Blue Origin Builds for 150 New Glenn Upper Stages a Year While Its Florida License Caps Launches at 12

Up to 150 New Glenn upper stages a year could come out of Blue Origin’s Rocket Park campus near Kennedy Space Center once a $330 million expansion is finished in summer 2027, the company said Friday in a post by Ian Richardson, its senior vice president of operations. Blue Origin also plans more New Glenn launch pads on Florida’s Space Coast and two more ocean landing platforms, and says the buildout is designed for “multiple flights per week by the end of the decade.”

Blue Origin’s FAA license allows up to 12 New Glenn launches a year from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral. The company has asked to raise that cap to 50, according to the agency’s draft environmental review, and the FAA holds a virtual public meeting on the request Thursday before comments close Oct. 30.

New Glenn’s booster lands on a ship at sea and flies again. The upper stage, the top half that pushes the payload into orbit, is used once: the FAA document says it ends up in a disposal orbit or breaks up on the way back down. So New Glenn can fly about as often as Blue Origin can build upper stages.

A factory for the bigger rocket

The Rocket Park expansion builds upper stages for New Glenn 9×4, a larger version with nine engines on the booster and four on the upper stage, Spaceflight Now reports. Its pad, LC-36B, is under construction, and the announcement didn’t say where the additional pads would go.

The rocket in the FAA draft is the current New Glenn, seven engines on the booster and two on top, flying from LC-36A. In May, one was destroyed during a static fire, an engine test run on the pad before launch, and the FAA says the accident also damaged or destroyed parts of the pad, including its towers and the transporter that raised the rocket upright. LC-36A is still being rebuilt, with a goal of returning New Glenn to flight by the end of 2026, CNBC reports.

A $330 million factory going up in Florida is built for a version of New Glenn that Blue Origin's pending FAA request doesn't cover.

Due in summer 2027, it can make up to 150 upper stages a year, the top half of the rocket that's used once per flight, all for @blueorigin's…

— Aaron Harme (@Aaron_Harme) October 18, 2026

The money and the permits

Blue Origin’s first outside funding round raised $10 billion at a $140 billion valuation, CNBC says, citing the Wall Street Journal, and CEO Dave Limp told the network the round was “oversubscribed.” The same report says SpaceX has stopped selling commercial rides on its Falcon 9 to focus on Starship, and Blue Origin is one of Amazon’s launch providers for its Leo satellite network.

The 12-to-50 request covers the version of New Glenn the new factory isn’t built for. The 150 stages a year turn into launches only once a 9×4 pad is finished and more pads are sited and built. Blue Origin is spending first on the piece it can schedule by itself, and the rest of the chain runs on permits and concrete.

Investors in that $10 billion round bought into a factory sized for nearly three upper stages a week, while the FAA review is about whether the current rocket may fly about one a week.

Sources

• Blue Origin: Building the Infrastructure for More Frequent Launches in Florida
• FAA: Blue Origin New Glenn Cadence Increase at SLC-36 (Draft Environmental Assessment)
• Federal Register: Notice of availability and public meeting on the New Glenn cadence draft EA
• CNBC: Blue Origin plans $330 million Florida expansion to ramp New Glenn launches
• Spaceflight Now: Blue Origin to add new Florida launch pads, seeks aggressive increase in New Glenn flight rate