A worker at Blue Origin stencils the seventh and last tortoise onto what Jeff Bezos calls a “hardy and stalwart” New Shepard space capsule. (Credit: Jeff Bezos via Twitter)
After seven launches, Blue Origin’s first New Shepard suborbital space capsule is getting a send-off from the company’s founder, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The tortoise serves as the mascot for Bezos’ space venture, apparently in reference to the race between the tortoise and the hare in Aesop’s Fables. “In the long run, deliberate and methodical wins the day,” Bezos explained last month in an email.
The payload capsule on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lights up its in-flight escape rocket motor and separates from the booster below. (Credit: Blue Origin)
By Alan Boyle and Nat Levy
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is a happy man today, now that the wildest test flight ever conducted by his Blue Origin space venture has ended in the safe landing of an empty crew capsule as well as a fuel-filled rocket booster.
The most important outcome was the survival of the New Shepard spacecraft’s capsule, demonstrating that Blue Origin’s in-flight escape system works. The booster was a bonus.
Bezos said before the launch that he fully expected New Shepard’s booster to go boom. But in a pleasant surprise, the booster made a safe return to the ground, leading to cheers from the audience watching the live stream of the flight at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle. And that’s nothing compared to the celebration that took place at Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship stands on its pad for a June test flight. (Blue Origin File Photo)
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has to pass up a historic date for its next flight test, due to unacceptable weather.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship had been due to blast off from the company’s test range in West Texas on Oct. 4, which is the 59th anniversary of the Sputnik launch that ushered in the Space Age.
However, the company said today that the flight (and the live webcast that goes with it) had to be rescheduled for Oct.5.
Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, inspects Blue Origin’s launch facility in West Texas before a test flight in April 2015. (Credit: Blue Origin)
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – SpaceX isn’t the only billionaire-backed company that’s planning to go to Mars: Blue Origin, the space venture created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is also taking aim at Mars, the moon and other deep-space destinations.
Those missions are implied in Bezos’ long-term vision of having millions of people living and working in space, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson said today at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara.
This model of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was put through wind tunnel testing. (Credit: Jeff Bezos via Twitter)
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket isn’t due to go into orbit until later this decade, but its design has already been validated by computer simulations and three weeks of wind tunnel testing.
That’s the word from Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin 16 years ago this month. In a pair of tweets, Bezos showed off a scaled-down version of the New Glenn, which will tower 313 feet high in its three-stage version.
The pictures follow up on Bezos’ unveiling of the design earlier this month. Bezos said the model has been tested at transonic and supersonic speeds, with “exciting results.”
Jeff Bezos (center) shows off a sword that serves as part of the Heinlein Prize, as XPRIZE co-founder Peter Diamandis (right) takes the selfie and Art Dula (left), trustee for the Heinlein Prize Trust, looks on. (Credit: Peter Diamandis via Twitter)
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos received one of the spaceflight community’s richest honors, the Heinlein Prize, during a ceremony in the nation’s capital on Wednesday night. The prize includes a $250,000 cash award … and a sword that evokes one of Robert A. Heinlein’s sci-fi stories.
The prize was handed out by representatives of the late science-fiction writer’s family trust to recognize Bezos’ work with Blue Origin, the space venture he founded. Past recipients include Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX; and Peter Diamandis, who co-founded the XPRIZE program as well as Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.
Blue Origin’s chart shows a lineup of past, present and future rockets, ranging from Orbital ATK’s Antares to the New Glenn configurations and the Saturn 5 moon rocket. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is providing a sneak preview of the “New Glenn” rocket for orbital launches, which his Blue Origin space venture has been working on for four years already.
Bezos shared the design and basic specifications in an update sent to thousands of email subscribers.
“Named in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, New Glenn is 23 feet in diameter and lifts off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from seven BE-4 engines,” Bezos wrote. “Burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, these are the same BE-4 engines that will power United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket.”
The two-stage version of New Glenn would be capable of flying commercial satellites and astronauts into low Earth orbit. Bezos said a three-stage New Glenn could send payloads on “demanding beyond-LEO missions.”
Artwork shows Blue Origin’s crew capsule firing its escape rocket motor. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has flown the same rocket booster to outer space and back fourtimes over the pastyear – but the fifth trip, planned for October, will be that booster’s last.
“Our next flight is going to be dramatic, no matter how it ends,” Bezos said in an email.
Bezos said the uncrewed flight will serve as a test of the New Shepard suborbital spaceship’s escape system.
About 45 seconds after New Shepard launches from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site, the capsule that’s designed for cargo and crew will separate from the booster. This will happen at an altitude of 16,000 feet, at a point in the ascent known as “max-Q,” or maximum dynamic pressure, when the spacecraft’s structure comes under maximum stress.
If the test proceeds according to plan, the capsule’s “pusher” rocket motor will fire for two seconds, propelling the capsule away from the booster. Parachutes will deploy to slow down the capsule’s descent, and the capsule will be recovered safe and sound.
The booster will have a rougher time, which Bezos is bummed about.
The $200 million manufacturing and launch facility at Kennedy Space Center’s Exploration Park is expected to open by early 2018 and employ about 300 people.
That’s in addition to the folks who work at Blue Origin’s headquarters and production facility in Kent, Wash., and at its suborbital launch complex in West Texas. The company says it has about 700 employees today.
Blue Origin is currently focusing on its suborbital space effort. So far it’s conducted four fullysuccessfuluncrewedtests of its reusable, hydrogen-fueled New Shepard spaceship, which is built in Kent and flown in Texas.
Blue Origin software engineers get their picture taken for a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” chat session. (Credit: Blue Origin via Imgur)
Creating a commercial space effort is clearly not a 9-to-5 job: Software engineers from Blue Origin, the space venture that Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos created, reinforced that view today during an “Ask Me Anything” chat session on Reddit.
The issue came up just days after a human-resources executive from SpaceX, one of Blue Origin’s rivals in the commercial space industry, went through a Reddit AMA session and addressed the “myth” that his company’s engineers routinely work 80 hours a week.
“How many hours do you guys work?” the Blue Origin group was asked today.
“When you are passionate about what you do, time becomes relative,” they answered. (The group’s responses were not attributed to individual engineers.)
The questioner, who self-identified as a British teenager, wanted to hear more: “Dammit, a non-answer for that one. … ” But sometimes that’s the way it goes on Reddit.
Blue Origin’s team is hard at work at the company’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., developing a suborbital launch system capable of sending passengers and payloads beyond the 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary line of outer space – as well as an orbital launch system capable of reaching the International Space Station.
