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Will New Glenn and Neutron Beat Starship?
Is Starship faltering and will the competition overtake it? And if not where is it going? What will 2026 look like?
November 13, 2025 the New Glenn rocket achieved the milestone of landing its first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
This event killed the sense of inevitability of SpaceX dominance and success in the space race. The turtle had caught up with the hare.
As of now SpaceX has absolute dominance with its Falcon 9 rocket. Other companies have since tried for years to catch up. And for a while it looked like the ferocious progress of SpaceX would not abate. Starship seemed to advance at breath neck pace. Many years prior to Blue Origin May 5, 2021 Starship achieved its first landing. In October 2024 they achieved the magnificent booster catch with “chopstick” arms.
It seems SpaceX kept catching one win after the other before any other company even managed to achieve their first booster landing for an orbital rocket.
But then… then it seemed like SpaceX wasn’t getting anywhere. Rockets kept blowing up. And we get articles like this Starship Will Simply Never Work written by Will Lockett. Honestly I was surprised. SpaceX had just seemed unstoppable.
