Rocket Financed by Amazon Founder Crashes in Test

Source:

The Wall Street Journals Web Site

Some quotes from: THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

By KENNETH CHANG

"A spacecraft financed by Jeffery P. Bezos, the billionare chief executive of Amazon.com, crashed during a test flight in West Texas, Mr. Bezos said on Friday.

No one was on board for the flight, and no one on the ground was injured when the spaceship went out of control on Aug. 24.

Mr. Bezos acknowledged the failure on the web site of his space company, Blue Origin. The vehicle reached an altitude of 45,000 feet and a speed of 1.2 times the speed of sound before a 'flight instability' occured.

Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., is developing a suborbital spaceship called New Shepard, which is to take off and land vertically for carrying people to the near edge of space.

Blue Origin is one of several companies aiming to fly tourists above the 62-mile altidude that is typically considered the edge of outer space, offering a few minutes of weightlessness. The company also has a contract with NASA as part of its so-called commercial crew program to develop a system that can take astronauts to orbit. The crash was not related to the NASA work."

I would like to say- Kudos to Mr. Bezos for trying, but if I wanted to get off-planet, I would put my faith and safety in the hands of a tried and tested true ET flying saucer from outerspace.

Any comments are welcome.


Cheers,

Erno86

Not sure what to make of this, I for one would not climb on board this thing.






Or is it this?





Here's building 5




First flight?

reply to post by Erno86


seems odd to me why someone would want to re-invent the wheel. instead of spending incredible money in research and development to do what has already been done many times, why not have lawyers work it out with a group that already has the technology to do what this fellow is trying to do?

same thing if you want to go into the cookie business. you surround yourself with people who have worked for major cookie manufacturers, that know what machinery is used, the chain of distribution, etcetera, and you go to it. one doesn't have to start from scratch altogether.

reply to post by LargeFries


Most of our rocket technology & know-how started with military ballistic missile programs. Back then (the 1950s & 60s), the Cold War emphasis was on deploying reliable systems in the shortest possible time. Cost was no object.

You have probably heard the saying that, "Every product has three characteristics: Cheap, Good and Fast. You can have any two of these, but not all three in a single product."

All of our current rockets (Delta, Atlas & Titan) are evolved missiles. They were built "good" and "fast", but were not cheap. Their engines, as reliable as they are, are quite complicated, expensive to build and are used only once.

What people like Bezos, Musk, Rutan and others are trying to do is develop rockets that are "good" and "cheap". This means they have to design & build rockets that are simple and/or reusable.

That's why they are starting from scratch.

reply to post by Saint Exupery


Saint Exupery, thank you for that excellent reply. I learned an amazing lot and now I understand why this fellow is doing what he's doing. Sincere thanks