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Blue Origin to add new Florida launch pads, seeks aggressive increase in New Glenn flight rate

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Blue Origin to add new Florida launch pads, seeks aggressive increase in New Glenn flight rate

Blue Origin said it will add new launch pads on Florida’s Space Coast to help ramp up the flight rate of its New Glenn rockets, as the company recovers from a catastrophic test fire explosion in May.

In a series of other infrastructure announcements Friday morning, Ian Richardson, the Senior Vice President of Operations at Blue Origin, said the company was serious about launching and landing more rockets.

“These investments are centered on one goal: building the capacity to support more missions, more reliably, and more efficiently,” Richardson said. “As we look ahead, this infrastructure is designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade.”

The new pads would be modeled after Blue Origin facilities at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. LC-36A, which is being rebuilt after the static test fire explosion, serves the New Glenn 7×2 rocket and LC-36B is under construction to support launches of the 9×4 variant of the rocket, which features nine BE-4 engines on the first stage and four BE-3U engines on the upper stage. The announcement did not reveal the exact locations of the new pad facilities.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is in the middle of a 30-day comment period as it seeks public input on Blue Origin’s request to increase its launch cadence at LC-36A from 12 permitted flights up to 50. A virtual public hearing is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22, and public comment closes on Oct. 30.

With more pads coming online, Blue Origin said it will also introduce two new landing vessels to its marine fleet.


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