Posted on 04/30/2015 8:47:14 AM PDT by repentant_pundit
On April 7, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson said that the space company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would be conducting its first unmanned test flights “later this year.”
As it turns out, “later this year” meant “three weeks.” The company has announced that it had conducted the first flight of its New Shepard space vehicle yesterday.
The propulsion module, powered by Blue Origin’s BE-3 rocket engine, took the New Shepard space capsule up to a speed of over Mach 3. The capsule then separated from the propulsion module and flew to an altitude of 307,000 feet before beginning its descent. That altitude is just shy of the 328,084 feet that’s generally considered to be the boundary of space.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
from the production “Flesh Gordon”. ;’)
SpaceX is the only one on that chart that will go to orbit. The other companies, like Blue Origin for now, are suborbital tourism.
The methane-burning engine Blue Origin is developing will more than do that job, and their use of it will be somewhat subsidized by Lockheed-Martin & Boeing. But I agree that Musk and co. will come out on top. Without a destination, space travel for humans is really just an amusement park thrill ride that costs as much as a basic house in most of the US. He wants to ferry people to Mars, one way trips.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk_ Europe’s rocket has no chance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on6pzefo4t8
Some jokes just write themselves, don’t they?
Yep.
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