It is known that the firm Blue
Origin, which is owned by Jeff Bezos
of Amazon.com fame, aims to design fully
reusable rocket vehicles that will greatly
lower the cost of getting to space. They
are pursuing markets such as space tourism
and research
and even providing NASA astronauts transportation
to the International Space Station.
Blue, however, has been very secretive
about the details of their rocket projects.
It is known that they are developing a fully
reusable suborbital, vertical takeoff and
landing vehicle (VTOL) that can reach 100
kilometers in altitude routinely. In
2007 they posted photos and videos of
a test flight of a VTVL prototype at their
test site in West Texas. Since then they
have been very quiet about their hardware
development.
Recently, however, they have cracked opened
the door a bit. A newly revamped web
site includes photos and videos of another
prototype vehicle (PM2) that they flew twice
in 2011. Here is the PM2 prototype vehicle
on the pad in May 2011:
The following video shows a
"hop" flight in May 2011:
..
This diagram shows the basic elements of
the PM2:
![Blue Origin prototype](https://cdn.statically.io/img/web.archive.org/web/20111218223429im_/http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/Images/RLV/BlueOrigin/pm2-research_176x172.jpg)
Unfortunately, the PM2 vehicle was destroyed
in August
2011 when a supersonic flight to high
altitudes went awry. A new vehicle is under
construction.
Blue Origin is a participant in NASA's
Commercial
Crew Program (CCP) in which Blue is
developing an orbital crew module like that
shown here:
![Biconic Crew Module](https://cdn.statically.io/img/web.archive.org/web/20111218223429im_/http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/Images/RLV/BlueOrigin/SAA-CCDev2-Spacecraft_264x218.jpg)
The crew module initially will fly on the
expendable Atlas
V rocket but later will fly on a fully
reusable booster that Blue Origin is developing:
With the great resources and ambitions
of Bezos, Blue Origin should go far in the
coming years.
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