Jeff Bezos just unveiled his new rocket. And it’s a monster.

[TexasTowelie]

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=

The New Shepard rocket that Blue Origin has been launching and landing is a fairly modest thing, 65 feet high, capable of getting just past the edge of space, some 60 miles up. But on Monday, Jeff Bezos' space company announced the design of its new, orbital rocket, a towering, more powerful behemoth designed to take people and commercial satellites to orbit.

In a blog post, Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, said the New Glenn rocket would come in two variants--a two stage and a three stage--that would be ready to fly by the end of the decade. Powered by seven BE-4 engines, they would have 3.85 million pounds of thrust at sea level. The rocket would be nearly as tall as the mighty, Apollo-era Saturn V that ferried the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

"Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step," Bezos wrote.

The announcement comes at a critical time for the commercial space industry, which aims to reduce the cost of spaceflight and open it up to the masses. Last week, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, performed the first test flight of its new spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, as it prepares to take paying customers into space. And Blue Origin, which also promises to move into the space tourism market, plans to fly a critical test flight of New Shepard, its suborbital rocket, next month.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/09/12/jeff-bezos-just-unveiled-his-new-rocket-and-its-a-monster/

[nolabels]

1. Maybe with bunch of those new things they get into another enterprise......

Collecting all that other junk that so many agencies put up there before