Jeff Bezos Gives Glimpse Inside Blue Origin Capsule That Will Send Tourists To Space
Forget the Bahamas. What if your next vacation could be in space? Jeff Bezos has just offered a glimpse of the Blue Origin's New Shepard space tourism capsule.
Bezos recently remarked, “Our New Shepard flight-test program is focused on demonstrating the performance and robustness of the system. In parallel, we've been designing the capsule interior with an eye toward precision engineering, safety and comfort.”
The New Shepard features seats that can be tilted back so the passengers can look up as the rocket lifts off. The capsule measures 530 cubic feet or over ten times the room Alan Shepard, the capsule’s namesake, had on his Mercury flight. The capsule seats a total of ten people and allows room for floating. The capsule also boasts the “largest windows in space”. These windows are composed of multiple layers of fracture-tough transparencies and transmit 92% of visible light.
The New Shepard capsule will be able to reach suborbital altitudes. This means that the capsule will get to space, but will not have enough velocity to orbit entirely around the planet. Flights will last for roughly eleven minutes.
The capsule will get to space with the help of the B-3 liquid rocket engine. This engine will power the rocket to space with 110,000 pounds of thrust and slow to just 5 mph before landing back on earth. Blue Origin plans to one day reach orbital flight and is currently developing a more powerful B-4 engine.
Blue Origin has already successfully tested the New Shepard without human beings a number of times. It has even relaunched some of the recycled boosters in order to help cost efficiency and to be more environmentally friendly. The company hopes to make its first human test flight by the end of 2017 and get these first customers into space by 2018.
Bezos recently remarked, “Our New Shepard flight-test program is focused on demonstrating the performance and robustness of the system. In parallel, we've been designing the capsule interior with an eye toward precision engineering, safety and comfort.”
The New Shepard features seats that can be tilted back so the passengers can look up as the rocket lifts off. The capsule measures 530 cubic feet or over ten times the room Alan Shepard, the capsule’s namesake, had on his Mercury flight. The capsule seats a total of ten people and allows room for floating. The capsule also boasts the “largest windows in space”. These windows are composed of multiple layers of fracture-tough transparencies and transmit 92% of visible light.
The New Shepard capsule will be able to reach suborbital altitudes. This means that the capsule will get to space, but will not have enough velocity to orbit entirely around the planet. Flights will last for roughly eleven minutes.
The capsule will get to space with the help of the B-3 liquid rocket engine. This engine will power the rocket to space with 110,000 pounds of thrust and slow to just 5 mph before landing back on earth. Blue Origin plans to one day reach orbital flight and is currently developing a more powerful B-4 engine.
Blue Origin has already successfully tested the New Shepard without human beings a number of times. It has even relaunched some of the recycled boosters in order to help cost efficiency and to be more environmentally friendly. The company hopes to make its first human test flight by the end of 2017 and get these first customers into space by 2018.
