An aerial view shows the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane known as VSS Unity and its White Knight Two mothership from the rear. (Credit: Virgin Galactic)
Virgin Galactic had to scale back what it hoped would be its first free-flying test of VSS Unity, its second SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, due to unacceptably high crosswinds.
Instead of releasing Unity for a gliding descent today, Virgin Galactic’s test pilots kept the winged craft firmly attached to its White Knight Two carrier airplane from takeoff to landing at Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
In a series of tweets, the company kept its followers updated on the status of the flight, and the winds.
Jeff Bezos says he plans to spend his “Amazon winnings” on Blue Origin’s effort to build the heavy lifting infrastructure for space ventures. (Credit: Blue Origin)
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says he’s trying to do for outer-space ventures what delivery services and the internet did for him: provide the “heavy lifting infrastructure” that will make it possible for entrepreneurs to thrive.
And he’s willing to commit billions of dollars of his “Amazon winnings” to make it so.
Bezos has talked about the parallels between the internet and space commercialization several times before. In April, for example, the subject came up during our fireside chat at the Space Symposium in Colorado.
But at this week’s Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco, Bezos made a strong linkage between the work being done at Amazon and the work being done at Blue Origin, the space venture he founded 16 years ago.
Seattle billionaire Paul Allen (center) shakes the hand of SpaceShipOne pilot Brian Binnie in 2004 with rocket plane designer Burt Rutan by his side. (Photo courtesy of Scaled Composites LLC)
Commercial spaceflight seems to be hitting its stride right about now, thanks in part to the launch programs funded by billionaires such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos and Vulcan Aerospace’s Paul Allen.
But the spark for that entrepreneurial space was lit two decades ago, and a newly published book reveals how Musk, Bezos and Allen were striking some the matches way back when.
“How to Make a Spaceship,” written by Julian Guthrie, focuses on XPRIZE co-founder Peter Diamandis and his years-long quest to create a $10 million competition for private-sector spaceflight.
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.
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.”
During SpaceX’s Seattle announcement about an internet satellite network in January 2015, the company’s logo lit up Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. (GeekWire photo)
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation set the stage for new leadership as well as new initiatives during its meeting in Seattle this week, says the industry group’s president.
CSF President Eric Stallmer told GeekWire that the meeting signaled the Emerald City’s rising status amid a rising wave of entrepreneurship focused on the space frontier.
“Seattle has really become a hub city for commercial space activity,” he said, “so it’s really a no-brainer for us to come here. … I foresee more companies developing and coming up to Seattle.”
Those companies will follow in the footsteps of ventures such as Blue Origin (founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos), Vulcan Aerospace (funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), Planetary Resources (which counts Google execs and Virgin billionaire Richard Branson among its founding investors) and Spaceflight Industries (backed by Allen’s Vulcan Capital and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, among others).
In a series of post-midnight tweets, Musk said it’s possible that something hit the rocket to cause the fireball.
He put out the call for any recordings of the event – and said he was particularly interested in an explosive sound that preceded the main fireball by just a few seconds. “May come from rocket or something else,” he wrote.
