Blue Origin "New Shepherd" Makes It To Space... and Back Again (arstechnica.com)

Geoffrey.landis writes: Blue Origin's "New Shepherd" suborbital vehicle made its first flight into space (defined as 100 km altitude)... and successfully landed both the capsule (by parachute) and the booster rocket (vertical landing under rocket power). This is the first time that a vehicle has made it into space and had all components fully recovered for reuse since the NASA flights of the X-15 in the 1960s. Check out the videos at various places on the web.

Comments

Re:Please put the word "space" in quotes

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. The point (and it was clear even in the summary) is that the rocket landed back down. THAT's what was being tested. Granted, they didn't have to take as much propellant with them, but that isn't as big a deal when they were testing the ability to LAND from space.

Re:Please put the word "space" in quotes

[Rei]

Again: "from space" is not the same thing, or even close, to "from orbit". It's not the height that causes problems, it's the velocity. And more importantly than that, it's the extreme mass limitations that reaching that velocity imposes on your craft. With suborbital flight you can dedicate all the mass in the world to making the task as easy on yourself as possible.

Re:Please put the word "space" in quotes

[MrTester]

Yeeeessss....
They clearly should have spent 5 times the money to get further into space even though that would in no way help the validity of their test of recovery systems.

Why? Because that money would have helped shut up people who completely miss the point.
It would have been well worth it.

This is nothing but good

[kheldan]

Competition is nothing but good for everyone in the long run, and as much as I think Elon Musk and SpaceX have done some pretty cool stuff, this Blue Origin company is showing that they too can do cool stuff and be competitive, and I can't see any way that's a bad thing for anyone. So how about you whiners and complainers stop whining and complaining and just enjoy that they did something that was a success?

First fully reusable?

[macklin01]

This is the first time that a vehicle has made it into space and had all components fully recovered for reuse since the NASA flights of the X-15 in the 1960s

Weren't both the White Knight and SpaceShipOne fully recovered for reuse? Wasn't that the point of the X-prize (and doing it twice in two weeks)?

links: SpaceShipOne and X-Prize.