You can’t buy stuff from billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture on Amazon just yet, but just wait: Sixteen years after its founding, Blue Origin offers enough symbols, mottos and mascots to keep the folks who make caps, shirts, coffee mugs – and yes, even cowboy boots – busy for years.
The symbolism adds a sense of tradition to Blue Origin’s 21st-century mission of getting millions of people living and working in space.
So far, the company has conducted five fully successful test flights of its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship, and it’s working on an orbital rocket as well as a super-rocket designed to carry people and payloads beyond Earth orbit.
During last weekend’s Pathfinder Awards banquet at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, Bezos provided a guide to Blue Origin symbology, which we’re supplementing here with some extra bits of background. Before you know it, you’ll be shouting “Gradatim Ferociter” like a pro (preferably as you brandish a Lady Vivamus sword).
