As the news of the New Shepard’s landing got around, Musk congratulated Bezos in a Twitter post. Reusable rockets could revolutionize the space industry and promise to make future space exploration more affordable.
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Yesterday’s historic rocket landing builds on a largely successful test flight in April.
Through this significant landing, Blue Origin has demonstrated the technical viability of reusability, a revolutionary approach to spaceflight that counts fellow CSF Member’s Masten Space Systems and SpaceX among its pioneers.
New Shepard’s rocket is powered by a single BE-3 liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen engine. It showed another rocket concept that could be launched into the farthest reaches of Earth’s atmosphere and return safely, bringing back not only the crew capsule but the rocket booster too – landing it safely back on land. This time, the New Shepard succeeded in using its hydraulic thrusters and fins to slow and guide its descent. Historically, rockets that burn up on re-entry or plunge into the ocean but are never used again have been the only propulsion modules to launch payloads into space. Only after the paying customer is successfully on the way to orbit does SpaceX get a crack at trying to land the first stage.
But it was the controlled return of the launch rocket that was a first.
Bezos said that Blue Origin engineers were able to recognize the problem and chose to completely replace the hydraulics with a new design. Blue Origin has not yet achieved anything similar. However, if New Shepard booster is falling faster at re-entry, then it might, indeed, experience a harsher re-entry. The same aircraft repeated the mission a month later.
SpaceShip Two Crash: No one is more verbose than Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson, and no disaster cast as dark a shadow over the idea of space tourism as did the fiery crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two. VTOL stands for vertical takeoff and landing.
WILL OCKENDEN: The rocket flies into the sky, releasing the New Shepard capsule which is created to eventually take up to six humans to about 100km in a sub-orbital thrill ride. Together, they have agreed to expand production of the “BE-4” rocket motor, which will fly on the next-generation “Vulcan”. Although he made millions as a platinum-selling pop star, Bass’s money wasn’t long enough for the Russians, who had coordinated an expedition with the singer in 2002. “When asked about when the next flight schedule will be, he added, “[it] should be a matter of weeks.
In this space race between the billionaires, Bezos now has bragging rights. Astronaut flights will begin following completion of a methodical flight test program.
Blue Origin said the unmanned flight took place Monday morning at its site in Van Horn in West Texas.
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Meanwhile, ULA has left SpaceX’s satellites as the only USAF-certified satellites for NASA.
