Blue Origin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| 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 |
| Slogan | "Creating an enduring human presence in space" (?) |
| Website | www.blueorigin.com |
Blue Origin is a privately-funded aerospace company initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight founded in 2000. The company is developing a vehicle called the New Shepard. The company is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and headquartered in a warehouse situated on 25 acres of industrial land in the Seattle, Washington suburb of Kent, where its research and development is located. It has its testing and operations center in Culberson County, Texas, on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000 acre (668 km²) spread north of Van Horn and 15 miles south of the Guadalupe Mountains.
The company has released few details regarding its development. As of January 2005, the company's website announces that it hopes to establish an "enduring human presence in space"; Bezos told Reuters in November 2004 that his company hopes to progress to orbital spaceflight. The New Shepard will be controlled completely by on-board computers, without ground control. Unmanned test flights are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2006. Once passenger flights begin, the company expects up to 52 launches a year.
A 2004 article in The Economist reports additional rumors that the company's vehicle will take off and land under its own propulsion, using as propellants what the company's website later confirmed to be hydrogen peroxide and kerosene. 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. The spacecraft is based on technology like that used for the McDonnell Douglas DC-X and derivative DC-XA.
Employees of Blue Origin include Rob Meyerson (program manager) and science fiction author Neal Stephenson (part-time advisor).
[edit] Test Flights
- First Test Flight: 13. November 2006, 06:30, Status unknown, [1]
[edit] See also
- Virgin Galactic
- List of private spaceflight companies - A compiled list of private spaceflight companies
[edit] External links
- Official site, updated in June 2005
- Newsweek article: Bezos in Space (May 7, 2003)
- 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
- Van Horn Advocate
- Amazon.com founder's space venture has West Texas county abuzz (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 12, 2005)
- Amazon.com Exec to Open Aerospace Venture (Yahoo news, December 26, 2005)
- Blue's Rocket Clues (MSNBC's Cosmic Log, June 24, 2006)
- Blue Origin West Texas Commercial Launch Site Environmental Assessment PDF
- Buzz in West Texas is about Jeff Bezos space craft launch site
