Wherever Bezos sends rockets, men, or Christmas presents, there is always packaging involved.
Advertisement
“This flight retired a lot of risk and validated of lot of the elements of the design”, Bezos, who founded Amazon.com Inc and owns the Washington Post newspaper, said. It travelled 329,839 feet into outer space and then landed upright back on earth.
Reusable rockets are seen as an important and vital step in commercial spaceflight. In the end, both of them are doing impressive things that leave us excited for the future of space travel, and this success is a big win for all of us.
SpaceX’s Elon Musk congratulated Bezos and the Blue Origin team for yesterday’s flight. On June 28, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket exploded during its ascent to the worldwide Space Station.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing Blue Origin was working on a reusable rocket.
The test was similar to one flown in April, where the vehicle reached a peak altitude of more than 93 kilometers.
Bezos’ remarks were made to CNN’s Rachel Crane following the New Shepard rocket’s successful flight and landing.
Named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard, the New Shepard vehicle is comprised of two elements: a crew capsule in which the astronauts ride and a rocket booster powered by a single American-made BE-3 liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen engine. Controlled vertical landing of the booster at 4.4 miles per hour was then done.
After releasing the crew capsule, the booster began returning to Earth, deploying drag brakes as it reentered the atmosphere to slow down its descent.
SpaceX has tried on several occasions to land its rockets on Earth undamaged, but weather and technical problems have prevented it from doing so.
While this week’s achievement is being celebrated, Bezos said his company plans to fly the vehicle “many, many times and then when we’re completely confident in it, we’re going to start using it to take people into space”.
Advertisement
And Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle is not powerful enough to make it -; yet.
