Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space company failed to blow up a rocket booster during an escape pod test Wednesday.
Blue Origin tired to destroy the New Shepard rocket, but it unexpectedly stabilized and successfully landed. The escape pod also survived the test.
The company was testing its escape system, which is only intended to be used in the event of an emergency. The rocket booster being used was the same one to make the first successful launch and landing of a reusable rocket in November 2015. The rocket has successfully flown to space and back four times.
Blue Origins New Sheppard rocket successfully returns to Earth after its 5th trip to space. (Youtube/Screenshot/Blue Origin)
“We’ve already tested our pusher escape system, including many ground tests and a successful pad escape test, but this upcoming flight will be our toughest test yet, Bezos said before the flight. “We’ll intentionally trigger an escape in flight and at the most stressing condition: maximum dynamic pressure through transonic velocities.”
The test had been delayed by one day due to weather conditions at Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas.
Blue Origin put their reusable rocket into space and landed it well before its competitors — in the U.S. “space” begins 50 miles above sea level.
While technically simpler than sending a rocket into orbit, it’s a major technical achievement. Reusable rockets are considered a major advance by the rocket and space industry as spaceflight cost lies not in the fuel, but rather the rocket components.
Blue Origin has been competing with other companies, like SpaceX, to develop the first fully reusable rocket. SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, failed on two separate occasions to successfully land a reusable rocket before finally succeeding in April.
Blue Origin is currently developing a two-stage New Glenn rocket will be 270 feet tall and 23 feet in diameter and capable of generating 3.85 million pounds of thrust. This is much larger than NASA’s planned 212-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket, which will only by capable of generating 3.6 million pounds of thrust. New Glenn’s engines will burn liquefied natural gas and oxygen. Blue Origin’s very first orbital rocket will have slightly more than half the thrust of the Saturn V rockets that carried humans to the moon.
Bezos’ comapny is already opening up “early access” to ticket information for potential space tourists.
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