Blue Origin

Blue Origin has been awarded twice by NASA with both CCDev (US$ 3.7 million) and CCDev2 (US$ 22 million).

Blue Origin was set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. The primary focus of Blue Origin is the development of a Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing booster vehicles for both orbital and suborbital flight. New Shepard is a crew capsule for suborbital journeys. They are also working on a seven passenger biconical space vehicle for ISS crew deployments. The biconical space vehicle has successfully been launched unmanned and recovered a number of times. Actual passenger flying operations may not be too far off.

The VTVL booster for orbital flight would consist of two stages, the first stage landing vertically after second stage separation. This allows for the first stage to be reused multiple times and results in significant cost reductions.

While Blue Origin failed to receive an award from CCiCap, they have announced they will independently continue work their crew vehicle designs.

 

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Page last modified: 09 January 2019 15:53:01.