Blue Origin

Blue Origin, LLC
legal form	Limited Liability Company
founding	2000
Seat	Kent , Washington , USA
management	Bob Smith ( CEO )
Number of employees	over 1500
Branch	Space travel
Website	www.blueorigin.com

Blue Origin ( Engl. For Blue Origin ) is a private American aerospace company , which in September 2000 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos founded. The company initially focused on performing suborbital flights using reusable flight systems. The findings from the flights of the New Shepard suborbital rocket are incorporated into the development of the New Glenn orbital rocket . Blue Origin is also working on the Blue Moon lunar lander .

Locations

The headquarters is located in Kent ( Washington ), a suburb south of Seattle , where the research and development department is located. The test site is located on the Corn Ranch in Culberson County ( Texas ), north of the town of Van Horn .

Projects

New Shepard

Unfinished New Shepard crew capsule at company headquarters in Kent

The company's original vision is to develop reusable launch systems and spacecraft that take off and land vertically to transport people to the edge of space. The suborbital system, which was named "New Shepard" in honor of the first US astronaut Alan Shepard , should be able to be flown completely with onboard computers and thus without ground control. It consists of a carrier system that brings the capsule into a ballistic trajectory so that three passengers can be carried to the edge of space, and which then lands vertically and can be reused. The capsule is landed using parachutes.

An unmanned test flight of this vehicle with a achieved height of 100.5 km and a successful parachute landing of the crew capsule as well as a likewise successful vertical landing of the propulsion booster by means of re-ignited main engine was carried out for the first time on November 23, 2015 at the Texas test site. The findings from the suborbital flights flow into the development of orbital space systems.

Blue Origin received the 2016 Collier Trophy for its New Shepard capsule .

Concept study of the unrealized spaceship

Commercial Crew Development Program

As part of the Commercial Crew Development Program, NASA supports companies working on manned space programs. Work is being carried out to ensure that private service providers can operate manned flights to the ISS. As part of the first round of this program, Blue Origin received $ 3.7 million in 2010. In later rounds the company was no longer considered.

New Glenn

Blue Origin has been working on an orbital rocket with a reusable first stage since the early 2010s. This resulted in the New Glenn project with the BE-4 and BE-3 engines . With a planned height of 96 meters and an announced payload capacity of up to 45 tons, the New Glenn is one of the largest launch vehicles ever developed.

Moon lander

In April 2020, NASA selected a consortium of Blue Origin, Draper, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to develop a manned, three-stage lunar module . As a first step, the consortium will receive USD 579 million. As the consortium leader, Blue Origin will develop the descent module based on the Blue Moon lander already presented.