Blue Origin, an aerospace development company founded by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, has successfully landed their New Shepherd rocket at their testing grounds in Texas. The company is one of several who have been attempting to create cost-saving rockets capable of landing themselves after being launched into space, to be subsequently reused.
The rocket managed to thrust into the air, reaching an altitude of 100.5 kilometres, just outside of the designated altitude of 100 km where space was determined to begin. Upon reaching that peak, the crew capsule (just the tip) detached. While this flight carried no operators, the rocket’s head is slated to carry passengers who can enjoy the wonders of this suborbital altitude, including experiencing weightlessness, viewing the glow of Earth’s atmosphere, and seeing our planet in a way that very few humans have been able to. The capsule will then fall back to Earth with the help of parachutes. The booster itself used rockets to reduce its velocity to under 7 km/h before gracefully touching down on Earth again.
This victory in space travel is a huge step towards regular space travel, both for people and for cargo. Elon Musk’s machines at SpaceX have come incredibly close to achieving this goal as well, but have generally failed thus far, most notably with the crash-landing of the Falcon 9 in January, and the explosion and disintegration another Falcon 9 rocket in June. Debris from a U.S. spacecraft has recently washed ashore in the Isles of Scilly, Great Britain. It is believed that it is the remnants of the failed June mission. Granted, SpaceX’s goals are generally more ambitious or technically difficult compared to Blue Origin’s. While Blue Origin focuses on space tourism and short-duration trips that barely exit the exosphere, SpaceX aims to transport supplies to space stations and eventually colonize Mars.
The closest competitor for Blue Origin may be Virgin Galactic, another commercial tourism-based company. While the company has also made headway in space travel, a catastrophic breakup of one of their spacecrafts mid-flight has delayed their plans. The incident resulted in the death of the co-pilot and the injury of the pilot.
Despite the loss of government funding to NASA in recent years, private companies have made substantial headway in human space travel. The new developments are important for the future expansion of humans into space.
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