In video provided by Blue Origin, the space company showed liftoff of the New Shephard reusable launch system into the skies over West Texas. You would allegedly get four minutes of weightlessness after the capsule disconnected from the New Shepard rocket, which then lands for refueling. It is the first time a rocket has landed back on Earth without blowing up, which could pave the way to reusable rockets in the near future. “Everything that we have learned here on New Shepard is completely applicable to our orbital booster”, Bezos said.
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Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos one-upped fellow tycoon and rocketman Elon Musk in the race to create the first ever reusable rocket, thanks to the geniuses at his private space company, Blue Origin.
In suborbital spaceflight, rockets are not traveling fast enough to reach the speed required to counter the pull of Earth’s gravity, so they re-enter the atmosphere like a ballistic missile. But to compare the Grasshopper flights to Blue Origin’s mission on Tuesday is disingenuous, since Blue Origin’s flight went more than one hundred times farther than Grasshopper.
Thrill seekers interested in “reserving a window seat for a trip to space” can sign up on Blue Origin’s website to receive pricing information and early access to tickets when the company opens reservations.
Bezos announced the milestone with his first Twitter message following the launch and return of the rocket by his firm, Blue Origin.
Bezos said the Blue Origins booster flew through 119 mile-per-hour crosswinds at high altitude before firing its single BE-3 engine to slow its fall and make a controlled landing on legs less than five feet from the center of the launch pad.
Elon Musk, on his Twitter page, congratulated Jeff Bezos and his team on securing a vertical landing for their booster. With a fleet of reusable rockets, companies will no longer need a new multimillion-dollar rocket for every flight.
That builds upon a largely successful test flight in April.
“It is … important to clear up the difference between “space” and ‘orbit, ‘” he tweeted.
The launch ended with the spacecraft safely parachuting down to the ground at Blue Origin’s test site near the town of Van Horn, Texas.
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The test flight was unmanned, but the rocket is topped with a capsule created to carry six.
