Flew To An Altitude Of Over 300,000 Feet, Capsule Recovered By Parachute

Blue Origin, the commercial spaceflight company headed by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, has flown its "New Shepard" spacecraft for the first time.

The flight occurred Wednesday, according to the company. In a blog post, Bezos said "Today we flew the first developmental test flight of our New Shepard space vehicle. Our 110,000-lbf thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet. Guidance, navigation and control was nominal throughout max Q and all of ascent. The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect. Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.

"In fact, if New Shepard had been a traditional expendable vehicle, this would have been a flawless first test flight. Of course one of our goals is reusability, and unfortunately we didn’t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent. Fortunately, we’ve already been in work for some time on an improved hydraulic system. Also, assembly of propulsion module serial numbers 2 and 3 is already underway – we’ll be ready to fly again soon.

"We continue to be big fans of the vertical takeoff, vertical landing architecture. We chose VTVL because it’s scalable to very large size. We’re already designing New Shepard’s sibling, her Very Big Brother – an orbital launch vehicle that is many times New Shepard’s size and is powered by our 550,000-lbf thrust liquefied natural gas, liquid oxygen BE-4 engine."

"Yesterday’s test flight is truly a testament to the progress the commercial space sector is making towards innovative, cost-effective, and reliable access to space," said Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Eric Stallmer in a statement released to the media. "The development of these technologies will create an avenue for increased commerce and science in space, and will continue to push the bounds of Earth’s economic sphere. The CSF congratulates Blue Origin and its team for their incredible achievement of their New Shepard vehicle."

(Images provided by Blue Origin)

FMI: www.blueorigin.com