Jeff Bezos
2025-04-27 06:59:15
Blue Origin is back at it again.
The rocket company — backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — just announced the completion of its seventh rocket test and landing of its suborbital New Shepard rocket and capsule in Texas on Tuesday.
And they have the snazzy video to prove it.
SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos smashes champagne bottle atop giant wind turbine because Bezos does as he pleasesThe highly-produced video shows the relatively small, newly-upgraded rocket fly to 322,032 feet above Earth's surface, delivering the capsule — complete with huge new windows — to space. Both the rocket and the capsule then landed softly back on Earth.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable “Today’s flight of New Shepard was a tremendous success. It marks the inaugural flight of our next-generation Crew Capsule as we continue step-by-step progress in our test flight program,” Bob Smith, Blue Origin CEO, said in a statement.
The capsule also carried a test dummy nicknamed "Mannequin Skywalker" (get it?) complete with instrumentation to monitor its ride to space and back to Earth.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Having data on what people would feel inside the capsule is a good thing too. Blue Origin hopes to start test flights with humans aboard in the not too distant future, so knowing a bit more about what they might experience is an important datapoint for the company.
Blue Origin hasn't yet started selling tickets to fly aboard the New Shepard, nor has it indicated how much a seat on the system will cost once they start to sell them.
But we do have some indication of what a seat aboard a suborbital flight will cost.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which wants to fly people to suborbital space with its SpaceShipTwo, is charging $250,000 per ticket, and so far about 700 people have purchased seats. Virgin Galactic has yet to fly passengers.
Bezos has long said that he wants to see "millions of people living and working in space," and that's what Blue Origin's ultimate mission is. To that end, New Shepard is just the start for the company.
Blue Origin also has a rocket factory in Cape Canaveral, Florida to build its New Glenn rockets, which are expected to eventually bring large payloads and even people to orbit, something that the New Shepard system isn't capable of.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Blue Origin didn't release video of the rocket test until after the seemingly successful launch and landing. This marks a departure from the company's more recent attempts at being open about its launches by airing live webcasts of the events.
The secrecy around the launch also seems like a return to the early days of the Bezos-backed rocket company, which was known for its opaque way of dealing with the public.
That said, it's possible the Blue Origin will return to webcasting again soon as the company continues to test the new system, gaining confidence in its ability to safely fly people to the edge of space and bring them back home.
