Page 52 - World Airnews February Magazine Edition 2021

MROS

FIRST PASSENGERS

INTO SPACE AS EARLY

AS APRIL

After years in development, Jeff Bezos’ private space
company Blue Origin aims to carry its first passengers on a ride to
the edge of space in a few months.
Blue Origin has completed its fourteenth test flight of its New
Shepard rocket booster and capsule. Called NS-14, the successful
test flight featured the debut of a new booster and an upgraded
capsule.
Beyond the upgrades, it has been learned that NS-14 also marked
one of the last remaining steps before Blue Origin flies its first crew
to space.
The flight was the first of two ‘stable configuration’ test flights,
people familiar with Blue Origin’s plans have said. Stable configura-
tion means that the company plans to avoid making major changes
between this flight and the next.
Additionally, it was said that Blue Origin aimed to launch the
second test flight within six weeks, or by late February, and the
first crewed flight six weeks after that, or by early April.
Blue Origin’s next flight, NS-15, will also include a test of loading
and unloading the crew, the people said.

AN AMBITIOUS TIMELINE
The New Shepard schedule is ambitious, one of the people
cautioned, with the goal of flying every six weeks coming from the
company’s top leadership. Blue Origin’s prior mission NS-13 flew
in October, after being delayed from 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 New
Shepard’s NS-15 launch is to finish software qualification review,
which they said is not expected to be finished until late March or
even April.
New Shepard is designed to carry people on rides past the edge
of space, reaching an altitude of more than 340,000 feet or more
than 100 kilometres.
The capsule spends several minutes in zero gravity before
returning to Earth, with massive windows to give passengers a
view. Both the rockets and the capsules are reusable, with the
boosters returning to land vertically and the capsules controlled
landing with a set of parachutes.
The NS-14 mission featured multiple upgrades to the crew
capsule, including an audio push-to-talk system for astronauts to
talk to mission control, a new crew alert system panel at each seat,
cushioned wall linings and sound suppression devices to reduce be used to fly microgravity research payloads for NASA and other
noise in the capsule, and the addition of environmental systems customers. New Shepard is a fully autonomous system, with no
such as air condition and humidity controls. pilots on board.
Blue Origin was founded in 2000 by Bezos, and now has more Bezos personally funded Blue Origin’s development by selling
than 3,500 employees with its headquarters in Kent, Washington. part of his stock in Amazon. While he has previously said that he
To date, Blue Origin has launched New Shepard successfully 14 sells about (US) $1 billion of Amazon shares annually to fund the
times and landed the rocket’s booster 13 consecutive times. The space company, Bezos recently increased his sales of Amazon
company has built four New Shepard boosters in total, the fourth stock, cashing out more than (US) $10 billion worth in 2020. Q
of which launched recently. Article courtesy: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/
Its third booster has flown seven times consecutively and will blue-origin-aims-fly-first-passengers-space-early-april-rcna224?

World Airnews | February Extra 2021
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