A nice vertical descent point of view video of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket coming down.
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That’s insanely cool. Wow…
That is beautiful! They make it look so easy.
It is amazing footage - pure sci-fi stuff.
Blue Origin as an ‘up/down but no orbit’ experiment is doing good stuff on reaching space, but in terms of putting things in orbit it is harder. For a geo-synch orbit you need to get up to about Mach 30 horizontally, while this thing only went straight up and then down. I’m not sure what their plans are, as in if the system adapts to actual orbital work. The heat and slowing doing are big issues to sort out, as that’s a lot of energy to get rid of.
Their goal is space tourism, they only want to do those short hops.
AFAIK no orbiting planned at all.
A very nice and successful test for some sub-orbital tourism from Blue Origin:
Dang that’s awesome. That rip roar of the engine re-igniting…wow…
Impressive. I wonder what will happen when the first billionaire is killed in one of those things 
Happy heirs I guess.
Never let the heirs fuel the rocket. Space Flight Rule #324.
I agree that this was pure awesomeness. I just find it more interesting watching from my mac than I think I would as a passenger. In fact, that video somehow lessens the magic of space for me. Space just seems like a darker version of the stratosphere on a flight so short. I think I’d save my millions for a MiG-17 and a couple of spare engines. Let me get a couple of turns in orbit and my kid’s trust fund is yours!
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Look at the shadow of it around 1.50 in the first video… Blue Origin must have taken its shape from a bacteriophage!
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New Shepard Crew Module Escape Test. Looking good. The video starts at 1h5m as that is when the launch was:
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Great video!
Fun fact: Typical forces on the crew during that initial escape maneuver are in the ballpark of 14G to 17G. Ouch.
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I was gonna bring that up, that certainly did not look comfortable.
But I guess it’s better than, you know, death.
Seeing the rocket land vertically, while those mountains rushing by at great speed (albeit a parallax view) looks fairly terrifying. Does Blue Origin plan manned landings?
That’s a big ol’ rocket then…
Source: Blue Origin releases details of its monster orbital rocket | Ars Technica
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Wow thats indeed pretty big.
And even though I know it is probably only some phallus symbol building contest between that Blue Origin guy and SpaceX’s Elon Musk it is still exciting to watch that new Space Race.
Indeed it is a new space race and I love it, to see the world reaching for the stars and to see stuff that was science fiction for so long coming to life is really cool. Seems like Blue Origin already has some business for their new rocket.