Blue Origin Nails Rocket Landing

The landing was an important step towards building a fully reusable rocket, which would significantly reduce the cost of going to space.

Blue Origin said its unmanned New Shepard capsule climbed to a height of almost 333,000 feet, or about 62 miles on Monday, just above the internationally recognized boundary of space.

New Shepard launched from the company’s West Texas test site at 12:21 p.m. Eastern time November 23, reaching a peak altitude of 100.5 kilometers and top speed of Mach 3.72.

But could the project have been developed in secret when many of Blue Origin’s customers stand to stem from the federal space? In a video posted to YouTube, it appears that they did just that: the company launched a rocket to space, and successfully nailed a vertical landing. Bezos hopes his company will enable “millions of people” to live and work in space. Until the recent achievement of Blue Origin, rockets launched in space have either burned up in the atmosphere or ended up crashing in the sea, according to CNet.

It still faces two years of testing, but a rocket has safely travelled to space and back again, which could launch a new era of space travel. In the future, should all things turn out well, then a capsule will ferry passengers on such suborbital adventures, before descending to the ground using an old school method – parachutes.

Regardless of the technicalities involved, you can’t take away from what Blue Origins has accomplished.

Musk also pointed out that there have already been rockets that went to the edge of outer space and landed on runways so they could be reused.

Musk claimed that an earlier SpaceX rocket named Grasshopper had completed six “suborbital” flights and successfully landed vertically.

Most of us who follow spaceflight know SpaceX has tried multiple times to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX’s Elon Musk congratulated Bezos and the Blue Origin team for yesterday’s flight.