Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has furthered his ambition to launch people into space by practising a critical safety manoeuvre on his New Shepard vehicle. The rocket and capsule system launched normally from its Van Horn, Texas, desert pad on Wednesday but then made an early separation during the ascent. Read more
Blue Origin unveils big new rocket that will put humans in orbit
The newest model in the Jeff Bezos rocket line now has a name: the New Glenn. Blue Origins New Glenn rocket is meant to be reusable: after taking off and reaching space, it can return to Earth and land vertically on its boosters. It builds off the New Shepherd rocket and capsule, which launched and landed for the first time in November 2015. The rocket - named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth - is meant to take astronauts into orbit and beyond. It will come in a two-stage and a three-stage variant, both of which will have recoverable boosters. Read more
An unmanned spaceship funded by Internet billionaire Jeff Bezos veered out of control and had to be destroyed during a recent test flight, highlighting the dramatic risks of private space ventures. The spacecraft, developed by closely held Blue Origin LLC, was on a suborbital flight from the company's West Texas spaceport last week when it started to go off course and ground personnel lost normal contact with the vehicle. Investigators are looking at remnants of the craft recovered on the ground to determine the cause. Read more
Jeff Bezos' Spacecraft Blows Up In Secret Test Flight; Locals Describe 'Challenger-Like' Explosion
This afternoon, the Wall Street Journal got word from government officials that an unmanned rocket funded by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos crashed during a test flight last week. The Journal was unable to get Bezos' notoriously secretive private space firm Blue Origin to comment on the accident. Blue Origin's rep also declined to elaborate on the incident to Forbes. Luckily, some locals living near the remote West Texas space facility were more forthcoming. Read more
An unmanned spacecraft bankrolled by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos failed during a recent test flight. In a brief online post Friday, Bezos said "we lost the vehicle" at 45,000 feet. Bezos founded Blue Origin to develop a vertical takeoff and landing rocketship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. Read more
Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' usually secretive Blue Origin rocket venture raised the curtain today on three research experiments that are slated to take suborbital journeys on its prototype spaceship in two years' time. For years, Blue Origin has been working on a vertical-launched rocket that could someday take passengers on an automated trip beyond 100 kilometres in altitude. That's beyond the boundary of outer space - at a height where passengers could see the blue, curving Earth beneath the blackness of space, and experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Read more