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Blue Origin on Monday postponed its long-awaited return to space, citing technical reasons and promising to try again later this week. Jeff Bezos' space company has not launched a rocket since an uncrewed September 2022 crash placed its program on hold while it carried out fixes and awaited regulatory approval. The company finally announced a December 18 launch from its base near Van Horn, Texas. But on the day itself it first pushed back the takeoff window because of cold weather, then declared it was off. "We're scrubbing #NS24 today due to a ground system issue the team is troubleshooting....

Amazon on December 1, 2023 announced it has signed a three-launch contract with SpaceX to place its Kuiper satellites into orbit, supplementing the launch contracts it presently has with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin. From the Amazon press release: ""SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage launch vehicle designed for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond, and it has completed more than 270 successful launches to date. Project Kuiper has contracted three Falcon 9 launches, and these missions are targeted to lift off beginning in mid-2025."" In 2022 Amazon had signed contracts...

Elon Musk once branded Jeff Bezos a 'dilettante' of space exploration, but the Blue Origin founder is poised to beat SpaceX to Mars. NASA announced Wednesday that it will send two scientific spacecraft to the Red Planet aboard the first Blue Origin New Glenn rocket in August 2024 - a contract that costs $20 million. Musk's SpaceX company was initially set to carry the NASA payload on a Falcon Heavy rocket in October of this year, alongside NASA's Psyche mission, which was bound for an asteroid. However, the space agency pulled the additional crafts from the launch because the Falcon...

[snip] ...In the suit, however, shareholders claim that Amazon "acted in bad faith" and made no effort to properly discharge their fiduciary duties when picking the launch providers. They primarily claim that SpaceX, the leader within the industry was glossed over and not even considered when making the decision. If that were the case, they would have a valid point considering the cost per launch and timeline these satellites are meant to launch by... [/snip]Amazon Shareholders Think SpaceX Should Have Been Picked For Kuiper Launches | 8:06TheSpaceBucket | 23.3K subscribers | 17,895 views | September 1, 2023

The Zhuque-2 rocket lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Wednesday China said the rocket completed the flight mission. Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua via EPA-EFE July 12 (UPI) -- A methane-fueled rocket, launched by China, has reached orbit for the first time, beating out potential competitors from the United States and indicating a renewed effort by that nation to land astronauts on the moon with a more powerful spacecraft. Built by Landspace, a private Chinese company, the 164-foot Zhuque-2 rocket lifted off from its Jiuquan launch complex, in China's Inner Mongolia, on Wednesday morning local time, Chinese...

KEY POINTS Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin suffered a rocket engine explosion while testing its BE-4 rocket engine last month, CNBC has learned. During a firing on June 30 at Blue Origin’s facility in West Texas, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test. A Blue Origin spokesperson confirmed the incident, noting no personnel were injured and an investigation is underway, with a “proximate cause” identified. =============================================================== A Blue Origin rocket engine exploded during testing last month, CNBC has learned, a destructive setback with potential ramifications for the company’s customers and its own rocket. During a firing...

China’s burgeoning space program plans to place astronauts on the moon before 2030 and expand the country’s orbiting space station, officials said Monday. Monday’s announcement comes amid against the background of a rivalry with the U.S. for reaching new milestones in outer space, reflecting their competition for influence on global events. That has conjured up memories of the space race between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, although American spending, supply chains and capabilities are believed to give it a significant edge over China, at least for the present. The U.S. aims to put...

Outrageous egos battling each other across the cosmos? Check. Sci-fi nerds who’ve definitely watched too much Star Trek? Check. Humanity’s next chapter in a space left in the hands of insanely rich tech billionaires happy to take NASA’s tax-payer billions? Check. This is Mission Control: We have lift-off! Just a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the world’s most powerful rocket to date - the 400-ft long, $67 million Starship - only for it to explode mid-air just four minutes into flight, a phoenix has risen from the flames to bravely take on the quest for space travel. Or at...

Johnny the Walrus is a best-selling children’s book written by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh. The book is a terrific satire about adults who insist that children can be “transgender” and go so far as to put them on hormones and even have surgeries done on them, instead of letting them go through puberty normally and seeking psychotherapy to treat their distress. Many of the parents who do this to their children appear to be suffering from some kind of attention disorder that drives them to seek the limelight while they mutilate their own children, like the parents of Jazz...

Beloved children’s author Matt Walsh sits down with his story hour class to read his new children’s book “Johnny the Walrus.”

If you're tired of censorship, cancel culture, and the erosion of civil liberties subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Via Twitter, popular account Libs of TikTok posted an Amazon staff meeting where the team described author and commentator Matt Walsh’s kids’ book “Johnny the Walrus” as “traumatic” and “problematic.” The book is about a kid named Johnny who believes he is a walrus, even cladding in spoons for tusks and tube socks for fins to resemble the aquatic mammal. Initially, his mother thinks it’s a phase he will outgrow. However, society pressures her to allow Johnny to transition into a walrus,...

CHICAGO -- At least 30 people have been shot, four fatally, in shootings across Chicago since Friday night, police said. After being struck by a car Friday evening while riding a scooter in South Shore, a man tried to run but was gunned down by an occupant of the Hyundai Sonata that collided with him, Chicago police said. Two men were shot, one fatally, near a CTA Red Line stop on the Near South Side early Saturday morning, police said. A person was found shot to death inside a car early Sunday in Englewood on the South Side. The person...

Blue Origin launched its 23rd New Shepard rocket mission this morning, featuring science payloads designed for experimentation. The mission needed early, however, after it was aborted during the first ascent stage of the rocket, prompting the abort process to take over and firing the parachutes on the capsule, which drifted back to Earth shortly after take-off. This was not a crewed mission, so there was no one on board the capsule, though it is the same vehicle that the company uses for its private spaceflight tourist missions. This marks the first time ever that Blue Origin has encountered a problem...

Growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, Katya Echazarreta was encouraged to abandon her dreams of traveling to space. “Everyone around me — family, friends, teachers — I just kept hearing the same thing: That’s not for you,” Echazarreta told The Associated Press. Echazarreta, 26, will prove them wrong Saturday when she joins a diverse international crew boarding the fifth passenger flight by Blue Origin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space travel venture. She and five others, including Victor Correa Hespanha, the second Brazilian to fly to space, will blast off from Texas atop a New Shepard rocket for a 10-minute flight. The...

On Wednesday (March 30, 2022), at a meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Budget, Sanders raised an issue that’s been a regular part of his political platform for many years: wealth distribution. “Anyone who thinks we do not have an oligarchy right here in America is sorely mistaken,” he said. “Today in America, multibillionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson are off taking joy rides on their rocket ships to outer space.” Sanders appeared to be citing the three billionaires’ spaceflight companies: SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, respectively. All three U.S.-based businesses have played a large part...

Can anyone with experience with this please give me some advise? Thanks.

Glen de Vries had been aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft on 13 October, spending more than 10 minutes in space after launching along with Shatner and others.A businessman who travelled to space with William Shatner last month has died after a small plane crashed in New Jersey.Glen de Vries, 49, had been aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft on 13 October, spending more than 10 minutes in space after launching along with Shatner and others. He was killed along with another person in the New Jersey crash, state police said.https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1459248268806967299The plane, a single-engine Cessna 172, went down on Thursday...

Musk's net worth hit $302billion as of Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires' Index The increase of $10billion was due to a rise in Tesla shares on Thursday after the car firm announced a 100,000 car deal with rental firm Hertz The mogul is now worth over $100billion more than the second-richest person on earth, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who's worth sits at $199billion Musk is now worth more than the annual GDP of nations like Egypt, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece, Qatar and Finland He's also worth more than the market value of PayPal, the company he co-founded, as...

Blue Origin and Sierra Space have announced plans for Orbital Reef, a commercially developed, owned, and operated space station to be built in low Earth orbit. The station will open the next chapter of human space exploration and development by facilitating the growth of a vibrant ecosystem and business model for the future. Orbital Reef is backed by space industry leaders and teammates including Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University.Designed to open multiple new markets in space, Orbital Reef will provide anyone with the opportunity to establish their own address on orbit. This unique destination will...

Following Prince William’s comments about issues around current space flights, William Shatner responded to the royal’s concerns. The actor both justified his trip as well as to shut down what the Duke of Cambridge had to say. “He’s a lovely, gentle, educated Englishman, but he’s got the wrong idea,” Shatner told Entertainment Tonight. The star explained what he meant by noting that the “idea here is not to go, ‘Yeah, look at me. I’m in space.’” Instead, he said that “the prince is missing the point. The point is these are the baby steps to show people [that] it’s very...