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Blue Origin Lands Rocket During Launch Escape Test (gizmodo.com)
SpaceX isn't the only private company interested in reusable rockets. Blue Origin, an American privately-funded aerospace manufacturer established by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, surprised everyone, including itself, by successfully landing its New Shepard rocket in today's in-flight launch escape test. Gizmodo reports: Moments ago, Blue Origin conducted an in flight test of its launch escape system, separating a crew capsule from its New Shepard booster at an altitude of 16,000 feet. This test was critical to ensure that the rocket will be safe for human passengers, whom Blue Origin hopes to start flying into sub-orbital space as early as next year. Not only did the crew capsule make a clean separation, deploy its parachutes, and land softly in a small cloud of dust back on Earth, but the booster -- which everybody expected to go splat -- continued on its merry way into suborbital space, after which it succeeded in landing smoothly back on Earth for a fifth time. Although Blue Origin has tested its launch escape system on the launchpad before, this is the first time such a system has been tested, by anyone, in flight since the 1960s. It was almost too perfect. You can watch the test here.
The way the parachutes opened was really quite beautiful, too
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Blue Origin reached space multiple times. What they didn't reach yet is an orbital trajectory for their payload
which is the hard part.
I'm not so sure about that. Only two rocket systems land their boosters: SpaceX and Blue Origin. On the other hand, there is a multitude of rocket systems that can put payloads in orbit. Considering that once you have the booster slowed down to terminal velocity, it doesn't matter how fast it was originally going; the landing process is going to be the same. So maybe Blue Origin is focussing on the really hard part (the landing) and leaving the easier part (scaling up to orbital speeds) for later.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!