Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket this week made history when it landed intact in Texas. The unmanned crew capsule returned safely from a test flight that took it 330,000 feet into the air. The New Shepard could become the first reusable booster — it’s scheduled to return to space in a few months. It’s now tucked into a storage facility at a launch site in West Texas. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, aims to lay the foundation for an enduring human presence in space — a goal that reusing rocket boosters could help to achieve.
Its a nice start however not as impressive as doing so from an orbital mission. SpaceX did several short hop up and back flights years ago. The altitude is quite a bit higher than any of the Spacex flights however the reentry velocity is nothing like SpaceX. When Blue Origin starts doing orbital returns that will be impressive.
I thought this was a big deal until I went to their web site and realized this was just going to be a thrill ride into space venture for the 1%. Nothing marvelous about taking rich people for a 4 minute ride into the boarder of space and Earth. At least Space X has managed to sign a NASA contract to do a bit more then Blue Origin. The real contractors of private space are those putting satellites and other useful systems into orbit. Not what Blue Origin is doing.
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Blue Origin Rocket Sticks Landing
Posted by: Quinten Plummer November 27, 2015 05:00 AMBlue Origin’s New Shepard rocket this week made history when it landed intact in Texas. The unmanned crew capsule returned safely from a test flight that took it 330,000 feet into the air. The New Shepard could become the first reusable booster — it’s scheduled to return to space in a few months. It’s now tucked into a storage facility at a launch site in West Texas. Blue Origin, founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, aims to lay the foundation for an enduring human presence in space — a goal that reusing rocket boosters could help to achieve.