On July 18th 2018 aerospace company Blue Origin conducted the 9th test flight of their New Shepard launch vehicle. New Shepard is a booster intended for commercial suborbital missions for both scientific research and space tourism, and holds the much-ignored distinction of being the first booster to reach space and safely land vertically, predating a certain other well known companies achievement of such.
As mentioned, this was another test flight, in this case one designed to test the abort systems of the crew capsule. The test was successful, and the capsule itself reached an apogee of 120 kilometers. The New Shepard booster itself, vehicle number 3 with 2 previous successful flights to its credit, made another successful landing under its own power, giving New Shepard a very respectable 8 out of 9 flights with successful landings.
All around, I’m actually quite impressed with Blue Origin and New Shepard. While a small vehicle, the design of New Shepard is wonderful from both a functional standpoint, a technological one, and even an aesthetic one – the vehicle works damn well, has more thought into its design than other similar vehicle designs, and simply looks better, as little as that matters compared to actual usability.
Blue Origin, I feel, gets minimal credit for their designs and accomplishments. While the media and the masses fawn over one company thanks to a well engineered hype machine, Blue Origin is taking quite a steady approach with more refined vehicle designs. More importantly, they want to work with the rest of the aerospace industry, contributing designs, like the BE-4 engine, to other companies (like United Launch Alliance) rather than keeping things completely locked down. It’s a kind of cooperation that I love and feel is absolutely necessary for humanities future in space to be any kind of success.
I’ll go more into my thoughts on Blue Origin, New Shepard, New Glenn and the like in the near future – this is my first article touching on the subject of Blue Origin, and I really wanted to put some of my overall thoughts in.
On the subject of this test itself, well, I’ll let the video’s speak for themselves. An absolutely beautiful flight, to say the least. Of course to open with I have the live stream of the flight, cued up to T-15 seconds before launch. Be sure to take note of the wonderful view of the liftoff from a drone near the launch site. Quite the nice show, and an overall quality webcast.
Next up is the typical summary video of the flight. I love these, as they really capture the best moments of the mission. This one has an added bit of amazing camera work as the shock wave of the returning booster is caught on the video! It reminds you of the sheer stresses these vehicles endure coming back, something I think most people who obsess over the reusable rocket concept ignore.
As I said, there will be much more Blue Origin content from me in the upcoming months.