[Sixstrings]

Historic Rocket Landing

Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle successfully flew to space, reaching its planned test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before executing a historic landing back at the launch site in West Texas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pillaOxGCo

Soar with Blue Origin

Blue Origin offers the adventure of a lifetime with a historic rocket experience that re-creates the sights, sounds and sensations experienced by the great early space pioneers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YJhymiZjqc

Well that's quite something, they beat Elon Musk to it. A successful launch and landing (rocket power, landing legs coming out like a 1950s sci fi comic).

The rocket is suborbital and will be for space tourists.

[Tanada]

Don't kid yourself, once they have confirmed launch and landing capacity they can also use it as a first stage for light payloads putting them on a suborbital trajectory just like every other first stage does today. The difference is they will get the first stage back and not have to build a new one for every launch which will save them bou coup bucks!

[Cog]

Hopefully they will succeed with this. Reducing the cost per pound of payload is a very good thing.

[Sixstrings]

Don't kid yourself, once they have confirmed launch and landing capacity they can also use it as a first stage for light payloads putting them on a suborbital trajectory just like every other first stage does today. The difference is they will get the first stage back and not have to build a new one for every launch which will save them bou coup bucks!

Hm.. good point, I didn't think about small second stage / payload capability other than the tourist capsule.

Overall, it's a big deal, the age of resuable rockets has arrived. Launch, return to earth, fill up the tank -- and rocket fuel is CHEAP, it's always been the payload that costs the most versus the launch vehicle and then fuel is the least cost to it all.

Reusable rockets is the difference of like plane travel if it had to be building a new 747 for every flight versus reusable planes.

It amounts to a quantum leap.

And this rocket is small, but they've proven the tech and that will go further.. the reusable rockets will get bigger.

It's good news! Space industry and development, for the world!

(and more science because it will be cheaper to launch research probes / rovers / satellites, and internet micro satellites / who knows what and tourism and space hotels down the line and the whole nine yards.. eventually a burgeoning space industry in orbit and then that starts spreading out from there.)

[Sixstrings]

Blue Origin Launches Bezos’s Space Dreams and Lands a Rocket

This time, Jeffrey P. Bezos’ rocket went up — and it came down in one piece.

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has been investing some of his wealth in space dreams, establishing a rocket company called Blue Origin. On Monday, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard rocket, named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space in a similar suborbital flight in 1961.

The rocket lofted a capsule that is to eventually carry paying passengers on suborbital jaunts to a height of 329,839 feet, or 100.5 kilometers, above its launch site near Van Horn in West Texas. That is just above the 100-kilometer altitude that is considered the beginning of outer space.

The capsule descended to the ground under parachutes 11 minutes after blasting off. The rocket itself turned around and, firing its engines again, set back down at the launchpad at 4.4 miles per hour — faster than a person strolling, but gentle enough to prevent damage. It landed less than five feet from its target.

Jeffrey P. Bezos, left, with Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, announced a new Blue Origin rocket would be built near Cape Canaveral. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Company, to Launch From FloridaSEPT. 15, 2015
SpaceX Comes Close to Recovering RocketAPRIL 14, 2015
“It was a totally nominal flight,” Mr. Bezos said in an interview. “We’re walking on cloud nine. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

This builds on a largely successful test flight in April. In that operation, the launch and the landing of the capsule were flawless, but the rocket crashed because of a failure with a hydraulic system. Mr. Bezos said engineers had replaced the hydraulics with a new design.

...

The company, based in Kent, Wash., south of Seattle, is selling space on the capsules during the test flights for research experiments, and it plans to begin flying them next year. “There’s no reason not to do that,” Mr. Bezos said.

Commercial flights for tourists, also to launch from West Texas, could begin in a couple of years. Blue Origin has not started selling tickets or decided the cost of a flight, which would provide about four minutes of floating.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/science/space/blue-origins-rocket-launches-and-lands.html