Blue Origin announced November 24 that it launched its New Shepard suborbital vehicle on a second test flight, flying to the edge of space and successfully landing both sections of the vehicle.
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The achievement arguably qualifies New Shepard as the “first fully reusable rocket ever in history” to go into space, said Deanna Wilke, a spokeswoman for Blue Origin.
“Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket, “said founder Jeff Bezos in a statement”.
“We’re gonna’ fly the vehicle many, many times and then when we’re confident in it we’re going to start using it to take people up into space”, Mr Bezos, who founded Amazon.com Inc and owns the Washington Post newspaper, said.
In this photo provided by Blue Origin taken on Monday, November 23, 2015, an unmanned Blue Origin rocket blasts off in West Texas. Then, the capsule made a controlled landing, falling to the ground under a parachute.
Musk congratulated Blue Origin on its successful rocket landing on Tuesday but noted that suborbital rockets are not flying high or fast enough when compared to his rockets. That makes it less hard than landing a rocket from orbit, which is what SpaceX is trying to achieve.
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The rocket’s engines reignited at 5,000 feet above ground to slow descent, and it was traveling at only 4.4 miles per hour during its final 100 feet. The vehicles are created to carry six passengers about 100 kilometres above Earth, breaching the boundary between the atmosphere and space. In fact, Blue Origin is already compiling something of a “waiting list” though it hasn’t publicly listed prices or provided a time table for any future manned flights. The accomplishment remains an elusive task for rival rocket developer and space exploration company, SpaceX, led by the always eccentric Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. This means the rocket can be re-used for subsequent flights, which companies like Blue Origin claim will make spaceflight far less expensive. The flight of the New Shepard was only revealed after the fact.
