Don’t Click Twice—New Chrome, Edge, Safari Hack Attack Warning Although Blue Origin was - like SpaceX - created during the dawn of the new millennium, its founder and designers have been much more circumspect in advancing and unveiling new prototypes - mysteriously without the pyrotechnics that accompany most early-stage rockets. Jarrett Jones, a senior vice president at Blue Origin overseeing the development of the New Glenn, said the rocket aced a series of tests conducted around the Christmas holidays, including the practice firing of the seven massive liquid methane- and oxygen-fueled BE-4 engines that power its first stage. “This is a monumental milestone and a glimpse of what’s just around the corner for New Glenn’s first launch,” Jones said in a press release. “Today’s success proves that our rigorous approach to testing–combined with our incredible tooling and design engineering–is working as intended.” Blue Origin is simultaneously developing its Blue Moon lunar lander for the upcoming NASA missions - and its vice president, John Couluris, told CBS News earlier this year that the rocket outfit aims to land an uncrewed prototype of the spacecraft on the lunar surface in 2025. The Blue Moon, which vaguely resembles the lunar module that carried the first NASA astronauts to the powdery plains of the Moon a generation ago, and the New Glenn booster are vastly simpler than SpaceX’s cosmic Starship, which might work in Blue Origin’s favor in terms of reaching the ancient orb first in this new-millennium Space Race, says Professor Kip Hodges, the founding director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and one of the leading space scholars in the U.S. “Could a New Glenn beat Starship to the lunar surface?” Professor Hodges wonders. “It’s not impossible. Starship has slightly more legacy, but New Glenn has the advantage of simplicity.” While SpaceX and Blue Origin are now racing each other to the Moon, they could ultimately together ... [+] capture the lunar tourism market with reusable rockets and cheap flights, landing far more spacefarers on the Moon's surface than NASA (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images) Getty Images Professor Hodges lauds the extraordinary design of the Starship, and says its next-generation technology, high-speed evolution, tremendous power and full reusability all represent a planet-changing revolution in space flight - one that will be highlighted in history books for centuries into the future. But the complexity of refueling the SpaceX super-ship in low Earth orbit with cryogenically cooled methane and oxygen, he says, along with other complications that might arise due to its futuristic design, could delay its first flights to the Moon. And while Blue Origin and SpaceX vie with each other to reach the Moon, they will also be competing, in a sense, with NASA and its traditionally designed and built, and extremely costly, Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule. Under NASA’s current blueprints, which have come under fire from myriad directions over the last several years, the SLS will blast the Orion into orbit around the Moon, where the capsule will rendezvous with a SpaceX or Blue Origin lander to transport its human explorers to the surreal surroundings of the satellite’s South Pole. Since unveiling and evolving this masterplan for Moon exploration, NASA has never fully explained its rationale for relying on two parallel sets of rockets and capsules for each Artemis mission. The agency’s complex strategy would deliver only eight astronauts to the polar region of the Moon over the next five years, and will require astronomical budgets, says NASA Inspector General Paul Martin. Martin testified before Congress last year that each launch of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft will cost more than $4 billion. “Relying on such an expensive single-use, heavy-lift rocket system will, in our judgment, inhibit if not derail NASA’s ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals for the Moon and Mars,” Martin told NASA’s leading supporters in Congress. Altogether, he added, “NASA is projected to spend $93 billion on the Artemis effort from FY 2012 through FY 2025.” Inspector General Martin attributed the ever-rising costs of the Artemis program - endangering the goal of engineering a sequence of lunar landings through the 2020s and beyond - to the agency’s using a cost-plus contracting structure for the SLS and Orion spacecraft, which rewards traditional spacecraft developers like Boeing - prime contractor for the Space Launch System - regardless of the quality or cost or timeliness of their production, and provides no incentive to design reusable rockets. The Orion capsule, shown here, and super-expensive Space Launch System rocket are produced under ... [+] cost-plus contracts that are endangering NASA's entire Moon exploration program (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Getty Images Unlike SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s recoverable boosters, the core stage of Boeing’s SLS rocket, with its advanced RS-25 engines derived from the United States Space Shuttle, is jettisoned into the Atlantic Ocean following every liftoff. At the moment, Martin said, “the SLS is the only launch vehicle with the capability to lift the 27-metric ton Orion capsule to lunar orbit.” Yet SpaceX and Blue Origin are in the final stages of developing powerful rockets that “capitalize on multiple technological innovations, making them lighter, cheaper, and reusable.” The competition between these agile aerospace outfits will drive down launch rates, and NASA should begin weighing whether to replace the high-cost SLS rocket with a commercial alternative, Martin told the House of Representatives. “Although Congress mandated that NASA build the SLS and Orion for its space exploration goals in 2010,” he said, “the Agency may soon have more affordable commercial options to carry humans to the Moon and beyond.” During one of his swan-song press conferences, current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was asked whether he was concerned that his successors - with the changing of the guard set for January 20 - might eliminate the entire sphere of cost-plus contracts that are clouding NASA’s future. “Your question is are they going to axe the Artemis and insert the Starship,” Nelson replied. In a roundabout way, Nelson strived to defend the future use of the Space Launch System, and ruled out its ultimately being replaced by SpaceX’s Starship, but he didn’t present any economic or technological rationale for that prediction. Check out