{The marketplace} for personal area enterprises is way from free, particularly with SpaceX CEO and eagerly keen Martian sperm donor Elon Musk holding the purse strings of the federal authorities. SpaceX’s opponents can solely sit again and put together for the lack of its authorities contracts. Blue Origin introduced on Thursday that it will likely be shedding 10 p.c of its workforce, round 1,400 workers.
Blue Origin’s layoffs come only a month after the New Glenn rocket’s maiden launch. The 2-stage rocket is anticipated to launch Amazon’s Kuiper satellite tv for pc constellation, a possible rival to SpaceX’s Starlink. Kuiper is led by a former Starlink vice chairman who was fired by Musk in 2018 and is primarily staffed by different ex-SpaceX engineers. The non-public area firm based by Jeff Bezos set a goal of eight New Glenn launches per yr.
Blue Origin workers had been made conscious of the layoffs in an all-hands assembly on Thursday. In response to the Impartial, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post-meeting e mail:
“Our main focus in 2025 and past is to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with pace, decisiveness, and effectivity for our prospects. We grew and employed extremely quick in the previous couple of years, and with that progress got here extra forms and fewer focus than we would have liked. It additionally turned clear that the make-up of our group should change to make sure our roles are finest aligned with executing these priorities. Sadly, this resulted in eliminating some positions in engineering, R&D, and program/venture administration and scaling down our layers of administration.”
Blue Origin’s workforce discount isn’t the primary spat of layoffs within the non-public area sector this yr. Boeing introduced it’s making ready to lay off half the workforce constructing the Area Launch System, NASA’s Artemis program rocket. SpaceX is seemingly solidifying its place because the dominant area enterprise on this planet. In 2022, Musk’s area firm performed 78 p.c of launches in the US. It’s a proportion solely more likely to improve along with his management of the federal funds.
