First Developmental Flight of New Shepard
“Today (29 April 2015) we flew the first developmental test flight of our New Shepard space vehicle. Our 110,000-lbf thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet. Guidance, navigation and control was nominal throughout max Q and all of ascent. The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect. Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

57 replies on “First Developmental Flight of New Shepard”

  1. Congratulations to Blue Origin! They will be flying ‘astronauts’ before Virgin Galactic. In my opinion.

    1. Can’t wait to see that baby put in the old Xerox Machine and scaled up.

      You may need to get after me for blue O worship too Mr. Squared 🙂

    2. I don’t see anything in VG that will get them into orbit any time soon. One of my main issues with VG is that I see it as something of a dead-end fun ride.

      I am much more enthusiastic about the similar, but much larger and capable, Stratolaunch with Dreamchaser:

      http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2…

      1. Indeed. I’ve wondered about the silliness of VG from the first day. And by the time they get their kiddie toy up to snuff, we will be able to use the same $$ for an actual trip. To an actual object in orbit.

        It’s so obvious that clearly I’m missing something.

  4. Interesting, so now Blue Origin come out from behind their screen of almost total secrecy! Suborbital only but everyone has to start somewhere!

    I’ve got a feeling that the staff at SpaceX had a rotten morning because of Elon’s mood. I also think that the Crewed Dragon team would have had more-than-usual managerial oversight today too!

    2. That is what SpaceX gets for becoming a NASA contractor and pacing their developments to NASA funding 🙂

      Hopefully SpaceX will respond by rushing a commercial Dragon into service now for non-NASA uses like BA.

      3. SpaceX is also getting funding by selling commercial launches. Any profits from those launches go right back into development.

    1. Neat. Had not seen that before. I note this 2011 test vehicle had three engines on ascent ; used only two coming down. Unusually visible orange plumed if burning LH2 . Yesterday’s New Shepherd had only the single BE-3 engine

  6. Too bad the recovery of the suborbital stage was unsuccessful, but I’m sure they got some good data.

    These guys are super secretive, but I’d speculate that the second stage of their orbital launcher will bear some resemblance to the suborbital stage seen here. If so, it makes one wonder if they intend both stages of the orbital vehicle to be reusable.

    1. Here is an overview:
      https://www.blueorigin.com/…

      They plan on using the BE-3 LH2 engine in an expendable 2nd stage, and the CH4 BE-4 engine in the reusable first stage (which strongly resembles in size and shape the suborbital craft). Rather similar to Falcons. A case of convergent evolution.

      1. Really cool design! I love how the booster was built for flyback and landing throughout. The bottom is aerodynamic (I guess it’s a biconic booster as well). The legs are a neat design, and the bulge lines extend up from that the length of the booster up to where they support the top ring fin and fin wedges. Those and the drag brakes are smartly simple and reliable designs.

      1. From the diagrams it looks like this would be the first stage with the methane engine and tanks back-fitted, with a new LH2 second stage using the vacuum version of this BE-3 engine.

  7. This is indeed good news. Here’s to hoping we don’t have to wait another 4 years before we see the next flight New Shepherd flight.

  9. Interesting to see all of these “new” rocket developments and what their respective companies plan to do with them. Cost reduction and efficiency could play a big role in a new emerging space sector, but I am still hesitant to think there is a huge swath of new customers out there to make economic stability viable for all these new entrants to the launch market.

    2. Yes…strongest egg laying chicken may be an apt description of what may happen. It may be that old existing players suffer the economic instabilities. The new entrants, esp. if lightening can strike twice with another SpaceX-like advance, may end up with the stable economics.

      That’s not to say that the transition we are in will be smooth for anyone.

      Also, there is an argument to be made, analogous to military jet fighters and such, that one company like ULA may just end up with a swath of just enough DoD business (say 6 a year, and one model of rocket, and very expensive) indefinitely – if only because the DoD will always dream up unique requirements even when not really needed. The other swath may be parsed out here and there with no real savings to DoDs budget there overall.

      The real market and growth will lie elsewhere, where revenue can be made by adding value, lowering prices, higher flight rate, innovating. This would be the land of the new entrants, becoming eventually Boeing-commercial airliner like. Not that DoD really wants that either, so again, the transition we are in makes for instability for all.

      2. Agreed.

        Instability is the name of the game right now. New entrants play up potential reward, but also don’t have the history of reliability and knowledge base. Don’t discount the “old dogs” just yet. Some of them may be a bit of a grouch and a little overzealous about their stature, but there are some good old space companies out there. Rocketdyne has the most extensive repertoire of propulsion technology, LM & Boeing both have a tremendous amount of vehicle design IP & Northrop has some great gyroscope & telemetry tech. The thing is, there is a need for new entrants to push these guys to truly leverage what they have and help shape the landscape of US space policy.

        I would like to see collaboration/VC funding from these new entrants with the “old dogs” and get some genuine value out of the technology that was developed & never used (ie; XRS-2200, composite fuel tanks, electric propulsion, nuclear propulsion, etc). Couple that with technologies from Bigelow, XCOR, Scaled Composites, etc and things can really start to happen. The new boys going it alone isn’t sustainable, money will run out. One major accident, one significant failure in aerospace can end it all – collaboration can reduce those risks.

    2. Does look slick and BO is going for the full tank return and reuse, not a capture the engines as they plummet to earth.

  11. It may look like a flying sex toy , but it flies elegantly and works splendidly —if they can keep that Hydraulic Gremlin at bay , the same mischievous creature that wrecked the first Falcon 9R barge landing. Oh well. The real news here is the first all-new American hydrogen engine, and reusable at that. This was mighty impressive all around. Bezos & Co. can no longer keep it secret once that engine is ignited, even in West Texas. My hunch says we’ll see New Shepherd follow-on flights in months, not years. The engineering looks sound.

    2. The Blue BE-3 HydroLox engine has been around for many years. It is not new. Since it is a tap-off engine, have not so great ISP as compare to the RL-10 engine for upper stage usage.

      FYI a previous version of of the booster module have an inflight RUD (rapid unplanned dis-assembly) over the the same West Texas site during 2011 with very little fanfare.

    4. All LOX/LH2 engines are inherently reusable. There is nothing fundamental about the physics that limits them to a single flight.

          1. I wonder about those huge wings ( a lot of mass) but idea was a fully reusable shuttle. Space station was to be highly inclined at 600 miles to cover most of earth and be have long lifetime orbit and station was to have a lot of people. But along came Sputnik and Apollo… other than that many tasks such as weather, communications, and recon are better done by unmanned satellites. However these guys were thinking big (expansion as in 1800s the call was “Go West” and in mid 1900s the call was to “Conquer Space”).

          2. One major downside of the ships was that they used storable hypergolic fuels. They are known to be horribly toxic and these puppies carried a lot. More of a problem was that von Braun designs always tending to divert course towards London, and had to be corrected.

    2. I think you and the only ones old enough to have seen the Disneyland TV shows with these Von Braun films back in the ’50s

      1. This is the lunch box that started this whole dream for me. Looks a lot like a SpaceX Mars Colonial Transporter, doing a moon mission to me.

    3. Possibly the person who created more space flight and astronomy fanatics was the incomparable illustrator Chesley Bonestell. He is the way the we saw the Universe and our Future.
      He combined scientific integrity with awe-inspiring artist imagination.
      His art was everywhere – TV, magazines, movies. He was artist for Destination Space and when Worlds Collide.

      Collier’s (1952):

      https://lpod.wikispaces.com…

      Saturn from Mimas (1944):

      http://www.bonestell.org/Im…

      Want some fabulous backgrounds? Go here:

      https://www.google.com/sear…

      1. Wow! They even have one of the gravity wheels made out of some of Shuttle tanks there. SHUTTLE CITY!

  14. Blue Origin should release the video of the crashing booster in a few days if they are smart.

    Get more people interested

  15. What the deal with the giant black feather on the side of Shepard?? I heard a guy say it had to do with Pegasus getting a feather stuck in a flames duct or something? What’s that all about?

    1. When I first saw it I thought it was a spill or a burn mark down the side of the rocket.

      Strangely, my google-fu can find nothing about what the feather is supposed to represent.

  16. They are so secretive that I don’t know how to tell if this is a minor step towards a project of major importance, a major step towards a project of minor importance, or a middling step towards a project of… gimmicky utility? I dunno.

  17. Good effort, but I have to say that I have rarely seen such a phallic vehicle. The last time was probably in ‘Flesh Gordon’. Here’s some shots from the movie, including a landing on what looks rather like 67P… …someone *should* have said something, Bezos is bound to be
    mocked for this!

    1. I’m glad I’ve never seen ‘Flesh Gordon’. And by the way, it’s NSFW (not safe for work), so I don’t recommend a Google search from a work account/machine.

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