was not in flight-ready condition, however, as there were no functioning engines mounted to it. In May 2024, New Glenn was rolled out again for additional testing prior to a planned launch later in the year.