How high does Blue Origin reach?

Blue Origin's suborbital vehicle launches vertically from West Texas and shuts down its BE-3 engine at about two and a half minutes into flight, at over 3,500 km/h. The capsule separates and keeps climbing on momentum to an apogee that, on crewed missions, has ranged between 105 and 107 km. That margin above the Kármán line, set by the International Aeronautical Federation at 100 km, is what lets the company present its passengers as astronauts. Up there they enjoy three to four minutes of weightlessness before the capsule reenters and deploys three parachutes; the booster, meanwhile, reignites its engine and lands vertically a few kilometers from the pad.

With the 98 m New Glenn, Blue Origin entered the orbital business. Here the question changes: a launcher doesn't climb to a height and stop, it accelerates its payload to about 7.8 km/s or more so it stays in orbit. On its maiden flight, on January 16, 2025, the second stage reached an orbit of about 2,400 × 19,300 km with the Blue Ring test payload, although the first-stage booster failed to land on the barge. It is expected to carry satellites to low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, and even toward the Moon with the Blue Moon lander.

An altitude of 107 km looks modest next to the International Space Station's 400 km, but the real difference isn't distance, it's energy. New Shepard reaches about 3,600 km/h at its fastest point; a ship in low Earth orbit needs about 28,000 km/h. Sustaining that speed, and especially braking it on reentry, requires very different heat shields and structures, which explains why the leap from one program to the other took the company more than a decade.