Blue Origin announces layoffs following New Glenn launch
Less than a month after Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket successfully reached orbit for the first time, the company is announcing sweeping layoffs.
Eyewitness News obtained an email from Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp announcing a 10% reduction in the company's workforce.
The email states that the company's focus is to scale manufacturing output and its launch cadence.
Blue Origin says it's doing what it can to support everyone impacted.
'I think in the case of Blue Origin, we might look at it from the point of view of engineers are victims of their own success, and so basically if they've gotten a system to the point where it's designed and it can transition to being operational, then they may not have a job anymore, and so it's a different set of employees that are needed to run the operations,' said Don Platt, associate professor of space systems at Florida Tech.
Limp said the company will continue to invest, invent and hire hundreds of positions in areas that will best serve customers.
It still means an uncertain future for some employees and comes just days after Boeing announced 400 potential layoffs for employees working on its Space Launch System program that supports NASA's moon rocket.
Blue Origin built and launched its New Glenn rocket from Florida's space coast.
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