This is John Batchel, speaking with colleague Eric Berger of Ars Technica, Senior Space Reporter,

about the success of Blue Origin's first mission for NASA, the launch of New Glenn with two packages for Mars, Operation Escapade.

The important thing here is that New Glenn is a big rocket, number three

overall, SLS and super heavy from SpaceX or one and two. That's a lot of lifts New Glenn can do.

It's had two launches now. It's several hundred behind what's going on at SpaceX, but the machine is well made, and Eric has great promise for it.

Where's the money?

The money is from national security launches, but many other things are available when you have a booster that returns,

and Blue Origins booster returned perfectly to the barge at sea, just as SpaceX does going forward.

Here's Eric to talk about the days ahead for Jeff Bezos's, Blue Origins, New Glenn.

Much more of this tonight.

Well, there's got to be more paperwork, certainly on the military side before it's certified to compete for the most expensive national security launches, but it's certainly on that path.

And NASA also is going to get through the certification process pretty quickly for New Glenn, so I expect to see them bidding alongside ULA and SpaceX for NASA's most important science missions,

and that'll be good. That'll give more competition for NASA.

You know, they have a really busy manifest even without NASA and military missions.

And so if they need to fly more certification flights, which I don't think they do, they've got plenty of missions to fly.