Jeff Bezos

Factual · Their own work or organisation

“The booster is fully reusable.”

Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin founder, narrating video · 20 September 2018 · Full transcript: Jeff Bezos shares Amazon management wisdom (GeekWire)

The booster being described is fully reusable and lands down range on a ship.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 20 September 2018. The claim describes the design of the booster Bezos was presenting (Blue Origin's New Glenn first stage). It is not a claim that the booster had already flown and been reused, so a reuse flight is not required. True: Blue Origin's published specifications at the time describe the first stage as fully reusable and as landing downrange on a ship or sea platform. Mostly true: the design is described as reusable and landing on a ship, but with a minor difference in detail, for example 'reusable for a target number of flights' or a different description of the landing platform. Mixed: only one of the two parts holds, for example reusable but not landing on a ship downrange. Mostly false: the booster was designed to be only partly reusable, or reuse was only a later aspiration, not the stated design. False: Blue Origin's specifications at the time show an expendable booster, or one with no ship landing.

Evidence

1. New Glenn: Blue Origin's powerful reusable rocket Space.com · 1 May 2018

   “New Glenn's first stage was designed to be reusable, capable of launching up to 100 times.”

2. New Glenn: Blue Origin's powerful reusable rocket Space.com · 1 May 2018

   “The New Glenn booster will come back to Earth for vertical, powered landings on a drone ship at sea, about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange of the launch site.”

3. New Glenn - Wikipedia Wikipedia Own record

   “The first stage boosters of New Glenn are intended to be reusable, and were originally intended to be recovered downrange on the Atlantic Ocean via their landing platform ship Jacklyn, which would have acted as a floating movable landing platform.”

4. New Glenn | Blue Origin Blue Origin · 11 September 2024 Own record

   “Following separation, the first stage autonomously descends to a landing platform located 620 miles (1,000 km) downrange.”

Reasoning

Space.com, writing in May 2018 independently of Blue Origin, reported that New Glenn's first stage "was designed to be reusable, capable of launching up to 100 times" (E1). The same article said the booster would make vertical landings on a drone ship about 620 miles (1,000 km) downrange (E2). E3 also describes the original plan to recover the booster downrange on a landing platform ship, and E4, a 2024 Blue Origin page, describes landing on a platform 620 miles (1,000 km) downrange without saying whether it is a ship. Both parts of the claim match the design described before the judge date, but the reporting gives reuse as a target of up to 100 flights, not unqualified "full" reuse. The criteria name that kind of difference as an example of mostly true.

Cite this claim

Jeff Bezos, “The booster being described is fully reusable and lands down range on a ship.” (said 20 September 2018). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_474c824f2da5, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_474c824f2da5