Blue Origin’s New Shepard Booster Rides – and Lands – Again! [Video]
Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin has once again made history by being the first company of its kind to not only successfully launch and land a reusable rocket booster – their New Shepard rocket – but also to do it again successfully with the same booster.
An article by Bezos posted on the Blue Origin website summarizes the accomplishment:
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The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.
Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today’s re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one. Rather than the vehicle translating to land at the exact center of the pad, it now initially targets the center, but then sets down at a position of convenience on the pad, prioritizing vehicle attitude ahead of precise lateral positioning. It’s like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don’t swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline. Our Monte Carlo sims of New Shepard landings show this new strategy increases margins, improving the vehicle’s ability to reject disturbances created by low-altitude winds.
There has been some criticism in the industry, most notably from SpaceX founder Elon Musk, about the fact that the New Shepard rocket is not designed to achieve orbit, perhaps diminishing the achievement. Bezos seems to have responded to this criticism in the article on the Blue Origin blog. Continue reading to learn what he had to say about this.
