Could Blue Origin offer it’s own rocket to the Moon?

 Copyright 2025 Robert Clark

 There is increasing concern within NASA that China could beat us back to the Moon. A big component of this concern derives from increasing delay in the development of the SpaceX Starship, tabbed to be the lunar lander for the Artemis lunar program.

 Surprisingly, it may turn out that Blue Origin’s New Glenn with some relatively small upgrades can operate as its own independent Moon rocket.

 One estimate of the Blue Origins first stage propellant mass has been in the range of 1,150 tons:

First Stage:
Fuel load: 1150 tonnes
How? BE-4 with 2,440kN of thrust, and an ISP ~310 should have a mass flow rate of ~803kg/s. We know from the payload users guide that the engines burn for 200 seconds. 200s x 7eng x ~803kg = 1,124,200kg. This number should have a pretty high fidelity, being off on ISP by 3 only changes the final number by ~10 tonnes. Subtract out some for a likely throttle down during Max-Q and during the end of the burn to limit Gs under 4 then add back in the landing fuel and you likely arrive at ~1,150 tonnes. 

Empty mass: ~100 tonnes
How? Falcon 9's first stage weighs about 27 tonnes vs. ~409 tonnes of fuel. Falcon 9 also has fuel that is 30% more dense, doesn't have large strakes, and the TWR for Merlin is probably about twice as high as BE-4.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41146.msg2120895#msg2120895

 This seems pretty robust, based on propellant burn rates and published length of the first stage burn time as indicated there. However, it could be this doesn’t take into account the propellant that needs to be kept on reserve for landing.

 On the other hand, this estimates it as smaller by a factor of 2.6 than that of the SpaceX Superheavy booster:

{Credit: Ken Kirtland}

https://x.com/kenkirtland17/status/1761481624548511916?s=61

Apparently taken from this graphic available in the New Glenn Users Guide:

 The SuperHeavy has a capacity of 3,600 tons, this would put the New Glenn propellant capacity at 1,380 tons.

 Estimate its’s dry mass as in that forum.NasaSpaceflight.com post as ca. 100 tons. For the hydrolox upper stage, based on it’s size estimate propellant load as ca. 200 tons, and assume a Centaur-like 10 to 1 mass ratio, giving it a dry mass of ca. 20 tons.

  Then estimate the payload to LEO using the rocket equation:

340*9.81Ln(1 + 1,380/(100 + 220 + 100)) + 465*9.81Ln(1 + 200/(20 +100)) = 9,300 m/s, sufficient for 100 tons to LEO. 

 But the point of the matter is 100 tons to LEO has long been seen as the needed payload capacity for a rocket to serve as a single launch manned rocket to the Moon.

 However, this will need greater thrust than the 1,750 tons cited by Blue Origin to lift off with adequate thrust/weight ratio(TWR). Indeed, the gross mass in this estimate is already above the 1,750 ton sea level thrust quoted by New Glenn.

 During the first test launch of New Glenn it was much commented on how slow was the acceleration at lift-off. Even at that lower estimated first stage propellant load of 1,150 tons the lift-off TWR would still be quite low. It seems likely this low TWR is the cause of the payload being initially only 25 tons rather than the previously announced 45 tons.

 Given the low liftoff TWR and the reduced payload, Blue Origin probably intended from the beginning to upgrade the New Glenn thrust.

This graphic shows a thrust level of 4.51 million pounds for a three stage New Glenn, or 2,050 tons compared to the current 1,750 tons, a 17% upgrade.

SpaceX has upgraded the thrust of the Raptor more than once at higher than this level of increase so this is a feasible upgrade. 

 Additionally, Blue Origin in an employment announcement has mentioned an increase in the number of engines from 7 to 9:

 SpaceX has also shown increasing or decreasing number of engines on a stage is a relatively straightforward modification. Actually, given the competitiveness between New Glenn and SpaceX it may be that Blue Origin originally decided to go with 7 engines rather than 9 just so as not to be seen as copying SpaceX. It does seem mysterious why Blue Origin would field a rocket with such a low TWR from the beginning.

 So we’ll assume an upgrade of thrust level of the BE-4 by 17% to bring the 7 engine thrust to 2,050 tons and also an increase in the number of engines to 9, to bring the total thrust now to 2,635 tons. This results in a quite healthy liftoff TWR of 2,635/1,800 = 1.46.

 After their success in their first launch of reaching orbit with New Glenn, Blue Origin plans to top that with a launch of a lunar cargo lander in March with the Blue Moon Mk 1. This would be quite remarkable to advance so rapidly from an initial orbital launch to follow that in the next launch to a landing with a rather sizable 21 ton lander on the Moon. This larger than the Apollo lunar lander.

Note, a 100 ton LEO capacity of the upgraded New Glenn will allow a ca. 50 payload to trans-lunar injection(TLI). This is comparable to that of the Saturn V. 

 In a follow-up post we’ll show this New Glenn with an additional third stage and lander comparable to the Blue Moon Mk 1 can form a manned rocket to the Moon.