Making difficult decisions
With the cuts, Blue Origin will seek to trim its management ranks. Of the cuts, Limp said, “This resulted in eliminating some positions in engineering, R&D, and program/project management and thinning out our layers of management.”
He added that these difficult decisions will set Blue Origin on course for success this year and beyond. “This year alone, we will land on the Moon, deliver a record number of incredible engines, and fly New Glenn and New Shepard on a regular cadence,” he wrote.
Even before Thursday’s announcement, Blue Origin had been seeking to control costs. According to sources, the company has had a hiring freeze in place for the last six months. And in January, it let the majority of its contractors go.
The cuts appear to be an effort by Bezos, who hired Limp a little more than a year ago, to put Blue Origin on a more financially sound footing. Although Bezos could continue to fund Blue Origin indefinitely with the wealth he has acquired from Amazon, he has been pushing programs to become, at worst, revenue-neutral.
In addition to the New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin is working on developing large uncrewed and crewed lunar landers, a human spacecraft for the rocket, and an Orbital Reef space station. The impacts to these programs were not immediately clear.
