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Blue Origin Will Be VTOL

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the less-glide-for-your-ride dept.

Spy Handler writes "The Blue Origin spacecraft, being built by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' new venture, will have VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) capability, according to the company's FAA permit applications. It will be a cone-shaped vehicle about 50 feet tall and 22 feet in diameter at the base, and carry 3 or more passengers to an altitude of 325,000 feet"

3 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Scales better than SS1 by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    SpaceShip[12..] is a design which will only work as a straight up-down suborbital vehicle. The basic idea behind Blue Origin: to have a straight forward rocket with a high mass fraction can be made to scale towards semiballistic lobs and eventually orbit. Its a good way to go.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. Re:Impressive turn-around time, too... by drgould · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At one point they were able to turn the DC-X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-X) around in 26-hours.

    It's just a matter of designing for reliability and servicability instead of cutting-edge performance like NASA does.

    It helps that this is a sub-orbital vehicle.

  3. Re:Hmmmm by Salgak1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sounds more like the old DC-X / Delta Clipper project. . . In fact, according to Wikipedia, Blue Origin has hired a number of DC-X engineers . . .