Blue Origin “merchandise” on Amazon.com

You can buy a lot of things on Amazon.com, from books and DVDs to clothes and jewelry. Did you know that you can also buy a full-scale replica of Goddard, the Blue Origin spacecraft? It’ll only cost you $9,999,999.00 (on sale from $11,999,999.00!). The product description: “A full sized replica of Goddard. This is [...]

Blue Origin successful test flight

During her presentation at the Space Access ’07 conference this afternoon, Michelle Murray of FAA/AST mentioned that Blue Origin had a successful* test flight yesterday (March 22), their second under their experimental permit and the first since their initial flight in November. No other information about the flight is available, but I’ll update this [...]

Time reviews the industry

The website for Time magazine has a fairly detailed review article about the emerging space tourism industry. Writer Cathy Booth Thomas talks with a number of the leading companies, including Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace, and Benson Space Company, and also covers the more secretive Blue Origin; there’s also coverage if Bigelow Aerospace and developing [...]

Blue Origin opens up

I was just sitting down to lunch when a coworker came up to me and asked, “Have you checked out Blue Origin’s web site recently?”

“Umm, no,” I responded.

“You should,” he responded. And I did, and you should, too: the company has provided a major new update on its web site, in the [...]

Another Blue Origin test upcoming

MSNBC’s Cosmic Log reports that the FAA has issued a temporary flight restriction for the airspace around Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas. The restriction, in effect from 7:30 am through 12:30 pm CST on Thursday through Saturday, is similar to one in effect earlier this month for Blue Origin’s first low-level flight [...]

Blue Origin flies

According to MSNBC and the AP, Blue Origin performed its first low-level flight test on Monday morning at about 7:30 am EST from its test site in West Texas. The company, not surprisingly, has released few details about the flight. FAA officials said that the flight lasted “one or two minutes”, but we don’t [...]

Blue Origin tests impending

MSNBC’s Cosmic Log reports that Blue Origin plans to conduct flight tests in the next few days from its West Texas spaceport. A notice to airmen (NOTAM) issued by the FAA sets aside airspace over about 15 square kilometers centered on the launch site up to an altitude of about 3,000 meters, although the [...]

Bezos speaks (a little) about Blue Origin

It’s rare that Jeff Bezos speaks about his suborbital RLV startup, Blue Origin, adding to the secretive environment that surrounds the company. So it was a bit of a surprise to see the topic come up in an InformationWeeb interview with Bezos. He doesn’t say much about Blue Origin, and there are no real [...]

Blue Origin gets experimental permit

Alan Boyle of MSNBC reports that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has awarded an experimental permit to Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ secretive suborbital launch venture. The one-year permit allows Blue Origin to begin powered test flights from its facility in West Texas, over 30 kilometers north of the town of Van [...]

Odds and ends

A roundup of a few space tourism-related items from the last several days:

Wyle Labs Inc. is creating a new business unit “focusing on providing human spaceflight services to the emerging commercial ‘space tourist’ industry”. The Commercial Human Spaceflight Services unit, led by Vernon McDonald, will offer a variety of medical, training, and operations [...]