Did You Know Jeff Bezos is in Space (Well, His Rockets Are)?

Imagine you and your friends are playing Mario Kart, and you want to beat one another. Now make you and your friend the two richest people in the world, make your cars rockets, and make your track our solar system, and you have the rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin. Now I can almost guarantee you know what SpaceX is and what they do, but do you know who Blue Origin is?

NS 4 Launching from Corn Ranch

Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos. Its main goal was simple. It aimed to make spaceflight cheaper and more reliable by using reusable launch vehicles. Sounds similar to SpaceX. Anyhow, I won’t be talking about the rivalry between SpaceX and Blue Origin today, but I will be later, so stay tuned. Anyway, today, on January 14, 2021, Blue Origin launched its first upgraded New Shepard spacecraft on an uncrewed suborbital test flight from its launch site in Corn Ranch spaceport in West Texas. This flight test is one of the many successful launches from private space companies in 2021.

NS 2 at the EAA AirVenture in 2017

The New Shepard (NS) is Blue Origin’s suborbital launch vehicle developed for suborbital space tourism. Prototypes of the launch vehicle and its engine date back all the way to 2006. In 2010, Blue Origin started working on the NS vehicle engine and finished its development cycle in 2015. The NS vehicle uses the BP-3PM liquid rocket engine, which has 110,000 lbf (489 kN) of thrust. The first successful launch of NS was on November 23, 2015, when NS successfully performed a vertical landing after going suborbital, being the first rocket to ever do so. The version that launched on January 14, 2021, was the NS 4. It was the fourth propulsion module to be built but the first that was designed to carry passengers. 

NS 4 has two parts to it: the rocket and the capsule. Both the parts are reusable, which makes spaceflight cheaper and more routine. During the launch, the booster came down for a powered landing in the landing zone while the capsule settled a short distance away, using parachutes to land.

NS 4 Capsule Landing

The capsule reaches an altitude of 66 miles (107 kilometers), barely making it into the border of space (the boundary of space is at an altitude of 62 miles (100 km)). The capsule itself has six seats. During today’s test flight, one seat was occupied by the test dummy named Mannequin Skywalker (that’s pretty punny if you ask me). Additionally, NS 4 was carrying a payload of 50,000 postcards submitted by students worldwide to Blue Origin. 

In the end, Blue Origin is one of the many rocket and space tourism companies that have an opportunity to change the future. Other companies include Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In the end, these companies will be big players in the way spaceflight will work in the next few years.

Blue Origin's Logo

Sources:

“Blue Origin.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Jan. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin#Facilities. 

“New Shepard.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Jan. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Shepard#New_Shepard_1. 

Wall, Mike. “Blue Origin's 1st Upgraded New Shepard Spacecraft for Astronauts Aces Launch (and Landing).” Space.com, Space, 14 Jan. 2021, www.space.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-ns-14-launch-landing-success.