New Glenn has already reached orbit. Starship has not, at least, not on an operational mission. Both are reusable rockets built by companies founded by billionaires who made their fortunes elsewhere, and both are competing for the same heavy-lift government and commercial contracts. But when it comes to proving what they can do, they’re at very different stages.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn first reached orbit in January 2025. Like Falcon 9, it recovers only its first stage. SpaceX’s Starship is a more ambitious bet: a fully reusable vehicle with both stages designed to land and fly again.
As of 2026, Starship is still working through uncrewed flight tests. New Glenn is already flying missions; Starship is still trying to prove the concept that sets it apart from every other rocket in the world.
The Comparison at a Glance
| Measure | Starship | New Glenn |
|---|---|---|
| Builder | SpaceX | Blue Origin |
| First orbital flight | Still in flight testing, no operational orbital mission yet | January 2025 |
| Height (stacked) | Roughly 120 meters | About 98 meters (322 feet) |
| Reusability | Both stages designed to land and refly | First stage lands and reflies. Upper stage expended |
| Payload to low Earth orbit | Design target exceeds New Glenn’s advertised figure | Roughly 45 metric tons (expendable, Blue Origin’s advertised figure) |
| Engines | About 33 Raptor (booster) plus 6 (upper stage), methane and liquid oxygen | Seven BE-4 (first stage) plus two BE-3U (second stage) |
| Confirmed mission role | NASA’s Human Landing System for Artemis | National-security, commercial, and NASA science payloads |
New Glenn Has Already Reached Orbit
New Glenn’s clearest edge right now is simple. It has already reached orbit, and Starship has not flown an operational mission. New Glenn first reached orbit in January 2025, losing its booster during that landing attempt but delivering its payload successfully. Starship is earlier in its process, flying uncrewed prototype after uncrewed prototype to find and fix problems before any operational flight. That build-fly-learn approach is one SpaceX has used since its earliest Falcon rockets.
That gap will not necessarily hold. Starship’s design goals, both stages recovered and reflown, go further than what New Glenn attempts. A harder engineering target tends to take longer to prove out. Falcon 9 itself needed years and several failed landing attempts before reuse became routine. A longer road for Starship does not by itself say anything about whether the vehicle eventually works.
Starship’s Reuse Goes Further
New Glenn recovers only its first stage and lands it on a ship named Jacklyn. That is the same basic split Falcon 9 uses: keep the expensive booster, expend the simpler upper stage. Starship aims higher. Both its Super Heavy booster and its upper stage are designed to land and fly again, an approach no operational rocket anywhere has achieved. If SpaceX gets there, the cost of a Starship launch could fall further than a partially reusable rocket like New Glenn or Falcon 9 can reach. None of the hardware from a Starship flight would need rebuilding from scratch.
Reaching for more reuse is also why Starship carries more risk. Recovering an upper stage that reenters the atmosphere at orbital speed is a harder problem than recovering a booster that never leaves the lower atmosphere. That difficulty is part of why Starship’s testing program has taken longer and produced more visible setbacks than New Glenn’s shorter path to a first orbital flight.
Different Jobs in the Same Launch Market
NASA gave Starship a job New Glenn was not selected for. The agency chose Starship as the Human Landing System for Artemis, the vehicle that will carry astronauts from lunar orbit down to the surface and back up again. That role plays to Starship’s size and its ability to be refueled in orbit before heading to the Moon, a capability New Glenn’s current design does not target. New Glenn instead carries Blue Origin’s own Blue Moon landers and NASA planetary science payloads. It also carries national-security and commercial satellites, including some of Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation.
Both companies also compete for the same national-security launch contracts the US Space Force awards. The government prefers more than one certified heavy-lift provider, so a problem with one rocket does not ground every sensitive satellite at once. New Glenn already holds that certification. Starship’s path to the same status depends on finishing its current test program.
Size Alone Does Not Decide the Comparison
Starship’s roughly 120-meter stacked height makes it the largest rocket ever flown, well past New Glenn’s already-tall 98 meters. A bigger vehicle is not automatically the better choice for every mission. New Glenn’s 45-metric-ton advertised payload to low Earth orbit, in expendable mode, already covers most satellites flying today. Its shorter, already-proven flight path gives customers a working option now, rather than one still finishing flight tests. Starship’s larger capacity matters most for the specific missions that need it, like lunar landings and very large Starlink batches, rather than for every payload a customer might launch.
What Would Change This Comparison
A confirmed operational Starship mission, carrying a real customer payload rather than a test article, would close the flight-proven gap that currently favors New Glenn. A second successful New Glenn landing, building a real reuse record, would strengthen its own case the same way Falcon 9’s growing landing streak did years ago. Readers who want the underlying mechanics can start with the Starship explainer and the New Glenn explainer. The launch vehicles guide covers how payload class and orbit shape which rocket a mission needs. Neither company publishes a commercial price for these vehicles; what a Starship launch costs and New Glenn launch cost each work through the targets and outside estimates in circulation for their own vehicle.