Report: Blue Origin Could Launch Test Flight This Weekend

The rumors that Blue Origin would conduct another test flight proved to be true as Jeff Bezos' aerospace company announced late Friday night the success of a second test flight.

"The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance".

"It's like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway", Bezos wrote.

In case these so-called "New Space" entrepreneurs succeed in reliably recovering and reusing rockets, the expense of space flight may decrease dramatically.

Blue Origin plans to build orbital rockets at Exploration Park on Merritt Island, just outside Kennedy Space Center's secure gates, and launch them from Launch Complex 36. Blue Origin will be creating over 300 jobs at its East Coast home base for production and launches. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well", Bezos said in a post-flight statement on Blue Origin's website, titled "Launch. Information is still light, but it sounds like the booster did ignite and look good, but there were some "thrust fluctuations" during the test, according to a tweet from Musk.

Yet SpaceX hasn't attempted to reuse the Falcon 9 rocket that made history in December.

"The first rocket to fly above the Karman Line and then land vertically upon the Earth is now the first to have done it twice", Blue Origin said in a video featuring the rocket launch and landing.

The New Shepard rocket is named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space in 1961. The feat also comes less than a week after SpaceX failed to land the same booster on a floating platform at sea. And that's just a small part of SpaceX's achievement-the Falcon 9 traveled at roughly double New Shepard's speed and deployed 11 new communications satellites with its second stage.

"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", Bezos wrote in a blog post.

New Shepard is not the first reusable suborbital vehicle.

Not only that, reusable rocket technology is critical for realizing Bezos dream of "millions of people living and working in space" and Musk's dream of building a permanent civilization on Mars. That engine is expected to start a test program this year. Last year, Jeff Bezos said that he wanted to allow millions of people to live and work in space, since his company is already developing a spacecraft for people. SpaceNews learned yesterday that the FAA granted a temporary airspace restriction for an area that included Blue Origin's facility near Van Horn, Texas.