Blue Origin retrieves back used rocket stage successfully, a major milestone

You would allegedly get four minutes of weightlessness after the capsule disconnected from the New Shepard rocket, which then lands for refueling. Then, the crew capsule separated from the booster and coasted into its planned test altitude, before making a successful parachute descent. Now we know what that was all about.

A rocket needs to be traveling about three times the speed of sound, or Mach 3, to reach space, but orbital missions require speeds about Mach 30, Musk said.

During the test mission, the unmanned “New Shepard” was launched to the edge of space at an altitude of 100km.

Launch (11:21 a.m. on November 23) – New Shepard launches from the company’s West Texas launch site. Just prior to landing, the booster re-ignites its BE-3 engine which slows the vehicle to 4.4 miles per hour for a gentle, powered vertical landing, enabling vehicle reuse.

While this week’s achievement is being celebrated, Bezos said his company plans to fly the vehicle “many, many times and then when we’re completely confident in it, we’re going to start using it to take people into space”.

Now that NASA has essentially retired its rockets, both SpaceX and Blue Origin hope to take both astronauts and tourists into space in the future.

Another private company, SpaceX, has tried to land boosters upright on a barge in the ocean but so far has failed.

Blue Origin, LLC (Blue Origin) is a private company developing vehicles and technologies to enable commercial human space transportation.

The rocket landed just 1.4 metres from the centre of the launch pad, Bezos said. The results have been fun to watch, but presumably frustrating for Elon Musk, who may be Bezos’s frenemy #1 judging from the shade he threw on the Blue Origin accomplishment. Blue Origin, launched in 2000, has had $500 million sunk into it by Bezos alone. Just ask SpaceX which is yet to do what Blue Origin has now done.

“It is, however, important to clear up the difference between “space” and ‘orbit, ‘ as described well by (link)”, Musk added with a second tweet.

Blue Origin was originally only focused on suborbital flight, but in the past two years has become more involved in contracts for the United Launch Alliance.