Only one minute and four seconds after takeoff, right when Blue Origin was reaching its maximum pressure, the launcher veered off course, its thrusters in flames, before going pitifully crashing a few kilometers further on, “in the hazard area”wrote thehe American regulator of civil aviation, the FAA. There are no images from the event.
Booster failure on today’s uncrewed flight. Escape system performed as designed. pic.twitter.com/xFDsUMONTh
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) September 12, 2022
The good news is that the crew capsule ejected without difficulty, projected at an impressive speed. Her parachutes deployed, she came back down to earth just over seven minutes after the accident. Not very smooth, it is true, but without damage. It was recovered and should be able to serve again.
There was no astronaut on board, it was an unmanned flight which was to be used for scientific projects, some of which were funded by NASA: among other things, an artificial intelligence experiment to record suborbital data or tests on the how beeswax can be made in space to create cleaner propulsion products.
This kind of accident is extremely rare. In any case for this New Shepard program, which also sends tourists into space and which is reputed to be extremely reliable. It was thus its 23rd mission, and so far all the launchers had been able to be recovered and reused after having sent the capsules in suborbital flight (a hundred kilometers away) without any problem. No one, in any case, expected this flight to go to hell…
This is a real blow for the company of the founder of Amazon, which can compromise his ambitions to send more and more people into space. The US civil aviation regulator (FAA) has banned any further takeoffs until engineers have identified and corrected the cause of the malfunction.
However, for more than a year, Blue Origin has been making money with manned flights. The New Shepard program has already taken 31 tourists into space (including the actor playing the iconic Captain Kirk of the series star trek, William Shatner), aboard six different flights of 10 to 15 minutes each. Jeff Bezos himself took advantage of this in 2021. In early August, the company had successfully sent the first Egyptian and the first Portuguese into space. The ticket price is not public, but it is not less than 200,000 dollars.
Obviously, this halt will make the main competitor of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, at the head of SpaceX, happy. The two men, two mbillionaires with egos as disproportionate as their projects, aspire to the same dream: to settle permanently in space. Elon Musk who – surprisingly this time – did not have a mocking word on the networks for his unfortunate rival.
In 2021, NASA chose SpaceX to build the moon landing craft that will take the next American astronauts to the Moon. A juicy contract at 2.9 billion dollars. It did not please Jeff Bezos at all, who had filed a challenge file. Without success. When he found out, Elon Musk had compared his rival’s grounded rockets and erectile problems (“Can’t get it up (to orbit)”, “He can’t get it up (to put it into orbit)”)
Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2021
Jeff Bezos will however be able to console himself: he has other projects, at least two of which are much more ambitious than suborbital flights. He still has in his boxes the construction of a new rocket, the New Glenn, which she will be able to maintain in orbit around the earth.
And the construction site of its own space station, Orbital Reef, almost as big as the International Space Station (ISS) which is due to retire in the early 2030s. Intended to accommodate up to 10 passengers, astronauts, researchers, tourists, businessmen or film directors. NASA has given the green light, the project is in the design phase.