Which rocket will change everything? Starship or New Glenn?

Video from the channel Mecánica Orbital about New Glenn, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 24:20. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

The video compares Blue Origin's New Glenn with SpaceX's Starship: their purpose, their characteristics, how they are reused, and the flights completed by the time of publication, asking which will dominate access to space. SpaceX aims Starship at turning humanity into a multiplanetary species through a fully reusable system. Blue Origin, for its part, aims to move heavy industry off Earth and envisions commercial stations such as Orbital Reef.

New Glenn had been in development for more than a decade when it first flew, on 16 January 2025. With that flight, Blue Origin reached orbit for the first time, since its previous rocket, New Shepard, was suborbital. The first stage, however, failed to land on the Atlantic droneship because it lost telemetry. Starship, meanwhile, had made seven test flights since April 2023. The first ended with the rocket destroyed before stage separation, the second debuted hot staging, and the third reached orbital velocity. The fourth survived reentry. The fifth, in October 2024, achieved the first catch of the Super Heavy booster by the tower's arms. The seventh, in January 2025, repeated the catch but lost the ship to a fire in its rear section.

According to the video, New Glenn measures 98 m tall and 7 m in diameter. Its first stage, 57.5 m long, is designed to be reused up to 25 times by landing on a ship and carries seven BE-4 methane/liquid-oxygen engines with a combined thrust of 17,100 kN. The second stage, 22 m long, burns hydrogen and oxygen. The rocket can carry 45 tonnes to low Earth orbit and 13 to geostationary transfer orbit, with an 18 m, 458 m³ payload fairing that descends by parachute for recovery. Starship, with its Super Heavy booster, reaches 123 m tall and 9 m in diameter: it carries 33 Raptor engines on the booster and six on the ship, and in its version 2 can put about 150 tonnes into low Earth orbit. The author concludes that Starship looks better positioned thanks to its fast reusability and payload capacity, though he credits New Glenn with an important role in the space economy.