Successful Space Rocket Launch and Landing

Space rocket launched and landed

Jeff Bezos (the mastermind at Amazon) made history and beat Elon Musk (Tesla motors, Space X...) after a successful launch and landing of a rocket intended to carry civilians into space. While still a few years out, this is another huge win in the space tourism industry(yep thats a thing) for Bezos and Blue Orgin. From the New York Times:

This time, Jeffrey P. Bezos’s rocket went up — and it came down in one piece.

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has been investing some of his wealth in space dreams, establishing a rocket company called Blue Origin.

On Monday, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard rocket 329,839 feet, or 100.5 kilometers, above its launch site in West Texas, reaching just above the 100-kilometer altitude that is considered the beginning of outer space.

A capsule that is to eventually carry paying passengers on suborbital jaunts separated and successfully descended to the ground under parachutes. The rocket itself then turned around and, firing its engines again, landed back at the launchpad.

“It was a totally nominal flight,” Mr. Bezos said in an interview. “We’re walking on cloud 9. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

That builds upon a largely successful test flight in April. In that operation, the launch and the landing of the capsule were flawless, but the rocket crashed, because of a failure with a hydraulic system. Mr. Bezos said that engineers had replaced the hydraulics with a new design.

“Think of this as the beginning of a thorough test program,” Mr. Bezos said. The next flight, he said, “should be a matter of weeks.”

The company, based in Kent, Wash., south of Seattle, is selling space on the capsules during the uncrewed test flights for research experiments, and the company plans to begin flying them next year. “There’s no reason not to do that,” Mr. Bezos said.Commercial flights for tourists, also to launch from West Texas, could begin in a couple of years. Blue Origin has not started selling tickets or decided the cost of a flight, which will provide about four minutes of floating.

https://youtu.be/9pillaOxGCo

See the full article from The New York Times and Learn more about Blue Origin here.

It doesn't matter to me who gets this squared away first. The big question is which company will actually make this trip affordable. Judging by past business practice though, my bet is on Jeff Bezos.

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