Blue Origin Makes Historic Rocket Landing [With Video]
“Blue Origin today announced that its New Shepard space vehicle successfully flew to space, reaching its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a historic landing back at the launch site in West Texas.”
“Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard space vehicle flew a flawless mission–soaring to 329,839 feet and then returning through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to make a gentle, controlled landing just four and a half feet from the center of the pad. Full reuse is a game changer, and we can’t wait to fuel up and fly again.”
Marc’s note: Congratulations to the Blue Origin team. This is indeed an historic milestone in the history of flight. Now, how about providing some more details on the crew capsule and how it performed?
Blue Origin Flies and Lands New Shepard Suborbital Spacecraft, Space News
“The successful flight keeps Blue Origin on track to begin commercial flights of uncrewed research payloads by the middle of 2016, a goal recently stated by company officials. Bezos told reporters he hoped to to start flying people on New Shepard in a couple of years, depending on the progress made during test flights. “As much as I would like to put humans on that vehicle and fly it as soon as possible,” he said, “the reality is that we’ll enter commercial operations withat that vehicle when we’re ready, and not before.”

31 replies on “Blue Origin New Shepard Completes First Reusable Suborbital Flight”

  1. Congratulations to the Blue Origin team and a tremendous demonstration of the next evolution of rocketry. Now, just get that capsule landing down and you may have something there.

  2. Great news 🙂

    Charlie Rose told Jeff he wants to ride with him when he takes his first flight.

    Hope it happens!!!

  5. Excellent news! I’d like to know about the crew capsule as well.

    As the Motherboard article pointed out, this isn’t quite the same as SpaceX’ attempted landings because the latter are so much heavier (and trying to land on a barge at sea), but it’s still an impressive technical feat that brings commercial suborbital flights closer to reality.

    EDIT: Jeff Foust pointed out on Twitter that this isn’t the first commercial reusable suborbital launch vehicle.

    EDIT #2: I love that Blue Origin just does the work, gets the achievements, and then announces them. They don’t start off by shilling a gigantic amount of hype only to disappoint. That’s my favorite kind of company.

    1. For #2 to work, you’d have to ignore their claim back in 2006, that they would be offering sub-orbital tourist flights on a weekly basis by 2010, or the 2008 claim that they’d be achieve manned spaceflight by 2012.

  6. Congrats to the Blue Origin team. This only adds to the pressure against the non resuable boondoggle SLS and Orion.

    2. Look I am very happy for Blue Origin and think this is an awesome accomplishment but this in no way diminishes SLS/Orion. This booster is only capable of sub-orbital missions. It isn’t even close to being in the same class to SLS (it isn’t even in the same class as F9). Also Orion will at least be partially reusable.

        1. So do you believe in only private funds for spaceflight? If that is the case then get used to only suborbital flights from here on out.

          1. Do you only believe governments fund spaceflight? The money spent by private investors on communication and remote sensing satellites is much larger than what governments spend annually. And now that the government is on the verge on making space mining legal expect firms to start figuring out how to mine the Moon, Mars, Asteroids and beyond.

            BTW one great advantage of private spaceflight. The program doesn’t get tossed out every time a new Administration takes office. Blue Origins started in 1999 and has been moving forward at a steady pace. So has Bigelow Aerospace. And SpaceX since 2002. In that same time frame the X-33, X-34, X-38, OSP, Ares I and Ares V at NASA have all come and gone with nothing left behind except some relics left to rot in storage yards and old Youtube videos.

          2. I believe that spaceflight should be funded as much as possible by private and public sources. I was replying to a comment that seemed to argue that only private money should be used for spaceflight. I correctly pointed out that we wouldn’t have humans beyond suborbital space if that came to pass.

        2. Think again. Blue Origin received funding for the New Shepard launch abort system under NASA’s Commercial Crew program. Also they receive ongoing Space Act support from NASA – basically NASA staff paid for by our tax dollars – does free-of-charge consulting to Blue Origin to help them with development.

          Those tax dollars are a pittance compared to the money Blue Origin has put into their own development though, so they are a prime example of how NASA’s COTS program has taken government resources to stimulate private industry space development.

        3. OK. You would have perhaps preferred that these developments happen in house at NASA, right?

          What of the argument that private firms can do it better and cheaper? Isn’t that what this proves? or not?

          Can’t have it both ways.

          1. Or Not.

            Blue Origin didn’t do this without NASA. NASA paid for their launch abort system, and NASA has been paying for NASA engineers to provide free guidance to Blue Origin’s engineering teams. Blue Origin also didn’t do it without the engineers on their own staff who came bearing experience from the DoD/NASA funded DC-X vertical landing program.

          2. All good points. So it is something less than infinitely better — perhaps only a few orders of magnitude better.

      2. Joe, my apologies. I say boondoggle only in that I want NASA focused on the “bleeding edge” of technology. Not launching 1970’s engines on a rocket to expensive to sustainable, in the LONG RUN.

        Of course it is not heavy lift, Blue Origin is not pursuing that .. yet. (Bezos seem to allude to it at the press confrence when they got the new pad in florida)
        I would much rather see limited taxpayer funding that goes to NASA actually produce the tools we need to add to the tool belt if we want to spiral outward.

        If the Nation can not get fuel handling down, in a vacumn, and in zero G and low G we are not going anywhere. If NASA can conceiviably buy it in the market place and not do it in house I prefer that course. COTS (commercial off the shelf) should be the goal.

        NASA acts to increase the TRL (technology readiness level) and as the pump primer, after that shovel the tech into the private sector and then NASA and the rest of the aerospace industry can buy it off the shelf.

        To these ends I would rather see NASA as an anchor tenant for projects like a fuel depot. All NASA needs to tell industry is “we need this many tons of fuel and oxidizer per year”

        “This presentation “Propellant Depot Requirements Study – Status Report – HAT Technical Interchange Meeting – July 21, 2011” is a distilled version of a study buried deep inside of NASA. The study compared and contrasted an SLS/SEP architecture with one based on propellant depots for human lunar and asteroid missions. Not only was the fuel depot mission architecture shown to be less expensive, fitting within expected budgets, it also gets humans beyond low Earth orbit a decade before the SLS architecture could.

        Moreover, supposed constraints on the availability of commercial launch alternatives often mentioned by SLS proponents, was debunked. In addition, clear integration and performance advantages to the use of commercial launchers Vs SLS was repeatedly touted as being desirable: “breaking costs into smaller, less-monolithic amounts allows great flexibility in meeting smaller and changing budget profiles.””
        http://www.spaceref.com/new…

        1. Boeing/Nasa SLS and Lockheed Martin/Orion head Quarters

          Nothing shall stand in our way. We will finish what you have started.

          The Rebels must not be aloud beyond low earth Orbit.

          Only WE should be aloud to rule deep space!!!
          https://youtu.be/1n9ykP5NJ2s

      3. Of course the New Sheppard core don’t lift much to LEO if at all. But change the 3 BE-3 engines with a BE-3U engine, you got yourself a relatively cheap HydroLox upper stage. The latest info is that the BE-3U have 150k lbf (670 kN) of thrust.

  10. Wow, that engine really had to pivot to keep it steady, but it made a nice landing. Congrats Blue!

  11. What I don’t understand is what is the path forward for Blue Orion to compete with SpaceX on Orbital reusable rockets, which is what we really need.
    Does Blue Origin cluster BE 3 on a hydrogen first stage?
    Isn’t the BE 4 to big to be used for first stage recovery?
    Doesn’t Blue need a little methane engine added to its two engines for Vulcan or the first stage of Jeff’s rocket??
    Also how long will SpaceX stick with kerosene? Merlin, coking problems and all that mess? Doesn’t SpaceX need to be building a mini raptor as well as Raptor to replace/transform the falcon family to methane to double or triple the reusable life of their engines/falcons.
    Seems a lot more development needs to be done to really get to affordable practical reusable orbital rockets.

  12. What I don’t understand is what is the path forward for Blue Orion to compete with SpaceX on Orbital reusable rockets, which is what we really need.
    Does Blue Origin cluster BE 3 on a hydrogen first stage?
    Isn’t the BE 4 to big to be used for first stage recovery?
    Doesn’t Blue need a little methane engine added to its two engines for Vulcan or the first stage of Jeff’s rocket??
    Also how long will SpaceX stick with kerosene? Merlin, coking problems and all that mess? Doesn’t SpaceX need to be building a mini raptor as well as Raptor to replace/transform the falcon family to methane to double or triple the reusable life of their engines/falcons.
    Seems a lot more development needs to be done to really get to affordable practical reusable orbital rockets.

    1. “what is the path forward”

      Their two stage orbital rocket.

      “Does Blue Origin cluster BE 3 on a hydrogen first stage?”

      No, they are planning to use a vacuum version of the BE-3 on the second stage, and possibly the ACES upper stage for ULA.

      “Isn’t the BE 4 to big to be used for first stage recovery?”

      Yep.

      “Doesn’t Blue need a little methane engine added to its two engines for Vulcan or the first stage of Jeff’s rocket??”

      No, that’s what BE-4 is for.

      “Also how long will SpaceX stick with kerosene?”

      Probably for the life of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. I wouldn’t be surprised if those rockets continue in use even after BFR comes along.

      “Merlin, coking”

      They’ve had the opportunity to run Merlin engines through numerous operation cycles on their test stands to see how long they last and what service is needed. Have you seen anything that indicates that coking is a roadblock to them in terms of being able to reuse the engine?

  13. Blue Origon’s sub-orbital rocket is basically a reusable sounding rocket. 110,000 pounds of thrust is not much.

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