Tag: Blue Origin

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Concrete poured for Blue Origin space complex

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Workers pour concrete at the site of Blue Origin’s rocket factory in Florida. (Credit: Space Florida)

Work is progressing on the facility in Florida where Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture plans to build its orbital spaceships.

Bezos called attention to the groundbreaking milestone for the 750,000-square-foot rocket factory in June. Today, Space Florida, the state development agency that’s leasing the property and Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 to Blue Origin, tweeted that concrete is being poured for the campus’ first building.

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 fully successful uncrewed tests of its reusable, hydrogen-fueled New Shepard spaceship, which is built in Kent and flown in Texas.

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Blue Origin engineers talk rocket science

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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.

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Jeff Bezos touts Blue Origin flight test results

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A photo taken after last month’s flight test of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship highlights the ring of crushable bumpers on the underside of the crew capsule. (Credit: Blue Origin via Jeff Bezos)

Last month’s test flight of a Blue Origin rocket ship to space and back was aimed at seeing how safely it could land even if one of its three parachutes went out. Today, the results got a thumbs-up from Jeff Bezos, who’s the founder of the Blue Origin space venture as well as the Amazon online retailing giant.

“We’ve designed the capsule to ensure astronaut safety not just for the failure of one parachute, but even for the failure of two parachutes,” Bezos said in an email update that was addressed to fans and potential spacefliers.

The rocket ships are built at Blue Origin’s production facility in Kent, Wash., and then shipped down to the company’s suborbital launch complex in West Texas.

The uncrewed flight test was conducted June 19. New Shepard rocketed up just beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) boundary of outer space. Then the booster fired up its rocket engine again for a vertical landing, while the crew capsule made a separate descent to Earth.

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Blue Origin set to pick up the pace for space

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship rises from its launch pad in June. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, plans to accelerate its current once-every-eight-weeks schedule for flight tests of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship, leading up to the first crewed flights next year, one of the company’s executives said today.

The variety of scientific experiments being flown on the flights will also widen, according to Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s business development manager. Wagner provided a glimpse of the road ahead for the New Shepard program at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference, which is under way this week in San Diego.

The New Shepard spacecraft was built at Blue Origin’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., but it’s undergoing testing at the company’s West Texas launch site. The reusable, hydrogen-fueled craft already has made four successful uncrewed flights to the edge of outer space and back, including two missions that carried research payloads.

Wagner told the San Diego audience that Blue Origin’s payload manifest has been planned out for the next year, and would add biology experiments to the mix. The team is also looking at ways to modify the spacecraft so that experiments can be exposed to the space environment, rather than staying inside the pressurized New Shepard capsule throughout the flight, she said.

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A peek at Blue Origin’s Florida rocket factory

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An artist’s rendering shows Blue Origin’s orbital vehicle production facility, which is under construction in Florida. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos today put a spotlight on the construction of a giant rocket production facility in Florida for his Blue Origin space venture – but he also gave a shout-out to the engine production team back in Kent, Wash.

In an email to Blue Origin’s fans, Bezos noted that ground has been broken for an orbital vehicle manufacturing site at Exploration Park, just south of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Ground-clearing actually began last month.)

“The 750,000-square-foot rocket factory is custom-built from the ground up to accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing,” Bezos wrote. In comparison, the production facility in Kent where Blue Origin is building rocket engines and its New Shepard suborbital spaceships takes in about 300,000 square feet.

“It’s exciting to see the bulldozers in action – we’re clearing the way for the production of a reusable fleet of orbital vehicles that we will launch and land, again and again,” Bezos said.

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos wins Heinlein Prize

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Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, has won the prestigious Heinlein Prize for his efforts to advance space commercialization at another company he founded, Blue Origin.

Bezos follows in the footsteps of SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis, who played a lead role in creating the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. Diamandis was the first award-winner in 2006, and Musk was honored in 2011.

The prize serves as a tribute to the late science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, who championed private enterprise beyond Earth in such stories as “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” and “The Man Who Sold the Moon.” The Heinlein Prize Trust is funded by the estate of Robert and Virginia Heinlein.

This year’s award was announced today in conjunction with the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle, and comes only a few days after Blue Origin put its reusable New Shepard spaceship through its fourth suborbital test flight to outer space and back. Blue Origin is also making progress on its BE-4 rocket engine, which is due to be used on future orbital launch vehicles.

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Blue Origin live-streams test flight to space

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship rises from its launch pad. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Something went wrong during today’s test flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship, and the world was able to watch how it was handled online.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture intentionally disabled one of the three parachutes on the New Shepard capsule, and also introduced some added challenges for the vertical landing of the rocket-powered booster stage after separation. It’s all part of Bezos’ plan to test the safety systems thoroughly before putting people aboard.

Liftoff took place at 7:35 a.m. PT (9:35 a.m. CT) from Blue Origin’s Texas launch complex. “Beautiful launch of our New Shepard rocket here from West Texas,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said during Blue Origin’s live video coverage. The video stream was provided via BlueOrigin.com and YouTube. At its peak, more than 15,000 viewers were tuning in.

The test flight lasted about 10 minutes, sending the capsule to an altitude of 331,501 feet (62.8 miles, or 101 kilometers), Cornell said. The capsule separated from the booster as planned. Then the booster made a successful landing, and the two-parachute system brought the capsule down safely, just as hoped.

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Blue Origin gets set for Father’s Day spaceflight

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Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos says it’s all systems go for a live-streamed Father’s Day launch of Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard suborbital spaceship, after a postponement due to a leaky O-ring seal.

Blue Origin, the space venture that Bezos founded in 2000, is due to send New Shepard into space from its West Texas launch facility at 7:15 a.m. PT (10:15 a.m. ET) Sunday, Bezos said in a series of tweets. Each of the tweets included a reference to Blue Origin’s motto, “Gradatim Ferociter” (“Step by step, ferociously”).

The test flight had originally been scheduled for today, but on Thursday, Bezos said the faulty O-ring forced a delay.

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Blue Origin will start live-streaming spaceflights

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lifts off for a test in January. (Credit: Blue Origin)

For his next trick, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos plans to have his Blue Origin space venture send its New Shepard rocket ship into outer space and back with one bum parachute on Friday – and live-stream the whole thing.

Allowing live video of a rocket launch and landing is old hat for the likes of rival billionaire Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX, but Blue Origin has never done it before. Bezos’ announcement indicates that the once-secretive company is becoming more comfortable sharing its accomplishments with the public as they happen.

Friday will mark the fourth go-around for this particular New Shepard suborbital vehicle at Blue Origin’s West Texas testing ground. The first suborbital flight test was done last November, followed by similarly successful outings in January and April. Each time, a booster powered by Blue Origin’s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 rocket engine sent an uncrewed space capsule to a height beyond 62 miles, the internationally accepted boundary of outer space.

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Jeff Bezos: Next spaceflight will include flaw

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew capsule descends on the end of its parachute system during an uncrewed test flight in April 2015. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos predicts there’ll be a problem with a parachute the next time his Blue Origin venture flies its uncrewed New Shepard spaceship. He’ll make sure of it.

Flying with a bad parachute is part of Blue Origin’s plan to test the suborbital craft under stressful conditions, in preparation for flying passengers to the edge of outer space in as little as two years.

In today’s email update, Bezos said he and the rest of the team were “finishing our mission planning for another flight of New Shepard, which will be our fourth flight with this vehicle.”

The New Shepard propulsion module and crew capsule went through successful flights to space and vertical landings in November, January and April at Blue Origin’s West Texas launch facility. During last month’s test outing, the propulsion module didn’t relight its hydrogen-powered BE-3 rocket engine until just seconds before what would have been a crash landing. New Shepard made a soft touchdown nevertheless.

“On this next mission, we’ll execute additional maneuvers on both the crew capsule and the booster to increase our vehicle characterization and modeling accuracy,” Bezos wrote.

“We also plan to stress the crew capsule by landing with an intentionally failed parachute, demonstrating our ability to safely handle that failure scenario,” he continued. “It promises to be an exciting demonstration.”

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