Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer
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Version 0 of 1. WASHINGTON — Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, founded a rocket company as a hobby 16 years ago. Now that company, Blue Origin, finally has its first paying customer as it ramps up to become a full-fledged business. Mr. Bezos announced that customer, the satellite television provider Eutelsat, on Tuesday. In about five years, Eutelsat, which is based in Paris, will strap one of its satellites to a new Blue Origin rocket to be delivered to space, a process it has done dozens of times with other space partners. For Blue Origin, the relationship represents its evolution from an engineering-obsessed company into one that also seeks to make a profit eventually. That goal may be a moon shot, with high risks, high costs and no guarantee that enough customers need transportation beyond Earth. Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., has launched only its New Shepard rocket to the edge of space, 62 miles up, before returning to Earth. The commercial partnership brings Blue Origin closer in line with SpaceX, created by Elon Musk, which has been launching satellites and taking NASA cargo to the International Space Station for several years. Last week, SpaceX announced that two space tourists would pay to fly on a weeklong trip around the moon. The companies are part of a private sector space boom that has restored the United States’ position in aerospace technology and exploration. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other international commercial space companies are also competing with the tech entrepreneurs for business and government customers. Mr. Bezos, true to his approach in business ventures, is looking far into the future. “The long-term vision is millions of people living and working in space,” he said Tuesday during a speech at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington. To make that happen, Blue Origin must take several intermediate steps, he said. It also needs to lower costs for launches by reusing rockets and other equipment, he added. We “need to get to a place ultimately where it is much more like commercial airlines,” Mr. Bezos said. New applications for satellites, including broadband internet, mapping and other services, have fueled more demand. Analysts said private rocket companies would fill a need to get those satellites into orbit in coming years. Blue Origin’s deal with Eutelsat is a “definite statement to the industry that Blue Origin will be a viable commercial launch vehicle,” said Carissa Bryce Christensen, the chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm. The large crowd to hear Mr. Bezos speak at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Tuesday illustrated renewed enthusiasm about the commercial space industry. Space has long been a pursuit of wealthy investors, and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk have captured the most public attention in recent years for their audacious visions. SpaceX is focused on reaching and inhabiting Mars. Blue Origin may be building a fleet of rockets to make deliveries to the moon and beyond. Mr. Bezos “is investing because he wants to transform people’s lives with space capabilities, but the expectation has always been that this will be a successful business,” Ms. Christensen said. Those ambitions have many doubters who do not see how expensive rocket projects can become profitable. Even with a surge in satellite technologies and perhaps a growing space tourism industry, demand may not be sufficient to cover rocket companies’ great costs for research, development and launches. “You wouldn’t get anything done without getting the dreamers out there, but how do you translate those dreams into a profitable business? That’s very tricky,” said Henry Hertzfeld, a research professor at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Blue Origin, which has more than 1,000 employees, has improved its technology to carry bigger payloads. A few months ago, the company began to court customers, and Eutelsat emerged as an ideal partner because it had experience working with first-time launch vehicles, Mr. Bezos said. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, named after the astronaut John Glenn, will be manufactured and launched at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It is expected to be completed in 2020 and will be used to carry one of Eutelsat’s geostationary satellites. No financial details of the partnership with Eutelsat were disclosed. In a video, Mr. Bezos revealed details about the rocket’s BE-4 engine and showed how it could carry 50 tons of payload and land on a moving sea barge. “Their solid engineering approach, and their policy to develop technologies that will form the base of a broad generation of launchers, corresponds to what we expect from our industrial partners,” Rodolphe Belmer, Eutelsat’s chief executive, said in a statement. Mr. Bezos said he was approaching his space project with an abundance of patience. “I like to do things incrementally,” he said, noting that Blue Origin’s mascot is a tortoise. With such high costs and risks with each rocket launch, it is important not to skip steps, he said. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” said Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years. “I’ve seen this in every endeavor I’ve been in.” |