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After years of development, Jeff Bezos’ private space company Blue Origin aims to transport its first passengers to the edge of space in a matter of months.
Blue Origin completed the fourteenth test flight of its New Shepard rocket thruster and capsule on Thursday. Called NS-14, the successful test flight featured the debut of a new booster and improved capsule.
Beyond the upgrades, CNBC has learned that the NS-14 also marked one of the last remaining stages before Blue Origin flew its first crew into space.
The flight was the first of two “stable configuration” test flights, people familiar with Blue Origin’s plans told CNBC. A stable configuration means the company plans to avoid making major changes between this flight and the next.
Additionally, these people said Blue Origin intended to launch the second test flight within six weeks, or by the end of February, and the first crewed flight six weeks after that, or At the beginning of April.
Blue Origin’s next flight, NS-15, will also include a crew load and unload test, people said.
The company declined CNBC’s request for comment on its plans for New Shepard.
An ambitious schedule
New Shepard’s schedule is ambitious, one of the people warned, with the goal of flying every six weeks from company executives. Blue Origin’s previous NS-13 mission flew in October, having been delayed to September due to a power supply issue – and it also came after a nine-month hiatus between flights.
The person also noted that one of the outstanding tasks for the New Shepard NS-15 launch is to complete the software qualification exam, which they believe should not be completed until the end of March or same April.
New Shepard is designed to carry people on rides beyond the edge of space, reaching elevations of over 340,000 feet (or over 100 kilometers). The capsule spends several minutes in zero gravity before returning to Earth, with massive windows to give passengers a view. Rockets and capsules are reusable, with boosters returning to land vertically and capsules landing under the control of a parachute set.
The NS-14 mission included several enhancements to the crew capsule, including a push-to-talk audio system allowing astronauts to talk to mission control, a new crew alert system panel every seat, upholstered wall coverings and sound suppression devices to reduce noise. in the capsule, and the addition of environmental systems such as air conditioning and humidity controls.
Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Bezos and now has over 3,500 employees with its head office in Kent, Washington. To date, Blue Origin has successfully launched New Shepard 14 times and has landed the rocket booster 13 times in a row. The company has built four New Shepard boosters in total, the fourth of which launched Thursday for the first time.
Its third booster has flown seven times in a row and will be used to drive microgravity research payloads for NASA and other customers. New Shepard is a fully autonomous system, with no pilot on board.
Bezos is personally funding the development of Blue Origin by selling part of his stock on Amazon. While he previously said he sells about $ 1 billion of Amazon shares a year to fund the space company, Bezos recently increased his sales of Amazon shares, taking in more than $ 10 billion in 2020.
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