Somehow Blue Origin New Glenn EXACT NASA SLS Replacement! Better than SpaceX...

Somehow Blue Origin New Glenn EXACT NASA SLS Replacement! Better than SpaceX...
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Somehow Blue Origin New Glenn EXACT NASA SLS Replacement! Better than SpaceX...
NASA had more than three years between Artemis I and Artemis II to prepare. Yet the Space Launch System is still running into one problem after another.
And now NASA is making an even bigger claim. They say that after these early missions, the gap between future Moon flights could drop to just 10 months.
Yeah, that sounds fantastic. But most people simply don’t believe it.
Because if SLS is still struggling today, how could NASA possibly sustain that pace? Unless they already have a different vehicle that could step in if SLS runs into trouble.
And in this context, one vehicle suddenly comes into focus. Not Starship. Not Falcon Heavy. The only real candidate might be New Glenn.
So why would Blue Origin’s massive rocket make sense as a backup option for NASA?
Let’s find out in today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
Somehow Blue Origin New Glenn EXACT NASA SLS Replacement! Better than SpaceX...
NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, has long been known for two things: an extremely slow production pace and an eye-watering price tag.
The rocket is built to support the Artemis program, NASA’s series of missions aimed at returning humans to the Moon. The program was first announced back in 2017, and nearly nine years have passed since then. Yet during that entire period, NASA has managed to produce only two SLS rockets.
One of them launched during Artemis I in 2021. The second is currently being prepared for Artemis II, which NASA says is targeting a launch in April.
That means the current production pace works out to a little over two years per rocket. And the cost is just as staggering. Estimates suggest it takes around 2.5 billion dollars to build a single SLS.
But after just one launch, all that effort from the engineers, along with that enormous investment, is simply gone. The rocket isn’t reusable.
Contractors have likely already started developing components for the next SLS vehicle, but it’s still unclear whether the production speed can actually improve.\
Somehow Blue Origin New Glenn EXACT NASA SLS Replacement! Better than SpaceX...
Recently, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a plan to accelerate the Artemis program. The proposal would cancel development of the SLS Block 1B, focus instead on ramping up production of the Block 1 version, and use that configuration for all missions after Artemis III.
The big question is whether that change can truly make a difference. Could it cut production time in half, or even by two-thirds? For now, no one really knows.
Unless NASA already has a backup plan, one that could both shorten the gap between missions to about ten months and reduce the overall cost. And that would mean replacing SLS with an existing rocket. And if that sounds unrealistic, there is one important fact to remember. Back in 2014, Orion was successfully launched on a Delta IV Heavy during the uncrewed EFT-1 test flight. That mission proved something important. Orion can fly on rockets other than SLS.
Somehow Blue Origin New Glenn EXACT NASA SLS Replacement! Better than SpaceX...
So the key question becomes simple. How many rockets today can actually do the job of SLS?
Because SLS has one main task. It has to push Orion out of Earth’s gravity and place it on a trans-lunar trajectory toward the Moon. That requires a very powerful heavy-lift configuration, with a payload capacity of more than 27 tons. More importantly, the rocket has to be human-rated, because it needs to launch the entire Orion stack, including the European Service Module and the Launch Abort System. Altogether, that system weighs more than 30 tons.
And that’s why Falcon Heavy from SpaceX ends up just missing the mark. Even though it can send about 26 tons toward the Moon in expendable mode, it still lacks full human-rating and comes up slightly short on performance. So it’s not the right vehicle for the job.

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