DTN 096: Jeff Bezos Gets It Up (to Orbit)

“We're tying together systems that have never been combined. Our society makes synthetic fuels, produces hydrogen from water, and has nuclear reactors. But no one has integrated all three of those into a scalable supply chain that is self-operated.”

“On Thursday morning, at 2:03 a.m. Eastern time, seven powerful engines ignited at the base of a 320-foot-tall rocket named New Glenn. The flames illuminated night into day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The rocket, barely moving at first, nudged upward and then accelerated in an arc over the Atlantic Ocean, lit up in blue, the color of combustion of the rocket’s methane fuel.

Thirteen minutes later, the second stage of New Glenn reached orbit.

The upward flight appeared almost flawless, but Blue Origin’s stretch goal of landing the booster stage on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean failed. As planned, the booster fired three of its engines to slow down, but then the stream of data stopped, indicating that the booster had been lost.

For years, Mr. Bezos has talked of an ambitious vision of millions of people working and living in space, sending spacecraft to the moon and building space stations. Skeptics, however, pointed out that Blue Origin had not sent a single thing to orbit since the company was founded nearly a quarter-century ago, two years before SpaceX.

Now it has.”