This article is from the WeChat public account: Mars Institute (ID: marssociety) , author: Nova greatly, the original title: “launch tonight! One step closer to the sub-orbital manned tour! “Blue Origin” broadcast thousands of postcards to space, take off at 22 o’clock in West Texas Spaceport! “, Picture from: pexels

Blue Origin ’s next new Shepard rocket (NS-12) will be about 22:00 this evening (December 10, 8:30 am UTC / 14: 30 UCT) Launched from the West Texas Space Port of Blue Origin.

Although time may be delayed due to weather or technical considerations.

On the eve of the flight’s departure, Blue Origin said that the weather conditions “are not as favorable as we want, but we will continue to focus on weather forecasts.”

Human Space Fly towards New Shepard with Blue OriginMoving forward, they are constantly improving the safety and reliability of the aircraft.

This is the sixth flight of this special New Shepard rocket, and it is the first time that the Blue Origin booster has made so many consecutive flights. ( The previous booster flew five times in a row) , and the number of repairs between each flight was minimal.

This particular rocket has become a viable payload aircraft, with several flights, which means that the system will no longer undergo greater changes.

This is also the ninth commercial payload mission of the New Shepard Rocket, and Blue Origin will bring their 100th customer onto the plane.

In this launch, thousands of postcards from students around the world were also placed on the New Shepard rocket. These postcards came from the non-profit future club of blue origin. (Club for the Future) .

The mission of the club is to inspire future generations to pursue a career in STEM and to help imagine the future of space life.

Bezos launched the “Future Club” program in May when he launched the “Blue Origin” “Blue Moon” lunar lander in Washington, DC.

Since then, “Blue Origin” has been collecting “Space Mail” postcards on which children can draw or write their vision for millions of people to live and work in space.

In August, Bezos reported that postcards had been received from 22 countries.

This includes our Martian society sister Angela sending past Martian postcards to Bezos. This launch is also a new Shepard rocket with other postcards to go to space and return to Earth.

The postcard will lift off with the rocket and return to Earth.

They will then be mailed to their owner.

There are two other experiments that are winners of the “Space Art” competition sponsored by OK Go.

A project by three New York City students designed to lift materials in zero gravity and cover a magnetized line art sculpture to mimic the process of adding primitive planets.

Another project was proposed by students from Utah to convert cosmic radiation readings recorded during the New Shepard flight into musical works.

Blue Origin notices two other payloads:

A zero-G pair conducted by Columbia University under the guidance of former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino (Mike Massimino) Scientific experiments on the effects of cell biology; an experiment from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will test a technology that converts garbage and human waste into gaseous mixtures that can be used to propel or sustain life.

The main purpose of the upcoming flight is to test New Shepard’s reusable propulsion module and crew bay before flying with the crew on board.

New Shepard is expected to begin transporting people to altitudes of more than 100 kilometers sometime next year.

The first flight may be a Blue Origin employee.

Paying travelers will follow, but Blue Origin has not yet begun bookings.

Ticket prices are still pending, but Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith (Bob Smith) recently said,

Prices will start at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

1, New Shepard

New Shepard is a rocket for space tourism made by Blue Origin.

The rocket is designed to bring passengers into suborbital space inside the passenger compartment.

The capsule has six large viewing windows, which Blue Origin calls the largest viewing window ever built for a spacecraft.

New Shepard is fully reusable, and as of April 2018, it has been tested 7 times.

In November 2015, it became the first reusable rocket to successfully land on the ground, defeating the more famous SpaceX Falcon 9 booster in a matter of weeks.

Blue Origin was founded by entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, who made his fortune on Amazon.

Bezos also purchased The Washington Post in 2013.

Forbes Magazine named him the world’s richest man in March 2018, with a net worth of $ 112 billion.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and also the CEO of Amazon, hopes to provide tourists with the opportunity to travel to space and use aircraft to bring passengers to an altitude of 100,000 meters.

Passengers can float in a zero gravity environment for about 10 minutes before returning to Earth.

Rocket fuel: liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen

Ability to carry to suborbital space: Undisclosed

Approximate height: 307,000 feet (93,573 m)

Number of astronauts: 6

Spacecraft volume: 530 cubic feet (15 cubic meters)

Blue Origin may not take passengers into space in the near future, but it has released details of flight routes:

When a passenger flight takes off, New Shepard will launch vertically for about two and a half minutes before the host shuts down.

The capsule will then be separated from the rocket;

During the 11-minute flight, the passenger will maintain a weightless state for about 4 minutes and be sufficiently high above the ground (at an altitude of 93,573 meters) < / span>, you can see the curve of the earth.

The spacecraft will taxi in space for a few minutes before re-entering the atmosphere.

New Shepard will makeLand with an automatic rocket-powered vertical landing system.

New Shepard is named after NASA’s Mercury Astronaut Alan Shepard (Alan Shepard) .

On May 5, 1961, Alain Shepard entered space with the “Liberty-7” spacecraft.

Unlike the one-month Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin’s actual orbit around the earth, Alain Shepard only flew for 15 minutes and reached a sub-orbit of up to about 187 kilometers.

This suborbital flight happens to coincide with the function and goal of Blue Origin ’s New Shepard rocket to send passengers to a suborbital altitude.

The difference is that passengers on board the Blue Origin space shuttle enjoy several times more space than Shepard’s on Liberty-7.

It is said that the internal space is large enough that everyone can float and move.

New Shepard 1

The New Shepard rocket has gone through several iterations over the years.

First flight of New Shepard 1On April 29, 2015.

Although the flight was successful, the rocket failed to land as planned due to the pressure drop in the hydraulic system.

The cockpit made a safe landing.

New Shepard 2

The next rocket version, New Shepard 2, made the world’s first soft landing on November 23, 2015.

Blue Origin successfully re-used the booster for the first time on January 22, 2016. Later that year, the re-used booster also successfully flew on April 2, June 19, and October 5.

In October 2016, the last flight of the New Shepard 2 was an abort test.

New Shepard 3

The latest flight used the New Shepard 3 rocket.

It was held on December 12, 2017, using a reusable booster, a capsule, and a mannequin called Skywalker.

This flight is the first flight of a New Shepard rocket under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (Federal Aviation Administration) .

2, History

The development plan for the “New Shepard” aircraft was announced as early as 2006. The plan includes a power module that provides thrust for the ascent and a passenger cabin for passengers.

On March 5, 2005, Blue Origin conducted the only test flight of the Charon test vehicle in Moses, Washington, reaching a height of 96m, and then returned to the vicinity of the take-off point.

“Caron” is the first test aircraft of Blue Origin, using 4 Rollo’s Viper-MK301 (Viper-MK301) Aero jet engine drive, designed to test autonomous guidance and control technology.

The Blue Origin Company used the Charon to gain a preliminary understanding of the design, manufacturing, and operation processes of vertical return landing technology.

On November 13, 2006, Blue Origin performed flight tests on the Power Module-1 technology verification machine and achieved success with a flight height of 85m.

Power module-1 technology verification machine, also known as “Godard” (Goddard) , powered by 9 BE-1 rocket engines .

On May 6, 2011, Blue Origin performed the first flight test of the Power Module-2 technology verification machine. The flight height reached 167m, and the low altitude vertical return was completed.

The Power Module-2 uses 5 BE-2 rocket engines, and its shape is close to the “New Shepard” aircraft.

On April 29, 2015, Blue Origin performed a flight test on the first “New Shepard” aircraft. Its crew cabin successfully landed using a parachute, but its “power module” lost control and crashed during the return process.

On May 2, 2019, the New Shepard rocket was successfully launched.

The launch mission took off from Blue Origin’s factory in western Texas, and it was the company’s first launch and landing of its rocket.

Rocket launchAfter the successful launch, Blue Origin also used this launch to realize 38 studies and experiments on the edge of space. The New Shepard rocket pushed the capsule developed by Blue Origin to a height of 100 kilometers.

Preliminary data indicate that the rocket was approaching Mach 3 as it rose. The launch mission took more than 10 minutes.

3, Blue Moon and New Glenn

In addition to the New Shepard suborbital space program,

There is also the Blue Moon lunar lander program and the orbit-level New Glenn rocket, which may begin flying in 2021.

In May 2019, Blue Origin (Blue Origin) showed its lunar lander “Blue Moon”.

Blue Origin describes Blue Moon as a “flexible lander” designed to provide small to large payloads to the moon’s surface.

In addition, the company states that its new lander can carry and deploy payloads en route to the moon, make “precise and soft” landings on the moon’s surface, and pave the way for long-term human life in space.

Since 2012, Blue Origin started to develop the “New Glen” rocket, but the project was not announced to the public until 2016.

The “New Glen” rocket has a two-stage structure,

One BE-4 uses 7 BE-4 engines,

Two BE-3U engines are used in the second stage,

The total length of the rocket is 86m, the diameter of the fairing is 7m, the carrying capacity of low earth orbit is 45t, and the carrying capacity of geosynchronous transfer orbit is 13t.

The rocket can be equipped with three sub-stages according to the mission requirements. The three-stage design uses a BE-3U engine, and the three-stage configuration is 99m in length.

One of the sub-levels is recycled on the offshore platform and designed to be reused 100 times.

The “New Glen” rocket will perform commercial and government launch missions in the future. Once the first flight is completed, it will definitely cooperate with American Space Exploration Technology Corporation (SpaceX) < / span>, United Launch Alliance Corporation, Arian Space Corporation (Arianespace) and other competing large satellite launch missions.

In October 2018, Blue Origin harvested a large contract from the United States Air Force and obtained 500 million US dollars, striving to develop its own new Glen (New Glenn ) Rockets.

4, there is no room for two tigers

According to foreign media reports, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company is expanding rapidly on several fronts, from its headquarters in Seattle’s south to its new beachhead in Los Angeles, and its main rival, Elon. Musk’s SpaceX is in full competition.

Three and a half years ago, Blue Origin employed about 600 people.

At the time, Bezos said that the company’s 28,000-square-meter office and production facility in Kent was “getting out of the woods.”

Now, Clay Morrie, vice president of global sales, marketing, and customer experience, said that Blue Origin’s total number of employees is about 2,500, and it will approach 3,500 next year.

This article is from the WeChat public account: Mars Society (ID: marssociety) , author: Nova greatly