Blue Origin

Blue Origin

Type	Private
Founded	September 2000
Headquarters	Kent, Washington
Key people	Jeff Bezos
Industry	Aerospace and space tourism
Products	suborbital spaceflight
Revenue	n/a
Website	www.blueorigin.com

Blue Origin is a privately-funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight, the company has built and flown a testbed of its New Shepard spacecraft design at their Culberson County, Texas facility. According to company statements, it initially planned on placing the New Shepard in commercial suborbital tourist service in 2010 with flights about once a week.^[1] However, the most recently publicized timetable states that Blue Origin will fly unmanned in 2011, and manned in 2012.^[2]

History

Since its founding the company has been notoriously tight-lipped about its plans.^[1] Although the company was formally incorporated in 2000, its existence only became public in 2003, when Bezos started buying land in Texas and interested parties followed up on the purchases. This was a topic of some interest in local politics,^[3] and his rapid aggregation of the lots under a variety of whimsically named shell companies was referred to as a "land grab".^[4]

In January 2005, Bezos told the editor of the Van Horn Advocate that Blue Origin is developing a sub-orbital space vehicle that will take off and land vertically and carry three or more astronauts to the edge of space.^[5] The spacecraft is based on technology like that used for the McDonnell Douglas DC-X and derivative DC-XA. Bezos told Reuters in November 2004 that his company hopes to progress to orbital spaceflight. As of January 2005^[update], the company's website announced that it hopes to establish an "enduring human presence in space", but the 2007 version talks instead of aiming to "patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system".

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson worked part-time at Blue Origin until november 15 2006^[6] .

Headquarters

The company is headquartered in a warehouse situated on 25 acres (100,000 m²) of industrial land in the Seattle, Washington suburb of Kent, where its research and development is located. The spaceport facility was set up at the "Corn Ranch", a 165,000 acre (670 km²) spread north of Van Horn and 15 miles (24 km) south of the Guadalupe Mountains, nearly 120 miles (190 km) east of El Paso.

New Shepard

During 2006 the company built a prototype of their New Shepard design. The New Shepard is controlled entirely by on-board computers, without ground control. The fuselage is roughly conical, with a rounded base, and roughly bullet-shaped overall. It is powered by a cluster of nine engines powered by high test peroxide (HTP) and RP-1 kerosene, arranged in a 3 by 3 grid on the bottom. Four landing legs containing shock absorbers also extend from the edges of the bottom.

The first example, christened the Goddard, first flew on November 13, 2006. The flight was a complete success, and pictures and movies from the launch form a major part of the company's spartan web site. However, a second test flight filed for December 2nd never launched.^[7][8] Two successful flight tests have been recorded since then.

In an interview with Charlie Rose on November 19, 2007, Bezos reported that the construction of a second test vehicle was in progress and that a third development vehicle would be built after that before any commercial flights would begin^[9].

Test flights

• First Test Flight: 13 November 2006, 06:30, name of vehicle: Goddard.^[10]

• Second Test Flight: 22 March 2007, name of vehicle: Goddard.^[11]

• Third Test Flight : 19 April 2007, name of vehicle: Goddard.^[12]

See also

• Bigelow Aerospace
• List of private spaceflight companies
• Space Adventures
• Space tourism
• Virgin Galactic
• Reusable Vehicle Testing

References

External links

• Official site
• Amazon Enters the Space Race Wired Magazine (July 2003)
• Amazon CEO gives us peek into space plans, a January 2005 article from The Seattle Times
• Amazon.com founder's space venture has West Texas county abuzz (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 12, 2005)
• Blue Origin West Texas Commercial Launch Site Environmental Assessment
• Latest Blue Origin News on the Space Fellowship

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Coordinates: 47°24′37″N 122°14′15″W / 47.41028°N 122.2375°W / 47.41028; -122.2375