Blue Origin (
www.blueorigin.com), a company established by the founder of Internet retailer Amazon, has announced that its New Shepard space vehicle successfully flew into space at the end of last month, reaching its planned test altitude of 329,839ft, before executing a “historic” landing back at the launch site in West Texas.
In his Web blog, Jeff Bezos wrote: “Rockets have always been expendable — not anymore.” During the flight, the vehicle reached Mach 3.72, nearly four-times the speed of sound; the flight also marked the first time that a re-usable vertical take-off/vertical-landing vehicle has reached space and returned to its launch site.
Speaking to the US television station CBS, Mr Bezos said that the development is a “a major step towards enabling space travel”. He added: “It is a ‘game-changer’ because it changes the cost structure of space travel completely. Our long-term vision is for millions of people to be living and working in space and continuing to explore the solar
system. Reusability is essential for that.”
Mr Bezos went on to say that “one of the good things about this vehicle is that it can fly autonomously. It’s kind of a flying robot that can travel into space, bring itself back and land, meaning that we don’t have to put pilots at risk during the test programme.
Once we are completely confident with the vehicle, we will start taking people up into space.” The launch and return of the New Shephard was welcomed by rival company Space X, which was established by Elon Musk, the co-founder of on-line payment group Paypal who has also been attempting to launch a re-useable rocket, but has yet to be successful.
Dale Skran, executive vice-president of the US National Space Society, said: “Although the New Shepard is a sub-orbital vehicle rather than an orbital rocket, this was a significant day for space tourism. The successful landing clears the way for a programme of sub-orbital research flights over the next year or so, and is expected to lead to sub-orbital tourist flights.”
Powered by a liquid hydrogen/oxygen engine, the New Shepard consists of two parts: a re-usable booster that returns to the launch site; and a cargo/passenger capsule that lands separately via parachute.
A future crew of up to six would experience three times the force of gravity on take-off and five times the force of gravity during part of the descent. Blue Origin has a contract with United Launch Alliance (ULA) to develop the BE-4, a new methane/liquid oxygen engine for its planned ULA Vulcan launch vehicle.