The successful flight to orbit of the Amazon founder’s powerful rocket suggests it could grow into a credible competitor with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos’ space company Blue Origin started at about the same time as Musk’s SpaceX but since then Musk’s firm has launched more than 400 of its Falcon 9 rockets into orbit and is testing out its giant Starship rocket which it hopes will send astronauts to the Moon and one day possibly on to Mars.

If New Glenn can continue to demonstrate its capabilities and (more crucially) its reliability, it has the potential to take some business that SpaceX would otherwise struggle to accommodate.

Granted, Blue Origin poses an even bigger threat to Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and Boeing (NYSE: BA) and their United Launch Alliance (ULA) joint venture, which charges $110 million for Vulcan rocket launches. Airbus ' (OTC: EADSY) Arianespace charges $77 million for an Ariane 62 launch, and is probably worried, too.

message posted on X. New Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. According to Blue Origin, the rocket is “engineered with the safety and redundancy required to fly ...

Years in the making with heavy funding by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ... Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is five times taller. Blue Origin poured more than $1 billion into ...

The 320-foot New Glenn rocket was initially scheduled to launch early Monday with a prototype satellite aboard.

The reusable spacecraft had been due to take off from Florida but the launch was halted as anomalies were detected after the countdown began

Blue Origin launched its towering New Glenn rocket for the first time early Monday, in a crucial milestone for Jeff Bezos’ space company.

The mission, the culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development journey, will include an attempt to land New Glenn’s first stage booster on a sea-fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after lift-off, while the rocket’s second stage continues toward orbit.

Years in the making with heavy funding by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ... Fla. Credit: AP/John Raoux New Glenn was supposed to fly before dawn Monday, but ice buildup in critical plumbing caused ...

The 320-foot New Glenn rocket is named after space pioneer John Glenn, who was the first ... hosting and refueling missions. Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, and it ...