{"id":16352,"date":"2015-04-30T23:24:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/bezos-blue-origin-completes-first-test-flight-of-new-shepard-spacecraft\/"},"modified":"2015-04-30T23:24:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:24:38","slug":"bezos-blue-origin-completes-first-test-flight-of-new-shepard-spacecraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/bezos-blue-origin-completes-first-test-flight-of-new-shepard-spacecraft\/","title":{"rendered":"Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin completes first test flight of \u2018New Shepard\u2019 spacecraft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS &amp; USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-6148\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blueorigin_launch-1024x652.jpg\" alt=\"blueorigin_launch\" width=\"620\" height=\"395\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blueorigin_launch-1024x652.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blueorigin_launch-300x191.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blueorigin_launch-768x489.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin, a rocket engine and spacecraft development company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, carried out an unpiloted maiden test flight of the company\u2019s New Shepard sub-orbital launch vehicle Wednesday, the historically secretive company revealed early Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>A dramatic video posted on the company\u2019s website showed the squat vertical-takeoff-and-landing New Shepard rocket being erected on a launch platform at Blue Origin\u2019s west Texas development facility followed by a brief countdown \u2014 with Bezos looking on \u2014 a smooth liftoff and a vertical climb to an altitude of 58 miles.<\/p>\n<p>At that point, the dummy crew capsule separated from its booster and completed a parachute descent to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday we flew the first developmental test flight of our New Shepard space vehicle,\u201d Bezos said in a web posting. \u201cOur 110,000-lbf thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGuidance, navigation and control was nominal throughout max Q (maximum aerodynamic pressure) and all of ascent,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect. Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rEdk-XNoZpA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The New Shepard is intended to be a fully reusable sub-orbital spacecraft with the booster flying itself to a vertical, rocket-powered landing after separation from the crew capsule. That phase of the test flight Wednesday was not successful, and the video did not include any shots of its descent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of our goals is reusability, and unfortunately we didn\u2019t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent,\u201d Bezos wrote. \u201cFortunately, we\u2019ve already been in work for some time on an improved hydraulic system. Also, assembly of propulsion module serial numbers 2 and 3 is already underway \u2014 we\u2019ll be ready to fly again soon.<\/p>\n<p>The New Shepard vehicle is built around the company\u2019s hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine, which can be throttled through a wide range of power settings. The booster is designed to propel a crew\/cargo capsule to altitudes above 62 miles, the generally accepted boundary of space. The capsule then separates for four to five minutes of weightlessness before falling back into the discernible atmosphere for a parachute descent.<\/p>\n<p>The booster, meanwhile, is designed to carry out an autonomous powered descent, using the variable-throttle BE-3 engine to fly back to a vertical touchdown for refurbishment and reuse. After an extensive series of test flights, Blue Origin hopes to begin launching people, payloads or both as a commercial endeavor<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNew Shepard is designed to carry three or more astronauts up to sub-orbital space,\u201d Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson told reporters earlier this month. \u201cWe say \u2018three or more\u2019 because there are combinations of astronauts and science payloads. We believe the science payload market is going to be a big one as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0EIkzHYYm1w?start=52&amp;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin will be competing with Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Galactic, with its winged air-dropped rocketplane, and other companies vying to carry \u201cspace tourists\u201d out of Earth\u2019s atmosphere for brief sub-orbital forays into space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe continue to be big fans of the vertical takeoff, vertical landing architecture,\u201d Bezos said. \u201cWe chose VTVL because it\u2019s scalable to very large size. We\u2019re already designing New Shepard\u2019s sibling, her Very Big Brother \u2014 an orbital launch vehicle that is many times New Shepard\u2019s size and is powered by our 550,000-lbf thrust liquefied natural gas, liquid oxygen BE-4 engine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The BE-4 has been selected by United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to power the company\u2019s new Vulcan rocket, the successor to the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 families of boosters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS &amp; USED WITH PERMISSION Blue Origin, a rocket engine and spacecraft development company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, carried out an unpiloted maiden test flight of the company\u2019s New Shepard sub-orbital launch vehicle Wednesday, the historically secretive company revealed early Thursday. A dramatic video posted on the company\u2019s website showed [&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":[1678,509,1046,1250],"class_list":["post-16352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-be-3","tag-blue-origin","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-new-shepard"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16352"}],"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=16352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}