Blue Origin Joins the Big League

It wasn't long ago Elon Musk was laughing about Blue Origin's successful return of the New Shepard reusable rocket because it was suborbital. Well, Elon, you may not be laughing now that Blue Origins is planning to go head-to-head with the United Launch Alliance and SpaceX by building its own heavy-lift rocket for major off-Earth missions.

The New Glenn rocket (playing on an astronaut's name again) at 313 feet will be almost as large of the workhorse Saturn V rocket at 363 feet, and pack quite a punch with multiple BE-4 engines.

Jeffrey Bezos is certainly looking towards a future beyond space tourism, stating: 

New Glenn is designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into space...The three-stage variant—with its high specific impulse hydrogen upper stage—is capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO missions.

Of course, Mr. Bezos could still work with tourists, but now they can go to the Moon or Mars for a vacation.  This is a very big deal that shuffles the cards again in the private space industry.

Flawless Blue Origin Rocket Landing

With all the recent praise of SpaceX's successful landing of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket, let's not forget that Blue Origin also had a successful landing of its New Shepard reusable rocket recently as well. Blue Origin CEO Bezos said it best in this Tweet:

Flawless BE-3 restart and perfect booster landing.  CC chutes deployed. @BlueOrigin

--Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 2, 2016

 You can watch the landing in this clip from Blue Origin.

The European Space Agency's PRIDE

The European Space Agency's (ESA) unmanned Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) space shuttle/spaceplane, part of its Programme for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator for Europe (PRIDE), was on display last week at the Paris Air and Space Show.  Showing the wear of a February test (see above), the spaceplane represents ESA's answer to the U.S. Air Force's X37B unmanned space shuttle, though with more science and less intrigue. 

Under PRIDE, ESA's is attempting to design a space vehicle that can provide all of the following:  

- Reusable launchers stages (lower and upper),

- Robotic exploration (for example, sample return from Mars or asteroid),

- Servicing of orbital infrastructures (for example, International Space Station),

- Servicing of future generation satellites (for example, in-orbit refuelling or disposal),

- Microgravity experiments (for example, optimum time/cost ratio),

- Earth sciences (for example, high-altitude atmospheric research), and

- Earth observation (for example, crisis monitoring).

That is quite a list.  And, of course, these type of spaceplane and reusable rockets are the focus of multiple projects around the world.  For instance, in addition to SpaceX's Falcon, earlier this month the European Airbus Defence and Space unveiled the Advanced Expendable Launcher with Innovative engine Economy (Adeline), though it will not be ready until 2025-2030. And Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is developing the reusable rocket New Shepard (shown below). 

So the race is on and future missions and governments funding those missions will be the winners.