Jeff Bezos Blue Origin Space Rocket Lost in Test Flight

Posted on September 3, 2011

The Wall Street Journal reports that Blue Origin, a private space venture founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, suffered a setback last week when it lost its unmanned rocket. The rocket made it to an altitude of 45,000 but then suffered "flight instability" and triggered Blue Origin's range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle.

A message on the Blue Origin website describes the setback and shares photos.

Three months ago, we successfully flew our second test vehicle in a short hop mission, and then last week we lost the vehicle during a developmental test at Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 45,000 feet. A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle. Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job. We're already working on our next development vehicle.

The WSJ says Blue Origin is one of four of NASA's U.S. commercial partners developing new capabilities to transport astronauts to and from the space station. Blue Origin is also one of three commercial space ventures backed by uber wealthy entrepreneurs. The other two are Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. It is a setback for Bezos' Blue Origin - and the private space industry - but it is not the end as Blue Origin is already working on another vehicle.

Take a look:

SPACE