Blue Origin re-uses history making rocket: originally published on 1/23/2016

On Nov 23, 2015 Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin first made history when they brought their New Shepard rocket back to Earth for a perfect vertical landing. Just 60 days after that historic land they did it again by re-using the same rocket and once again bringing down for a vertical landing. This latest feat once again puts Blue Origin one step ahead of Elon Musk's SpaceX that also returned a rocket back in December.

“Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I’m a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing. Why? Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well,” Bezos said in a post-flight statement on Blue Origin’s website, titled “Launch. Land. Repeat.”

On the November flight the New Shepard barely broke the Karman Line, that says outerspace starts at 100 kilometers, at a height of 100.5 kilometers. On yesterdays flight the New Shepard soared to 101.7 kilometers before both the New Shepard rocket and capsule were safely brought down in separate landings in the desert of the wet Texas test site. The capsule gently floated back to Earth when its three parachutes deployed. The rocket booster was then guided down remotely to come in for a soft landing.

“Since New Shepard is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here. We’re already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle. Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it’s still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year,” said Jeff Bezos in reference to their next step in development.

These two successful landing are an encourage sign that Blue Origins is on pace to start commercial flights by 2018. When these commercial flights start the Blue Origins' capsule will carry 6 tourist into a sub-orbit around the Earth. The tourist will be treated to a unique view of the Earth that only a few, mainly astronauts, have had the privilege of seeing. There has been no price set on how much it will cost for each tourist to buy a seat on the flight.