{"id":15766,"date":"2016-01-24T01:49:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/blue-origins-reusable-new-shepard-booster-flies-again\/"},"modified":"2016-01-24T01:49:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:49:00","slug":"blue-origins-reusable-new-shepard-booster-flies-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/blue-origins-reusable-new-shepard-booster-flies-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin\u2019s reusable New Shepard booster flies again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/74tyedGkoUc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Two months after it flew into space and landed smoothly, Blue Origin\u2019s suborbital New Shepard booster made the trip again Friday, proving it can be reused for future space tourism jaunts and laying the groundwork for a future commercial satellite launcher, the company said.<\/p>\n<p>The hydrogen-fueled single stage rocket took off and landed at a West Texas test facility owned by Amazon.com\u2019s Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin said the rocket reached a peak altitude of 333,582 feet, or 101.7 kilometers, on its short up-and-down test flight. The company did not release the duration of Friday\u2019s flight, but a launch following a similar profile Nov. 23 lasted about 11 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The rocket carried an unoccupied crew capsule, which separated from the New Shepard after its hydrogen-burning BE-3 engine switched off. The crew capsule \u2014 a testbed for Blue Origin\u2019s future space tourism ambitions \u2014 parachuted to a landing in the West Texas desert.<\/p>\n<p>While the New Shepard did not attain the speed required to reach Earth orbit, it did pass the internationally-recognized boundary of space of about 62 miles, or 100 kilometers.<\/p>\n<p>The Nov. 23 flight made history, with the New Shepard completing the first vertical rocket-assisted landing of a vehicle that flew into space.<\/p>\n<p>Bezos wrote on the company\u2019s website that engineers replaced a few components on the vehicle since November, such as the crew capsule\u2019s parachutes and the rocket\u2019s pyro igniters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cData from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today\u2019s re-flight relatively straightforward,\u201d Bezos wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Engineers also made several software improvements, including a change directing the rocket to touch down on its landing pad differently. The New Shepard\u2019s old software told the rocket to land at the center of the circular concrete touchdown zone, while the updated logic allows the booster to come down where it wants, based on the vehicle\u2019s attitude and position.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12161\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12161\" style=\"width: 621px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-12161\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/launch.jpg\" alt=\"The New Shepard lifts off from Blue Origin's test site north of Van Horn, Texas. Credit: Blue Origin\" width=\"621\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/launch.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/launch-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/launch-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/launch-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12161\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The New Shepard lifts off from Blue Origin\u2019s test site north of Van Horn, Texas. Credit: Blue Origin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway,\u201d Bezos wrote. \u201cIf the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don\u2019t swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bezos said the software update increases margins and makes the rocket landings more resilient to low-altitude winds.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin\u2019s experiments with vertical takeoff and landing have occurred at the same time SpaceX made significant strides in its effort to develop the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s first stage into a reusable booster.<\/p>\n<p>Founded and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, SpaceX recovered the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket after a liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Dec. 21. The 156-foot-tall booster returned to a landing pad near the launch site on Florida\u2019s Space Coast, igniting its engines for a series of guidance and braking maneuvers to steer the rocket to a soft touchdown.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX broadcast video of the landing live, and the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage is bigger and more powerful than Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket. The rocket landing also occurred after an operational launch carrying 11 Orbcomm communications satellites, which the Falcon 9\u2019s upper stage successfully delivered to orbit at about the same time the booster landed.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s test, which Blue Origin only announced after its completion, made the New Shepard the first commercial rocket to blast off from the ground under its own power, fly into space and return to Earth intact, then launch again.<\/p>\n<p>The privately-developed SpaceShipOne rocket plane achieved a similar feat in 2004, but an aircraft carried the spacecraft aloft before it fired into space and returned to a runway landing.<\/p>\n<p>Bezos, like Musk, favors vertical landings, not the gliding landings demonstrated by the space shuttle and SpaceShipTwo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThough wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I\u2019m a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing,\u201d Bezos wrote on Blue Origin\u2019s website. \u201cWhy? Because \u2014 to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space \u2014 we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you do a vertical landing, you\u2019re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bezos said Blue Origin plans future rockets to haul satellites into orbit, and they will be much bigger than the New Shepard, which engineers sized to launch, tourists, researchers and experiments to the edge of space.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin\u2019s first orbital vehicle will consist of two stages and will take off from Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 36 launch pad before 2020, the company says. More details on the orbital launcher are due to be released this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe solved the inverted pendulum problem on New Shepard&nbsp;with an engine that dynamically gimbals to balance the vehicle as it descends,\u201d Bezos wrote. \u201cAnd since New Shepard&nbsp;is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two months after it flew into space and landed smoothly, Blue Origin\u2019s suborbital New Shepard booster made the trip again Friday, proving it can be reused for future space tourism jaunts and laying the groundwork for a future commercial satellite launcher, the company said. The hydrogen-fueled single stage rocket took off and landed at a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1678,509,291,1046,1250,311,493,1898],"class_list":["post-15766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-be-3","tag-blue-origin","tag-commercial-space","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-new-shepard","tag-reusability","tag-space-tourism","tag-texas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}