Those early endeavors have paid off in the form of the New Shepard spacecraft, a suborbital vehicle capable of toting crews and cargo out to the Karman line - the internationally defined boundary of Earth and space. It made two more flights in 2007 before being retired. The test craft managed to reach a height of nearly 300 feet in the approximately 10 seconds that it was airborne. It was driven by nine pressure-fed peroxide-powered BE-1 rocket engines, Blue Origin’s first successful rocket design. The company built on that effort the following year with a test flight of the Goddard suborbital test vehicle. Designed to validate the company’s autonomous guidance and control systems, it climbed to a height of 316 feet using its quartet of Rolls-Royce Viper Mk. In 2005, the 9,500-pound Charon jet-powered VTOL test platform made its first and only test flight above Moses Lake, Washington. That financial backing has resulted in the development of several spacecraft and engine prototypes. Of course there’s little reason for the company to chase public input given that, as of 2016 at least, its entire billion-dollar annual operating budget is provided by Bezos himself.īy subscribing, you are agreeing to Engadget's Terms and Privacy Policy. In fact, the company repeatedly declined requests for comment regarding this story. The company’s existence wasn’t even discovered by the public until 2003 when Bezos began buying land in Texas for the company’s private suborbital launch and engine test site.
From the outset, secrecy has been a core tenet of the Blue Origin ethos. So, on the twentieth anniversary of its founding, let’s take a look at Blue’s origins and where the private aerospace company might be headed in the future.īezos officially founded Blue Origin on September 8th, 2000 in Kent, Washington (which now houses the company HQ and R&D center) and set about developing both space-worthy vehicles as well as the rocket motors to push them.
Tasked with the mission of sending millions of people to live and work in space, the company has spent the past two decades quietly designing and building rockets to do just that. In the year 2000 - having grown up, founded Amazon, and gained a measly $6 billion net worth - Bezos founded Blue Operations, LLC.
The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. Speaking as the 18-year-old valedictorian of his high school, Bezos told the Miami Herald in 1982 that he planned “to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit. As a teenager, young Jeff Bezos was fascinated with space exploration.
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