Blue Origin Expands Florida Facilities to Ramp Up New Glenn Launches

Image: Ars Technica · Source

Blue Origin plans major expansion of its Florida launch sites to support up to 150 New Glenn rocket flights per year by decade's end, including new pads, manufacturing, and landing ships.

Blue Origin has unveiled an ambitious expansion plan for its Florida launch infrastructure to dramatically increase New Glenn rocket flights. Currently under construction are two launch pads at Cape Canaveral, with plans to add two more. The company also intends to build a new manufacturing plant capable of producing up to 150 upper stages annually for an enlarged New Glenn variant.

To support increased flight cadence, Blue Origin will acquire two additional landing ships to recover the rocket's first stage, complementing their existing vessel, Jacklyn. A new customer integration facility, developed with the US Space Force, will include four payload processing bays to handle multiple missions concurrently.

According to Ian Richardson, Blue Origin’s Senior VP of Operations, these investments aim to build capacity for "more missions, more reliably, and more efficiently," targeting multiple flights per week by the end of the decade. The company has already invested about $3 billion in Florida facilities, employing over 5,000 people across more than 20 sites.

The move positions Blue Origin to capture market opportunities as SpaceX reduces commercial launch availability after 2028, potentially filling a growing industry gap for medium- and heavy-lift launches. However, Blue Origin’s New Glenn program suffered a setback in May due to a BE-4 engine failure destroying the rocket and Launch Complex 36A.

Rebuilding efforts are underway to restore LC-36A for a possible return to flight by early 2027, alongside completing the nearby LC-36B site tailored for a larger 9×4 engine variant of New Glenn. This larger rocket could deliver 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit and support NASA's Artemis lunar missions with a human lander as soon as 2028.

Blue Origin’s expansion underscores CEO Jeff Bezos's commitment to positioning New Glenn as a reliable, high-capacity launcher for the coming decade, competing robustly on the Space Coast as the commercial launch landscape evolves.