The costs involved in space travel are enormous. a one time flight can use up the best part of 54 million euros, but reusable rockets could cut this by half. The rocket technology will reportedly be used by NASA in launching future probes to other planets, and has the potential to make manned journeys to other planets, such as Mars, much more feasible. (NASDAQ:AMZN), is the first of its kind after a series of failed experiments by both Blue Origins and SpaceX.
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As Endgadget reports, “So far, SpaceX has managed to get its own reusable booster close to its barge platform, but hasn’t nailed the landing yet”.
The spaceship, New Shepard, was created to eventually transport passengers above the atmosphere. However, SpaceX’s rockets are larger and fly significantly further into space, carrying heavier cargo. SpaceX actually already did this a few years ago with its series of “grasshopper tests”, when it launched a Falcon 9 rocket a few hundred meters into the air and successfully landed it back on Earth.
The achievement produced “the rarest of beasts: a used rocket”, Jeff Bezos, founder of the company Blue Origin, said in a statement.
Bezos said this time his rocket performed exactly as planned, traveling into the edge of outer space before returning.
Bezos didn’t respond to any of Musk’s tweets on Twitter. In 2014, SpaceX and Boeing Co. shared the first contract to operate manned flights to the orbiting lab.
In the world of tech billionaires, that tweetstorm amounts to a rank-out, and Elon didn’t even drop the “Oh, you landed your reusable rocket on the ground?” Without pricing or cost information, it’s not clear yet whether Blue Origin expects tourism to be its primary function or a loss-leader to develop technology intended for partnerships with established space companies like ULA or an in-house launch business.
He added that the video showed that “we took the liberty of engineering all the drama out of the landing” with a controlled descent.
They had successfully flown their first stage rocket, named New Shepard, to an altitude of 62 miles and brought it back in one piece.
Because Bezos is not as flashy as Musk is, his rocket company Blue Origin hasn’t had almost the same amount of media attention, so today’s tweet comes as a bit of a surprise.
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The flight itself is described as suborbital spaceflight, meaning the rocket wasn’t powerful enough to launch the passenger vessel or itself high enough to achieve orbit.
