There’s a bit of a Twitter fight happening between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos – the two private spaceflight companies leading the future of reusable rocket technology.
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It is true that Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket can reach sub-orbital space, while SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can surpass orbital space, marking the difference that Musk was trying to steal Bezos’s thunder with.
After releasing the crew capsule, the booster began returning to Earth, deploying drag brakes as it reentered the atmosphere to slow down its descent.
But – since no people were riding along – the real excitement about this launch comes when the rocket’s main fuselage, which houses most of the fuel and the rocket’s engines, make its soft landing back on Earth.
TheNew Shepard space vehicle is fully reusable and operated from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site.
Watch for the Blue Origin Flight test in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program next year.
The New Shepard is created to carry six astronauts.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, is the founder of Blue Origin, which aims to commercialize human space travel. SpaceX has not succeeded in landing a rocket, but the company has had success launching its spacecraft to higher altitudes at higher speeds.
SpaceX has tried on several occasions to land its rockets on Earth undamaged, but weather and technical problems have prevented it from doing so.
The effort was congratulated by SpaceX’s Elon Musk. And ground launched rockets have so far been the only way to reach orbit. The ability to land vertically is prized because it allows rockets to be reused and may increase the frequency of launches. With a fleet of reusable rockets, companies will no longer need a new multimillion-dollar rocket for every flight.
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Blue Origin also is developing a rocket engine in partnership with United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, to replace Russian-made RD-180 engines used on ULA’s Atlas 5 boosters.
