Special to CosmicTribune.com, November 19, 2025

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

On Nov. 13, 2025, the first U.S. billionaire to found a space launch and service company — Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin Company (founded in 2000) — became the second company in history to achieve the first-stage recovery of its large New Glenn space launch vehicle (SLV).

The first was Elon Musk’s SpaceX Corporation Dec. 15, 2015 Falcon-9 first stage recovery.

But will this success on Blue Origin’s second try (first flight Jan. 16, 2025), compared to 20 attempts by the SpaceX Falcon-9, better position Blue Origin to be able to help win the Second Moon Race with China — which intends to send its people on the Moon in 2029 or 2030.

President Trump apparently wants the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to put Americans back on the Moon before he leaves office in 2029, and because the SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) contracted by NASA for the 2027 or 2028 U.S. manned Moon mission is late, NG-2’s success elevates interest in a potential Blue Origin solution.

This will have to be sorted out by commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman, who on Nov. 4 was for a second time nominated by President Trump to be the new NASA Administrator.

For this second mission the 321-foot-tall (98 meter) and 23-foot diameter New Glenn, dubbed “NG-2,” lifted off from Cape Canaveral and then 9 minutes later recovered its reusable first stage aboard the recovery ship Jacklyn, about 375 miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

NG-2’s main mission was to put its second stage into orbit and then transport the twin satellites of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer) to the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange Point, where they will spend about a year before traveling to the orbit of Mars to study how that planet lost its atmosphere.

Blue Origin plans significant launch activity expansion next year; On Nov. 17, Eric Berger of Ars Technica reported that Blue Origin Chief Executive Dave Limp expects that there will be 12 to 24 New Glenn flights in 2026, with New Glenn second stage production approaching one a month.

And of some significance to the new Moon Race, in early 2026 Blue Origin will reuse NG-2’s first stage to launch its Blue Moon Mk 1 Moon lander on its first “Pathfinder Mission” to test its ability to land on the Moon.

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