Expensive and expendable rockets are part of the story. The future of humanity is to take its heavy industry into space to protect the Earth and to travel in space safely, reliably and affordably. That is the blue origin. What was once a secret research company has now tested rocket launch systems and advanced plans to carry payloads and space tourists into space. Open for business, growing rapidly, and garnering commercial deals, is Blue Origin on track to become the next Amazon.com space?
Blue Origin belongs to Jeff Bezos (Image credit: Blue Origin)
What is the Blue Origin and to whom does it belong?
Blue Origin is an aerospace manufacturer founded in 2000 and 100% financed by the richest man in the world. Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com and owner of The Washington Post. Until now, most of Blue Origin's achievements have been financed by its own investment. According to the New York Times, he sells €1 billion (approximately £800 million) of his own Amazon stock each year to fund Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos divorced his wife MacKenzie in early 2019 and was granted all of his interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin. There is no ownership issue. In addition, Blue Origin is winning commercial contracts quickly and will therefore be less dependent on private investment from Bezos in the future. It is also expanding.
Blue Origin's suborbital engine launch and test site is located in West Texas (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Where is the blue origin based?
Blue Origin has a new headquarters and research and development center in Kent, Washington. However, its engineers oversee the launches from a private site that launches suborbital engines and engine tests at Bezos Ranch, north of Van Horn in West Texas. However, it is currently building an orbital launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, Florida, with a nearby rocket facility and a €200 million rocket motor facility, in Huntsville, Alabama. In April 2019, an agreement was signed with NASA to allow Blue Origin to test its BE-3U and BE-4 liquefied natural gas rocket engines at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, also in Huntsville. In the 1960s, NASA used the 300-foot vertical fire test platform 300 to test the massive Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, as well as the shuttle engines. space. The US Air Force's commitment to use its future super rocket, New Glenn (see below), means that Blue Origin plans to build a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Blue Origin is growing, although it still has a lot of work to do to reach the size of SpaceX.
The name & # 39; Blue origin & # 39; is a reference to planet Earth (Image credit: Harrison H Schmitt (Apollo 17) / NASA)
What are the long-term goals of Blue Origin?
Blue Origin's motto is gradatim ferociter, a Latin word meaning "step by step, fiercely," but its name indicates an index of the company's long-term goals. Blue Origin aims to develop "technologies that allow human access to space at greatly reduced cost and greater reliability," though Bezos has always been clear that he didn't think humanity would leave Earth in search of better housing. . Instead, he wants to see millions of people living and working in space, getting heavy industry and power from Earth to keep. "We can tap the resources of asteroids, near-Earth objects, and solar energy from a much larger surface area, and still do amazing things," he said in 2017. The alternative, he said, was an era of stagnation and stagnation in Earth, where we are forced to control population and limit per capita energy consumption. "I don't think stasis is compatible with freedom, and I really think it's going to be a very boring world – I want my grandchildren's grandchildren to be in a world of pioneers, exploring AND expanding through the solar system." Blue Origin too he is interested in lunar missions and participates in the Moon Race project to stimulate the moon exploration movement. Its first lunar lander, Blue Moon, was presented at an event in May 2019. This lander will be presented in two versions: one capable of carrying a payload of 3,6 metric tons and l & # 39; Another capable of carrying 6,5 metric tons (last ranked to carry people). Blue Moon will be carried aboard the New Glenn rocket (see below), and its descent engine will be powered by liquid hydrogen, which Blue Origin hopes can extract from the moon's polar ice using electrolysis.
The New Shepard reusable rocket engine also lands (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin New Shepard Reusable Suborbital System
Blue Origin is a rocket manufacturing company and, at the moment, makes rockets that can reach space, but not orbit the Earth. This makes them ideal for taking astronauts and searching for payloads beyond the internationally recognized boundary of space at 60 feet. The reusable suborbital rocket, New Shepard (named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to go into space) is powered by a BE-3PM rocket engine. First stolen in April 2015, New Shepard is launched from a conventional launch pad. A 12-foot diameter crew capsule leaves and passes beyond the Kármán line (100 km). It then returns to Earth to be restored and reused.
"Skywalker Mannequin" in the Blue Origin crew capsule (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Blue origin and manned flights.
It's important to understand that Blue Origin, as well as SpaceX and even Virgin Galactic, aren't specifically space tourism companies, but that it's probably a good way to generate revenue for your larger off-planet ambitions. So far, Blue Origin has only sent "Skywalker Manikin" into space at New Shepard, but it has ambitious and advanced plans for human spaceflight. In fact, its crew capsule is custom-designed for Earth observation. , with 39 x 43-inch windows along with six reclining leather recliners, Blue Origin looks set to embark on space tourism after 29 missions, including a successful escape test in July 10, when it launched the evacuation engine of engine pods.Crew at the highest altitude of all time.
The space flight experience will only last 11 minutes (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Why will astronauts of blue origin pass?
The 11-minute journey from Blue Origin to the outskirts of space will be a lot like what Apollo astronauts experienced in the 60s and '70s during their missions to the Moon. Six paying passengers will sit in the crew capsule atop a New Shepard rocket. After a vertical launch, the engines burn for two and a half minutes and reach three times the speed of sound before the rockets and crew capsule become separated from each other. These six passengers will continue their journey into space, where they will enjoy three minutes of weightlessness while observing the curvature of the Earth from space. They will then collapse to Earth before parachutes deploy to bring them slowly and safely to the surface. Blue Apollo-type takeoff flights are very different from what space travelers will experience with Virgin Galactic.
The parachute capsule crew on Earth (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Does Blue Origin have commercial contracts?
Yes, and they come fast. After a long time as a secret, privately funded research company with only a few small development contracts from NASA, Blue Origin is now wide open, seeking and winning major commercial rocket launch contracts. This is a big problem for a company that needs to grow quickly to meet its goal of slashing start-up costs. As of January 2019, he was also working under NASA's Flight Opportunities program, taking NASA's cabin-filled payload into space for his New Shepard (NS-10) mission. In August 2018, Blue Origin signed a €10 million (approximately €8 million) contract with NASA for the development of a lunar landing system. Blue Origin will work on cryogenic liquid propulsion for a lunar lander-scale integrated propulsion system; this could possibly mean a blue origin moon landing. Blue Origin also won a €500 million (approximately €400 million) contract to develop its new New Glenn rocket on behalf of the United States Air Force. And to further drive up development costs, two of its BE-4 engines, currently designed for New Glenn, have been selected to power United Launch Alliance's next Vulcan rocket, which is scheduled to fly in 2021.
The artist's rendering shows Blue Origin's new Blue Origin rocket in flight (Image credit: Blue Origin)