Bob Smith to step down as Blue Origin CEO at the end of the year

Jeff Bezos announced to his space company Monday that Bob Smith, the six year CEO of Blue Origin, will be replaced by former Amazon executive Dave Limp. Limp’s first day at Blue will be December 4 while Smith will stay on to help with the transition until January 2.

The highs and lows of Smith’s six years at Blue Origin

In two notes to employees, Jeff Bezos and Bob Smith announced a change in command to the company effective December 4. In Bezos’ note he shares that Dave Limp, the former senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, will join the company and take over as CEO.

Limp and Bezos go far back and have worked together on several projects while Bezos was still CEO of Amazon. While at the online retailer Limp oversaw development of Alexa, Echo, Ring and most recently Amazon’s Project Kuiper. Bezos describes Limp as “a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset,” showing Blue Origin is determined to be a leader in commercial spaceflight and New Shepard missions.

In Smith’s note, he describes that he and Bezos have been discussing this for some months and it didn’t sound like it was a quick decision from Bezos, who owns the company. Smith’s last six years have been full of success and set backs as the company has tried to expand its operation from more than just joyrides with New Shepard.

Under Smith, Blue Origin had several set backs with the development of its New Glenn heavy lift rocket and the BE-4 engines that will power it. Those engines also delayed the launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, however, now the rocket is delayed due to issues with another part of the system. Both rockets are now scheduled to launch in 2024, possibly.

However, Smith has seen incredible growth during his stint at Blue. When he started, the company only had 850 employees and now has over 10,000. Blue Origin has expanded its presence from a hand full of small operations to large scale facilities in Florida, Alabama, Texas, and more. With Smith the company was also the first to reach regular operations of suborbital space tourism flight on New Shepard, starting with Bezos’ flight in 2021. However, they have now been outdone by monthly flights by Virgin Galactic.

Most importantly, Smith oversaw the awarding of NASA’s second Human Landing System contract for Artemis 4 and beyond. The major $3.4 billion contract will help fund the company’s Blue Moon lunar lander that it has been working on at least since 2019. This, alongside its potential Space Force launch contract, could cement the company as the number two in commercial spaceflight, if all goes to plan.

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New CEO new company?

That relies a lot on the success of New Glenn. The rocket has been under development for years and has been repeatedly delayed for numerous reasons. Both the payouts of launch contracts and delivery of its lander require New Glenn to be launching soon.

With a new CEO, while he has little spaceflight experience unlike Smith, Limp has a chance to chart a new path for the company. Rumors of Blue Origin slow to innovate and over-cautious of failure have been widespread for years. SpaceX, the undisputed leader of the industry, is the opposite, quickly developing new technologies and failing very publicly and often.

With Limp now taking the reins he has the opportunity to change Blue Origin to be how he wants it to be. Maybe open the company up, be more transparent and update the public more than every few months on what you’re up to. Test in public, show us that you are working and learning on your design. Or maybe he’ll keep it the same from the outside and leave us in the dark.

However let’s be real for a second, Bezos is the one that truly controls the company as he has been funding the business since 2000.