Blue Origin is making the final preparations for crewed spaceflight in West Texas. Meanwhile, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, the company is continuing to push towards achieving orbit and entering the commercial launch market. During a speech this week, Jeff Bezos confirmed the company has already invested $1 Billion in space coast facilities and another $1 billion will be fed into the New Glenn rocket next year.
The New Shepard rocket, named after the first American in space Alan Shepard, is designed for suborbital space tourism. Passengers can experience a few minutes of weightless as the spacecraft flies up to 107 km, 7 km above the officially recognized Karman Line between Earth’s atmosphere and space. New Shepard first reached this altitude on Flight 8 in April.
The New Shepard 3 vehicle completed the most recent test flight in July, demonstrating the crew capsule’s escape system at the edge of the flight envelope. Flight 9 was the latest in a line of flights designed to demonstrate the safety of the crew vehicle, including another in-flight abort test in 2016, a pad abort test back in 2012, and a parachute redundancy test in 2016 where the capsule descended under only 2 of the 3 parachutes.