Blue Origin achieved a milestone in reusable spacecraft April 2, launching and recovering a New Shepard suborbital spacecraft for the third time in a row after relatively minor refurbishment.
“Flawless BE-3 restart and perfect booster landing,” Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos tweeted, referring to the cryogenic BE-3 rocket engine used in the past three flights. “CC [crew capsule] chutes deployed.”
Later Bezos tweeted “touchdown confirmed,” referring to the six-seat composite structure in development for autonomous space-tourism flights. As on the previous two flights, the vehicle was unmanned for the test at the company’s remote proving ground in West Texas.
Blue Origin has yet to announce pricing for its tourist flights, but the mission Saturday included two commercial microgravity experiments organized by NanoRacks, which pioneered commercial payload accommodation on the International Space Station.
The Kent, Washington-based company also is using the New Shepard missions to gain experience for its planned orbital launch vehicle, in development to fly from new company facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida. That vehicle will use the 550,000-lb.-thrust BE-4 engine that also is scheduled to fly in the planned United Launch Alliance Vulcan launcher. Fueled by liquefied natural gas, the BE-4 is also designed to be reusable.
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