The privately funded space company backed by Amazon.com Inc. founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos announced a historic coup with a test flight of a fully reusable rocket, which could usher in a new era for space transportation. Being able to refly a rocket will slash launch costs, a game-changer for the space industry, Bezos said. You see, Bezos owns a private space firm called Blue Origin, and while it seems to fly under radar compared to the huge press that SpaceX receives, the company just celebrated an incredible milestone in the efforts to advance reusable rockets for future space travel.
Advertisement
According to Bezo’s blog post, the booster was moving at just 4.4 miles per hour through the last 100 feet.
The New Shepard vehicle is meant to hold six astronauts in a crew capsule that is attached to a rocket booster powered by a BE-3 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine. However, the company has failed to have a successful landing of a rocket that has left the Earth’s atmosphere. Blue Origins does plan to open its space flights up to the public soon, and ticketing information is now available at their website. The capsule landed under parachutes on the company’s private range in West Texas. SpaceX’s Grasshopper test rig – essentially a Falcon 9 first stage with a single Merlin engine -reached an altitude of 744 meters on its eighth and final flight. And that’s what Blue Origin is after: suborbital spaceflight that will ferry paying customers to space and back so they can experience a brief 10 minutes of weightlessness.
The achievement caught the eye of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who reminded Blue Origin that their rockets don’t go as high or fast as his company’s rockets.
“Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO (Blue Origin) team for achieving VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) on their booster”, Musk tweeted.
So far, rockets like the one used by Blue Origin have either disintegrated in flight or landed with so much damage that they could not be reused.
Advertisement
“It is … important to clear up the difference between “space” and ‘orbit, ‘” he tweeted.
