Yeah, Z-Man. The reason today's rocketeers do so well is that they are standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak. The engineers in the wild-and-crazy 1950's and 1960's shoot-for-the-Moon (literally!) era solved so many technical problems that the answer to almost any question, or useful hints pointing at a solution, can be found in some old almost illegible photocopy of a type-written technical paper sitting in a nasa or air force archive somewhere.
That's one reason why I love all these private space enterprises. I much prefer projects that are created and managed by engineering visionaries to huge expensive risk-averse pork-barrel boondoggles conceived by government bureaucrats. I love the 'I think we could actually do this! So let's try!!' attitude. It doesn't hurt that SpaceX and Blue are bankrolled by the two richest men on Earth, who are both space-nuts in their own ways. (The world's never had that before.)
Appears that the capsule reached 108 km this morning, over the Karman line but still beneath orbital altitude. High enough that it will be black all around with the blue Earth down below.
I wonder if Blue's next flight of this thing will have people on board. This was a test flight of the booster and capsule meant for human flights.
I really do want to fly on this!!! (It will probably be too expensive though.)
Edit to add this little video tour of Blue's rocket engine plant in Huntsville AL. Watch it in full screen, since the narration gets out of synch with the images when it's playing small in the tweet.
https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/13...0202467328
The booster and capsule safely back on Earth this morning (photo from Blue's stream) --
That's one reason why I love all these private space enterprises. I much prefer projects that are created and managed by engineering visionaries to huge expensive risk-averse pork-barrel boondoggles conceived by government bureaucrats. I love the 'I think we could actually do this! So let's try!!' attitude. It doesn't hurt that SpaceX and Blue are bankrolled by the two richest men on Earth, who are both space-nuts in their own ways. (The world's never had that before.)
Appears that the capsule reached 108 km this morning, over the Karman line but still beneath orbital altitude. High enough that it will be black all around with the blue Earth down below.
I wonder if Blue's next flight of this thing will have people on board. This was a test flight of the booster and capsule meant for human flights.
I really do want to fly on this!!! (It will probably be too expensive though.)
Edit to add this little video tour of Blue's rocket engine plant in Huntsville AL. Watch it in full screen, since the narration gets out of synch with the images when it's playing small in the tweet.
https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/13...0202467328
The booster and capsule safely back on Earth this morning (photo from Blue's stream) --