Blue Origin is investing $600 million to build an 830,000-square-foot upper-stage manufacturing facility called Project Horizon at its Cape Canaveral, Florida campus. The announcement came the same day the FAA cleared New Glenn to resume flights after the April NG-3 mission failure, in which an upper-stage thermal anomaly caused a satellite loss. The new facility will add 500 aerospace jobs averaging over $98,000 in salary and is supported by Florida's Spaceport Improvement Program. The move consolidates Blue Origin's heavy-lift manufacturing and launch operations in the same county, eliminating a key logistics bottleneck. It also signals a direct response to the upper-stage reliability issues exposed in April, and positions Blue Origin against SpaceX, which is preparing for what could be the largest IPO in history at a $1.75 trillion valuation.
