Amazon.com Inc. Chairman Jeff Bezos, renowned for keeping quiet about strategic goals for his fledgling space company Blue Origin LLC, on Monday reversed course by disclosing plans for a giant, reusable rocket — named after iconic 1960s astronaut John Glenn — and powerful enough to blast people as well as satellites into high-Earth orbit.
The New Glenn rocket would feature a cluster of seven main engines and stand more than 310 feet tall. If it flies by the end of the decade as intended, the largest version of the proposed booster could vault Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., into head-to-head commercial rivalry with Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, founded and run by another billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk.
