During the Cold War, the race to reach space was between countries. Today, however, it is between startups as space exploration has become the status symbol among young billionaires. Recently, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX is going to the moon in 2018 shortly after, Jeff Bezos announced the megarocket engine for his New Glenn rocket ship.
Bezos' announcement has made it clear he and his company, Blue Origins, is still very much in the space race and aims to be much better than Musk's SpaceX. That is evident in the new megarocket they are building. According to the description on the Daily Mail, Blue Origin's New Glenn will be much bigger than the Dragon Heavy rocket SpaceX is building.
New Glenn comes in two stages with its stage 2 standing at 270 feet tall and measuring at 23 feet in diameter. It's stage 3 has the same diameter but stands at 313 feet. Each stage will be lifted off with a total of 3,85 million pounds of thrust from seven BE-4 engines.
Just like the Dragon Heavy, New Glenn will be able to transport humans and heavy cargo, as much as 10,000 pounds of goods, into space. That is, of course, in line with Bezos' ultimate goal - bring settlers to the moon as well as provide the goods the settlers will need, like some sort of Amazon Prime for space.
Bezos has, in fact, already reserved a parking spot on the moon - the Shackleton Crater located on the Moon's South Pole. The area is considered one of the prime spots on the moon because it gets a good amount of sun compared to the other areas. Aside from that, it has an abundant supply of hydrogen nearby, which the New Glenn's BE-4 engines can use.
Finally, Bezos also confirmed that it is right on schedule to send their own 'representatives' to the moon as soon as 2018. With that, the whole world awaits which company will be able to establish the first settlement on the moon.
