According to several people who know the changes, Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, expects to dissolve a corporate partnership established years ago to construct a commercial space station, reassigning staff and changing leadership as it adjusts to more pressing priorities.
The three people who knew the situation, the business relocated most of its workers on Orbital Reef, a commercial space station it had intended to construct with Sierra Space, earlier this year. According to the sources, the employees left for other projects, including a carefully held in-space mobility project and Blue Origin’s new NASA moon lander contract. According to a Blue Origin spokeswoman, Sierra will continue to be a partner on Orbital Reef, who declined to specify in what role.
The dissolution of the Orbital Reef team demonstrates the precarious status of industry plans to construct a privately funded successor for the two-decade-old International Space Station (ISS). This project has cost over $100 billion and involved various government space organizations.
According to two sources, Brent Sherwood, the director of Blue Origin’s Advanced Development Programs, which is in charge of Orbital Reef, intends to depart the organization before the end of the year. Sherwood is retiring, according to the firm.
The sources requested anonymity because the adjustments have not been made public knowledge. The collaboration was reportedly in doubt, although CNBC did not provide information on the personnel changes or Sherwood’s resignation.
Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com (AMZN.O), who has been trying to infuse the business with urgency as certain crucial initiatives confront significant obstacles.
Bezos informed Blue Origin staff last week that longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp will take over as CEO of the company before the end of the year.
After a mishap in 2022, the company’s suborbital tourist rocket, New Shepard, has been off the ground for over a year. The larger New Glenn rocket, which is anticipated to be a commercial workhorse representing Blue Origin’s first and long-awaited entry into Earth’s orbit, is also experiencing growing delays.
Blue Origin and Sierra Space, a subsidiary of defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp., announced their collaboration to establish what they refer to as a “business park in space” in 2021. Orbital Reef would serve various purposes in low Earth orbit, including as a tourist resort and a microgravity scientific laboratory for businesses and government organizations.
Sierra announced a $1.4 billion series A financing round a month after the announcement. It claimed that a third of that sum would be used to pay for its contributions to Orbital Reef, an inflatable habitat that served as the design’s main area for habitation. According to three individuals, the cooperation has recently worsened due to management disputes and fighting. A representative for Sierra Space declined to comment.
According to two sources, a covert “space mobility” initiative to create movable satellites was given access to those Blue Origin personnel who had previously worked on Orbital Reef. The project is described in a job posting from 25 days ago as a “cutting-edge satellite management system, capable of operating a large constellation of vehicles with a small team.”
According to the sources, other personnel visited Blue Lunar, the company’s intended manned lunar lander. This year, Blue Origin received $3.4 billion from NASA as part of the agency’s Artemis program for that lander. At the time, Blue Origin intended to privately invest “well north” of that sum.
NASA is assisting in funding Orbital Reef and three other early ideas since the ISS is becoming older and will be retired around 2030. 2026, the organization intends to increase financing for one or two space station concepts.
Executives from the industry have realized how close the deadline is in 2030. Officials from the United States are concerned that retiring the ISS without a commercial station may give China’s government space station a significant portion of the market for research and tourism in low-Earth orbit.
According to skeptics, four distinct privately built space stations could not be supported by the orbital market. According to two sources, without Sierra, Blue Origin, the partnership’s driving force, is anticipated to continue developing its design for a space station. However, it is not yet clear what those plans entail. According to its contract, the corporation must notify NASA of any changes to the relationship, but it hasn’t done so, a NASA representative said. When Blue Origin’s business agreement with Sierra is set to end it is unknown to Reuters.
