Amazon founder’s Blue Origin moves into Cape Canaveral

He also said, “The 45th Space Wing has worked aggressively to make launch property available to commercial space launch activities and to date has leased or licensed 65 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station facilities totaling more than 800,000 square feet at a value of more than $890 million”.

“Locating vehicle assembly near our launch site eases the challenge of processing and transporting really big rockets”, Bezos said.

At the event, Bezos also unveiled an artist’s concept image of Blue Origin’s new orbital launch vehicle, which Bezos said has been nicknamed “Very Big Brother”.

But the space firms also have had to endure major setbacks in the past year.

The BE-4 now in development by Blue Origin is a large staged-combustion rocket engine created to produce 2,400 kilonewtons of thrust.

“As a kid, I was inspired by the giant Saturn V missions that roared to life from these very shores”, Bezos said during the announcement here today (Sept. 15).

In the meantime, Blue Origin’s website page for career opportunities is stuffed with listings, mostly based in Kent, Wash., including openings for propulsion design engineers, flight sciences analysts, and the intriguingly-titled robotic laser operator.

Like the other billionaires set out on space exploration, Bezos said this has been a dream of his since he was a young boy.

“I come by the space bug honestly”, Bezos said.

He said Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine, which is being developed through a partnership between Blue Origin and the Boeing Co.-Lockheed Martin Corp. joint venture called United Launch Alliance, also will be tested in Florida. In the meantime, they’re developing reusable rockets that can carry cargo and other payloads such as relatively small satellites. In addition to providing capabilities for researchers and tourists, New Shepard and its associated operations are serving as a pathfinder for proving out the BE-3 engine and technologies for first stage flyback.

Aside from being constructed at the site, the American-made BE-4 engine, which will power the orbital launch vehicle, will be acceptance-tested there, and will eventually power the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.

“Reusability is the key to lowering the cost of getting into space”, Bezos said.

Blue Origin has conducted one test flight of its suborbital rocket, back in April.

The continued growth in the commercial space industry has a significant impact on California.

Musk, the Los Angeles entrepreneur who founded SpaceX, envisions a “multi-planet species” that will escape Earth’s suffocating pollution to live, for starters, on Mars – after nuking the red planet to warm it up, as he recently told “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two was designed and tested in the Mojave Desert area.