The Blue Origin New Glenn rocket had its debut flight postponed on Monday before dawn. Credit... Blue Origin New Glenn has never launched before. When it heads to space, its mission will be a test flight. Blue Origin is doing that to gather data on a vehicle’s performance to improve future missions. Test flights don’t always go off as planned. Because the company plans for New Glenn to then become operational , carrying payloads for paying customers, the stakes are high. In an interview before the launch on Sunday, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, and Dave Limp, the company’s chief executive, said they would regard reaching orbit and activating the Blue Ring payload as the measuring stick for success. Falling short of that would be a major setback. “You have to be prepared for things to go wrong,” Mr. Bezos said. “You certainly are hoping that things go well. I think we’re ready.” Below are some scenarios describing what may go right or wrong during the flight, and how they may be interpreted along a spectrum of success and failure. A launchpad or early flight explosion Blue Origin was founded in 2000. It has launched smaller suborbital rockets numerous times. And the BE-4 engines on New Glenn have helped Vulcan, a rocket flown by the company United Launch Alliance, reach orbit twice. If the whole vehicle were to be destroyed on the launchpad during fueling or seconds after liftoff, it could suggest a serious problem with New Glenn that could ground the rocket for a long time. An accident during separation On early flights, many rockets have had trouble with the act of separation between the lower boosters and the upper stages that go to orbit. That would not be entirely unexpected for New Glenn’s initial launch. But it would mean that additional work is required ahead of future flights involving payloads from customers like NASA and the Department of Defense or private companies like Amazon. If New Glenn fails to reach orbit, “It would probably push things back and how much it would depend on the cause of the failure,” Mr. Bezos said. A good launch to orbit New Glenn’s booster could have what the engineers call a nominal flight, and then send its upper stage on an orbit of the Earth. If Blue Origin is able to relight the vehicle’s upper stage engines in the vacuum of space, it would suggest that the design of New Glenn is sound, and its prospects for future missions are strong. An impressive booster landing SpaceX is the only company that has routinely landed and reused booster stages of an orbital rocket. Its Falcon 9 rocket had been flying for a number of years before it tried the feat, and SpaceX had a number of explosive failures before it figured out how to do it right. Blue Origin hopes to pull off an audacious debut for New Glenn by attempting to land its booster stage on an autonomous ship named Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean. The company even named it “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.” “Landing the booster on Jacklyn would be gravy,” Mr. Bezos said. “Attempting to land the booster on the very first attempt, some people might say that’s a little crazy. It’s certainly ambitious. And we’re certainly not counting on that.” Expectations are not high. But if New Glenn beats the odds and has a good first flight and booster separation in orbit, it will be like a novice pool player running the table. Show more