It marked the 17th test flight of New Shepard, the suborbital rocket developed by Bezos’ Blue Origin. The 60-foot-tall vehicle left a small launch pad at Blue Origin-owned facilities in West Texas on Thursday morning, carrying only a few scientific experiments and artwork instead of passengers, and flew more than 60 miles over the landscape before reaching a precise point, landing upright on a nearby concrete platform.
The initial launch had been delayed an hour due to what Blue Origin said was a “payload preparation problem”, although the rest of the flight initially did not appear to be significantly affected by the wait.
New Shepard’s unmanned suborbital test missions have also included experiments, and Thursday’s flight did a “demonstration of lunar landing technology” on behalf of NASA. Basically, Blue Origin put a set of sensors and computer algorithms on the New Shepard rocket, as the test technology could be used one day to navigate a lunar lander.
Bezos rushed about his experience after the flight, saying, “My God! Expectations were high and drastically exceeded.” But Wally Funk, one of the women in “Mercury 13,” who was previously denied the opportunity to go into space but flew alongside Bezos as an “honored guest” last month, also went have praise for the experience, but added, “I saw I thought I was going to see the world, but we weren’t tall enough,” Funk added at the post-flight press conference.
Blue Origin suborbital tourism flights travel more than 60 miles in height, which is generally considered the point at which outer space begins. But even the International Space Station, which orbits more than 200 miles above the ground, is not far enough away to offer holistic views of the Earth.
Although Thursday’s flight was not equipped, Blue Origin said it still plans up to two more manned flights this year.
Bezos plans to use the New Shepard rocket for a suborbital space tourism business, competing directly with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which developed an air rocket-powered spacecraft. (Branson took his own space flight a few days before Bezos’ flight last month).
Both companies plan to open for business in the coming months, which will allow anyone who can afford to reserve a seat in the respective spacecraft of the companies and enjoy a quick flight up and down that offers views panoramic views of the Earth and a few minutes of weightlessness.
Virgin Galactic had already sold about 600 tickets for about $ 200,000 before closing ticket sales in 2014. The company recently reopened ticket sales to $ 450,000 per piece.
Blue Origin also hopes to transform the technology it developed for New Shepard into a probe capable of landing on the moon. Bezos said the rocket engines, which are able to make precise adjustments to the amount of force they come off, they have helped inform how the company could use thrusters (or small engines) to make a soft touch to the lunar surface.
But Blue Origin’s dreams of landing a human on the moon have come to a major roadblock. Earlier this year, NASA announced it was giving a multimillion-dollar contract to SpaceX to build a lunar lander, pulling Blue Origin away from a contract it was desperately hoping to land.
Blue Origin has declined. After losing its first attempt to overturn the decision, the company sued the federal government, alleging that NASA’s decision-making was “wrong.” A decision in this case is due in November.