Blue Origin finally reaches orbit

One giant leap for Blue Origin = one small step forward in the billionaire space wars.

Early Thursday morning, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket took off from its Cape Canaveral launchpad. Thirteen minutes later, Jeff Bezos’ space company had achieved a monumental milestone – its first time reaching orbit since its founding in 2000 (two years before Elon Musk’s SpaceX).

• The launch’s only snafu involved Blue Origin failing to catch the rocket’s reusable booster, nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance” – since experts say it was unlikely the company would succeed on its first try; SpaceX required 19 launches before pulling it off.

New Glenn, we have liftoff

The rocket, measuring 320+ ft. tall, is designed to conduct regular flights using reusable boosters. Blue Origin aims for it to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9, the world's first orbital-class reusable rocket.

• New Glenn is eventually meant to launch astronaut crews and satellites – including Amazon's Project Kuiper internet satellites (a potential Starlink competitor) – into orbit.

Big picture: Blue Origin’s customers include NASA, various US government agencies, and some telecom companies, who are eyeing New Glenn as a potential way to reduce dependency on SpaceX. Of the record 145 launches reaching orbit last year (5x as many as 2017), Musk’s space company was responsible for 134.

🚀 Speaking of SpaceX…The company conducted the seventh test flight of its Starship rocket yesterday evening.