Air Force Brig. Gen. Philip Garrant, Vice Commander, Space and Missile Systems Center, and Ms. Joy White, SMC’s Executive Director, welcome Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and Blue Origin, to Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., Oct. 25, 2017. Mr. Bezos kicked off SMC’s “Airmen Everywhere” series of lectures by sharing insights on leadership and lessons learned throughout his career. (Sarah Corrice/Air Force)
(Bloomberg) -- Blue Origin LLC’s space tourism rocket is slated to fly to space Tuesday for the first time in 15 months, potentially marking the resumption of regular flights for the Jeff Bezos-founded company following an in-flight failure last year.
The New Shepard rocket, which is primarily used for shuttling paying tourists to the edge of space and back, is not carrying any passengers on this trip. Instead, New Shepard is ferrying research experiments meant to be tested briefly in space, as well as postcards from students.
If the flight goes off without a hitch, the capsule is expected to touch down back on Earth roughly 11 minutes after takeoff. A successful flight could pave the way for people to start flying on New Shepard again soon, though the company has not provided a time frame for when tourist flights would restart.
A successful flight would bring a much needed win for the company, which has struggled with executing its most ambitious spaceflight programs. The development of its larger New Glenn rocket and BE-4 engine have suffered from numerous delays. Earlier this month, Amazon.com Inc. veteran Dave Limp started as Blue Origin’s new chief executive officer in a major leadership shakeup.
Recently, Bezos said he thinks Blue Origin needs to move more quickly, which is one of the main reasons he left his role as CEO at Amazon. Bezos’ goal was to devote more attention to his rocket company.
“We’re going to become the world’s most decisive company,” Bezos said on a podcast hosted by Lex Fridman. “We’re going to get really good at taking appropriate technology risk and making those decisions quickly.”
New Shepard has been grounded since September of 2022, after an uncrewed flight of the rocket suffered an engine explosion a little more than a minute into the mission. The halt gave Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.’s rival venture months of uncontested suborbital tourism operations.
The mishap triggered New Shepard’s emergency abort system, prompting the capsule on top of the rocket to quickly detach and escape from the malfunctioning vehicle.
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