Bezos’s Blue Origin successfully brings spent rocket back to earth

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: MarketWatch


Bezos’s Blue Origin successfully brings spent rocket back to earth

Published: Nov 24, 2015 9:27 a.m. ET

Historic coup in vertically landing a rocket after space flight

By Andy Pasztor

The privately funded space company backed by Amazon.com Inc. ... founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos announced a historic coup by successfully landing a spent rocket back on Earth after an unmanned flight to the edge of space.

Blue Origin LLC said its reusable New Shepard vehicle flew a suborbital test mission to 333,000 feet on Monday — reaching nearly four times the speed of sound — and then both the unmanned capsule and its BE-3 liquid-fueled rocket separately landed safely back on earth.

According to a company release issued some 18 hours after the test flight, the rocket made a flawless return through stiff winds and touched down gently at the company’s launch facility in West Texas. The single rocket engine reignited at an altitude of about 5,000 feet during the controlled return, according to the company, and it landed upright, 4 feet from where it started, traveling at a speed of 4.4 miles an hour.

The ability to reuse such a large rocket has been a long-standing goal of the global aerospace industry, and until now the efforts of Elon Musk’s closely held Space Exploration Technology Corp. have garnered the most attention. The aim is to reduce costs and speed up the tempo of launches.
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An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com

Read more: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bezoss-blue-origin-successfully-brings-spent-rocket-back-to-earth-2015-11-24

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All I was able to see at The Wall Street Journal. was a preview of the article.

[SoapBox]

1. As I said in V & M...

wow.

[bill]

2. Excellent!

nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. SpaceX's Elon Musk goes ballistic over Jeff Bezos' rocket feat

SpaceX's Elon Musk goes ballistic over Jeff Bezos' rocket feat

Chris Woodyard and James Dean, USA TODAY and Florida Today 2:14 p.m. EST November 24, 2015

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk apparently wasn't ready to let Amazon's Jeff Bezos bask too long in the glory Tuesday of a space achievement.

Bezos' rocket venture, Blue Origin, showed that it can send a spacecraft aloft, then have it land vertically back on earth -- a feat that SpaceX has been trying to achieve lately on a barge.

Blue Origin said its unmanned New Shepard capsule climbed to a height of nearly 333,000 feet, or about 62 miles on Monday, just above the internationally recognized boundary of space. The capsule landed under parachutes on the company's private range in West Texas.

Bezos took to Twitter on Tuesday to note the milestone. In what appears to be his first ever tweet, Bezos wrote, "The rarest of beasts - a used rocket. Controlled landing not easy, but done right." Then he linked to a video of the takeoff and landing.

But Twitter veteran Musk, who is CEO of Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, and electric-car maker Tesla Motors, couldn't hold back. First, he tweeted congratulations. But then added a few other tweets on the matter, including one that said, "Jeff maybe unaware SpaceX suborbital VTOL flight began 2013. Orbital water landing 2014. Orbital land landing next." VTOL stands for vertical takeoff and landing.

Elon Musk included a link to this video: