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Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin laying off 1,000 employees: reports
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Jeff Bezos' aerospace company, Blue Origin, is laying off about 1,000 workers, according to media reports. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp announced the cuts in an internal email to employees, which was obtained by CNN and The New York Times, among other outlets. Blue Origin does not disclose how many people it employs, but that number is thought to be around 10,000, according to The New York Times. The new layoffs therefore represent a roughly 10% cull. 'We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,' the email reads, according to CNN. "It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities." According to the email, the cuts will be "in engineering, research and development, project management, and general managerial layers," The New York Times reported. Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, two years before Elon Musk established SpaceX. The two billionaires have both said they want to help humanity extend its footprint out into the cosmos. Musk's focus has long been on Mars, whereas Bezos has touted the potential of giant space stations. Related: Blue Origin: Everything you need to know about the private spaceflight company RELATED STORIES: — Blue Origin fires up 2nd stage of huge New Glenn rocket ahead of debut launch (video) — NASA delays ESCAPADE Mars launch on Blue Origin's giant New Glenn rocket to 2025 to avoid potential cost overruns — New Glenn: Blue Origin's reusable rocket Blue Origin has launched its suborbital, fully reusable New Shepard vehicle 29 times to date, most recently on Feb. 4. Nine of those 29 flights have been crewed. The company is also developing a big, partially reusable rocket called New Glenn, which launched for the first time ever last month. That test flight was a success, with the rocket's upper stage reaching Earth orbit as planned (though the rocket's first stage failed in its attempt to land on a ship at sea). Blue Origin has other irons in the fire as well. For example, it's working on a spacecraft called Blue Moon, which NASA selected to be the second crewed lander for its Artemis program.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin targeting late spring for 2nd launch of powerful New Glenn rocket
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. WASHINGTON, D.C. — The second launch of Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket could be just a few months away. The 320-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) New Glenn lifted off for the first time on Jan. 16 from Florida's Space Coast. The test flight was a success; the rocket's upper stage successfully carried its payload, a test version of Blue Origin's new Blue Ring spacecraft platform, to Earth orbit. A secondary objective didn't go so well; New Glenn's first-stage booster failed to stick its landing on a ship at sea. (This was the expected outcome, the company had stressed; a successful touchdown on the debut flight would have been a pleasant surprise.) Blue Origin says it has homed in on the likely cause of the booster issue and plans to try again soon. The booster's engines appeared to be performing well during the landing sequence, but "we weren't able to get everything right to the engine from the tanks. And so we think we understand what the issues are," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said during a talk on Wednesday (Feb. 12) here at the 27th Annual Commercial Space Conference. He didn't identify those issues, describing them as "a combination of a couple of things." Blue Origin is making some changes to the second New Glenn booster to increase the chances of landing success, Limp added. "The modifications are not complicated," he said. 'I don't think it's going to delay our path to flight. I think we can still fly late spring.' Related: Blue Origin: Everything you need to know about the private spaceflight company RELATED STORIES: — Blue Origin fires up 2nd stage of huge New Glenn rocket ahead of debut launch (video) — NASA delays ESCAPADE Mars launch on Blue Origin's giant New Glenn rocket to 2025 to avoid potential cost overruns — New Glenn: Blue Origin's reusable rocket Blue Origin still hasn't announced what payload(s) will fly on New Glenn's second launch, and Limp said the company is "still looking for opportunities." "If it came to it and we just had to fly a mass simulator, we'll fly a mass simulator," he said. The company views the first three New Glenn launches as developmental flights, he added, but has commercial customers for the rocket from Flight 4 onward. New Glenn, which has been in development for about a decade, can carry 50 tons (45 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO). Its 23-foot-wide (7 m) payload fairing — the shell that surrounds and protects satellites during launch — is larger than that of any operational rocket.
