Blue Origin Rocket takes another test flight

Blue Origin Rocket

Blue Origin, child of Amazons founder took another step towards having an operational system with at test flight in August of 2011. According to their web site “We’re working to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system,” …  “Accomplishing this mission will take time, and we’re working on it methodically.” Their concept is to have a re-usable first stage that lifts the main payload and then returns to earth for for a soft landing under powered flight. Of course they will have to carry the fuel needed not only to lift the main payload to orbit but to also return to earth, thus reducing the main payload. This concept may work but is somewhat inefficient and reusing first stages is not as easy as one might think. The refurbishment costs and complexities are many.This is supposed to me a manned vehicle..would you want to launch on a rocket engine with many flights? How many times can you really re-use a rocket engine? In any case it is a noble cause.

On the Blue Origin website they state :

“Conventional first stage booster rockets are expendable.  This conventional approach has two major drawbacks.  The lack of flight testing prior to first use makes reliability a challenge.  The fact that each mammoth vehicle is thrown away after a single use contributes to the staggering cost of spaceflight.

Blue Origin is developing a reusable first-stage booster.  It will take off vertically like a conventional booster rocket and lift the upper stages to a conventional suborbital staging point, where the upper stage will separate and continue to propel the astronauts to orbit.  Once separated, the first stage booster will descend to perform a powered vertical landing similar to the New Shepard Propulsion Module.  Then the orbital booster can be refueled and launched again, allowing improved reliability and lowering the cost of human access to space.”

They do have some nice videos of the “launch” and landing of the rockets on their websites which is impressive looking. If they can make it work it may show us all that landing using the rocket engines is a better way to go. If not…we can always use a low tech parachute.