Despite employing thousands of the world’s best rocket engineers and spending $1 billion a year out of his pocket to fund Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company still needs to manage to turn a profit. That’s a troubling sign given that the second-richest man in the world is investing so much capital into Blue Origin, which aims to supplant Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the regent of modern space travel. This week, a third executive departure was disclosed as Blue Origin tries to sharpen its competitive footing.
Mike Eilola, Blue Origin’s senior vice president of operations, is leaving the company “for personal reasons,” the company’s CEO Bob Smith told employees in an email on Friday. According to the memo, the departure, effective Nov. 3, will result in Eilola’s unit being split into two new organizations. Blue Origin’s spacecraft development efforts will remain intact, but the other unit will focus on manufacturing apparatus and facilities.
The move comes amid a restructuring effort at Blue Origin, with CEO Bezos announcing plans to replace Smith with longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp by the end of this year. Smith was a key hire by Bezos in 2017 when the company was just getting started. Since then, Blue Origin has quickly scaled to become a multibillion-dollar business with a massive vehicle and engine backlog. The company also made headlines this year with the successful maiden voyage of its crewed suborbital New Shepard rocket, but it’s been a bumpy ride for Blue Origin in other areas.
In particular, the company has struggled to deliver its heavier-lift New Glenn rocket after years of delays. Blue Origin also lost a major NASA contract for its lunar lander to SpaceX after years of legal wrangling. And, while the space agency eventually awarded a follow-up contract to Blue Origin, it must be clarified when that vehicle will fly.
Adding to the gloom, Blue Origin’s chief engineer for its human lunar lander project has already left to join direct competitor SpaceX. Nitin Arora, who led the mission architecture and integration for the lunar lander, is now the manager of SpaceX’s Lunar Dragon program.
Fortunately, the Blue Origin team has some experience in tackling these challenges. Limp spent the past 13 years at Amazon, overseeing the launch of several novel, high-tech products — some (the Kindle and Echo speakers) were a smash hit, others (Amazon’s Zoox autonomous car program) were less so. Limp also ran the company’s Project Kuiper internet satellite initiative, designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network, giving him some aerospace experience. Hopefully, Limp can help Blue Origin avoid the same fate as many of its rivals and finally make good on Bezos’ ambitious vision of a thriving commercial space economy. But it’s still early days for the company. And, as Blue Origin struggles to profit from its expensive activities, it may have difficulty attracting the top engineering talent it needs. As such, the departure of top executives from Blue Origin will likely continue, making it an uphill battle for the company to reclaim its competitive edge.
