CAPE CANAVERAL — There are tall, pointy metal tubes aplenty at Port Canaveral, but one is extra large.

The first-ever recovered first-stage booster for Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket arrived to the port Tuesday morning five days after its launch from nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 on the NG-2 mission for NASA.

Its girth stuck out like a massive, freestanding cigarette with a still-white paint job with a gold top standing tall on the port’s skyline littered with cranes, cargo ships and even a pair of competitor SpaceX’s Falcon 9 boosters.

In comparison, the Falcon 9 boosters, which had each traveled to space several times, had the black carbon-scoring soot from multiple reentries.

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— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 18

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