Blue Origin lets out some of its secrets

William Atkins
Tuesday, 22 November 2011 05:50

Science - Space

The space tourism business is pretty bustling these days as companies vie to send paying customers on suborbital flights into space. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is one such company, but it has been quite secretive in the past with respect to its space launches.

Most of its past has been kept a pretty big secret but the Blue Origin website has recently been modified, adding a couple of videos of a recent (successful) launch.

So far, no private company has yet to actually begin sending space tourists (paying customers) into the wild blue yonder.

One company that is trying to send tourists into space with a reusable spacecraft is Blue Origin. It was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

It has been developing and testing its vehicles, but much of it has been under a deep veil of secrecy.

It is known that the launch facility for Blue Origin is in Culberson County in west Texas, and the company's headquarters is in Kent, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

In addition, its suborbital vehicle is called New Shepard. Bezos intends his vehicle to take off and land vertically, with a combination of high-test peroxide (HTP) and kerosene (RP-1) fuels.

The New Shepard spacecraft is intended to be totally controlled by on-board computers, without any help from ground controllers.

When manned, the vehicle can accommodate up to three astronauts, or maybe one pilot and two paying customers.

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