Jeff Bezos's space tourism company just had a massively successful launch and landing
of both its reusable rocket and its passenger-carrying capsule.
Despite a delayed start due to thunderstorms, Blue Origin successfully launched its reusable
rocket, New Shepard.
Not only did the rocket lift off and launch, but the passenger carrying capsule also landed
safely on the ground.
Blue Origin, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, launched the New Shepard suborbital capsule
from its launch pad in Texas.
This particular launch marked the eighth of its kind for the New Shepard rocket.
The ultimate goal for Blue Origin was to bring tourists close to space and become the leader
of the private space industry as it grows and evolves.
In this video, Engineering Today will discuss about Blue Origin First Reusable Space Tourism
Rocket.
What is it?
How does it work?
Should the passenger-carrying capsule compete with United Launch Alliance's upcoming Vulcan
rocket and with SpaceX boosters in the U.S. launch market?
Lets get started.
Blue Origin, boosting a suite of microgravity experiments and an instrumented dummy astronaut
known as Mannequin Skywalker to the edge of space in the company's eighth test flight.
Designed to carry up to six "space tourists" to altitudes above 62 miles, the widely recognized
threshold of space, the unmanned New Shepard capsule separated from its booster, as planned,
at an altitude of about 47 miles, before soaring on its own to a height of 351,000 feet, or
66.5 miles.
That's nearly 20,000 feet higher than the normally targeted altitude in a bid to "expand
the envelope" and gather additional flight data.
As it arced over to begin the long fall back to Earth, the capsule experienced four to
five minutes of weightlessness before plunging back into the dense lower atmosphere, subjecting
the spacecraft to heavy deceleration and about four times the normal force of gravity.
Perched atop a reusable booster powered by a single hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine, the
New Shepard spacecraft blasted off from the company's Van Horn, Texas, test facility and
smoothly climbed away, generating 110,000 pounds of thrust and trailing a brilliant
jet of flame.
The booster, making its second flight, dropped back toward the launch site tail first, re-igniting
the BE-3 engine and deploying four landing legs before settling to a landing on a concrete
pad near the launch site about eight minutes after takeoff.
The New Shepard capsule, also making its second flight, completed a more leisurely descent,
slowly falling under three large parachutes before settling to a rocket-assisted touchdown
near the launch pad about 11 minutes after launch.
It was Blue Origin's eighth New Shepard flight overall and it's seventh successful booster
flight in a row.
It was the company's first test flight since Dec. 12.
The spacecraft features a powerful, already-tested abort system that can quickly push the capsule
away from a malfunctioning booster and six large windows, each measuring nearly four
feet tall and two-and-a-half feet wide that Blue Origin says will provide customers with
spectacular panoramic views.
For last flight, the New Shepard capsule was loaded with a variety of experiments, including
instrumentation provided by NASA to measure pressure, acoustics, acceleration and other
factors, along with components that will be used aboard the agency's Orion deep space
capsule.
Other research focused on microgravity gene expression, basic physics and tests of technology
designed to demonstrate the feasibility of wi-fi delivery to spacecraft.
These experiments included tests regarding life-support technologies that would be used
in space missions.
It was the second flight for Mannequin Skywalker, a dummy astronaut equipped with instrumentation
to measure the effects of the flight on an actual crew member.
"He is a little sensitive about being called a 'dummy,' as he conducts astronaut telemetry
and science studies.
Blue Origin is developing the reusable New Shepard rocket and spacecraft to carry up
to six space tourists, researchers and experiments on brief suborbital flights, with piloted
test flights presumably starting later this year.
Along with the suborbital New Shepard rockets and spacecraft, Blue Origin also is developing
a powerful new engine, the BE-4, to help boost satellites into orbit using much larger New
Glenn rockets.
Blue Origin has built a sprawling rocket factory near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to
manufacture New Glenn boosters and is developing a launch pad at the nearby Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station.
The New Glenn will compete with United Launch Alliance's upcoming Vulcan rocket and with
SpaceX boosters in the U.S. launch market.
In the suborbital space tourism arena, Blue Origin will be competing with Virgin Galactic,
a company owned by Virgin-founder Richard Bransom that is developing a rocket-powered
spaceplane to carry tourists on suborbital flights to the edge of space.
Though, neither company has announced when they plan to launch the first private citizens.
let's hope for the best.
For more infomation >> Everyday is Valentine's Day: Olga & Mohammad - Duration: 8:36. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét