On April 29, 2015 Blue Origin successfully completed the first developmental test flight of its “New Shepard” space vehicle. After accelerating through Mach 3 and reaching an altitude of 307,000 feet, the crew capsule (uncrewed in this test) was deployed and successfully parachuted to the ground.

In fact, if New Shepard had been a traditional expendable vehicle, this would have been a flawless first test flight. Of course one of our goals is reusability, and unfortunately we didn’t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent.

You can sign up to receive early access to reservations, ticket and pricing info when it becomes available. If anyone wants to “gift” me a ride, I’d be OK with that. 😉

Blue Origins is the private space venture backed by Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos.