On 29 April 2015, Blue Origin has just made a successful unmanned suborbital test flight of its passenger carrying New Shepard spacecraft and launch vehicle. The flight achieved an ultimate altitude of 307,000 feet before the capsule was separated to make a parachute descent safely back to Earth. The planned recovery of the propulsion module failed due to a hydraulics issue. While the booster uses a single LOx/Liquid Hydrogen BE-3 rocket engine, further down the line, the new LOx/Methane BE-4 is aimed to achieve orbital velocities on the first stage of a reusable two-stage rocket.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard makes suborbital flight to over 300,000 feet
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