Blue Origin
Type	Private
Founded	September 2000
Headquarters	Kent, Washington
Key people	Jeff Bezos
Industry	Aerospace and space tourism
Products	suborbital spaceflight
Revenue	n/a
Slogan	"Creating an enduring human presence in space" (?) - Gradatim Ferociter!
Website	www.blueorigin.com

Blue Origin is a privately-funded aerospace company initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight founded in 2000. The company is developing a vehicle called the New Shepard. The company is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and headquartered in a warehouse situated on 25 acres of industrial land in the Seattle, Washington suburb of Kent, where its research and development is located. It has its testing and operations center in Culberson County, Texas, on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000 acre (670 km²) spread north of Van Horn and 15 miles south of the Guadalupe Mountains. Blue Origin logo This is a copyrighted and/or trademarked logo. ... A private company is a company that is independently owned. ... Coordinates: Country United States State Washington County King Founded May 28, 1890 Mayor Suzette Cooke Area    - City 73. ... Jeff Bezos on the cover of TIME as Person of the Year 1999 Jeffrey Preston Bezos (born January 12, 1964) is the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Amazon. ... Aerospace engineering is the branch of engineering that concerns aircraft, spacecraft, and related topics. ... Space tourism is the recent phenomenon of space travel by individuals for the purpose of personal pleasure. ... A sub-orbital spaceflight (or sub-orbital flight) is a spaceflight that does not involve putting a vehicle into orbit. ... Revenue is a U.S. business term for the amount of money that a company earns from its activities in a given period, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. ... Look up Slogan in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. ... Look up aerospace in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A sub-orbital spaceflight (or sub-orbital flight) is a spaceflight that does not involve putting a vehicle into orbit. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... The New Shepard reusable launch vehicle is a manned rocket which is being developed by Blue Origin, a company owned by Amazon. ... Amazon. ... Jeff Bezos on the cover of TIME as Person of the Year 1999 Jeffrey Preston Bezos (born January 12, 1964) is the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Amazon. ... Nickname: The Emerald City Location of Seattle in King County and Washington Coordinates: Country United States State Washington County King Incorporated December 2, 1869 Mayor Greg Nickels (D) Area    - City 369. ... Coordinates: Country United States State Washington County King Founded May 28, 1890 Mayor Suzette Cooke Area    - City 73. ... Culberson County is a county located in the state of Texas. ... Corn Ranch is the name of the spaceport in West Texas from which the flight tests of the New Shepard are carried out by Blue Origin. ... Van Horn is a town located in Culberson County, Texas. ... Guadalupe Mountains The Guadalupe Mountains are a mountain range located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. ...

The company has released few details regarding its development. As of January 2005, the company's website announces that it hopes to establish an "enduring human presence in space"; Bezos told Reuters in November 2004 that his company hopes to progress to orbital spaceflight. The New Shepard will be controlled completely by on-board computers, without ground control. Unmanned test flights are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2006. Once passenger flights begin, the company expects up to 52 launches a year. 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Artists conception of a space habitat called the Stanford torus, by Don Davis Space colonization (also called space settlement, space humanization, space habitation, etc. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... An orbital spaceflight (or orbital flight) in the general sense is a spaceflight where the trajectory of a spacecraft reaches the height of, and through having an appropriate velocity enters into, orbit around an astronomical body. ... Ground Control was a real-time tactics game developed by Massive Entertainment and was at the time a forerunner in its genre, winning many industry awards. ...

A 2004 article in The Economist reports additional rumors that the company's vehicle will take off and land under its own propulsion, using as propellants what the company's website later confirmed to be hydrogen peroxide and kerosene. In January 2005, Bezos told the editor of the Van Horn Advocate that Blue Origin is developing a sub-orbital space vehicle that will take off and land vertically and carry three or more astronauts to the edge of space. The spacecraft is based on technology like that used for the McDonnell Douglas DC-X and derivative DC-XA. The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Ltd edited in London, UK. It has been in continuous publication since September 1843. ... Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a very pale blue liquid which appears colourless in a dilute solution, slightly more viscous than water. ... It has been suggested that RP-1 be merged into this article or section. ... Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) describes airplanes that can lift off vertically. ... Layers of Atmosphere (NOAA) The Kármán line is an internationally designated altitude commonly used to define outer space. ... The Delta Clipper Advanced The McDonnell Douglas DC-X, better known as the Delta Clipper or Delta Clipper Experimental, was an unmanned prototype of a reusable single stage to orbit launch vehicle developed in conjunction with NASA and the DOD SDIO from 1991 to 1993. ...

Employees of Blue Origin include Rob Meyerson (program manager) and science fiction author Neal Stephenson (part-time advisor). Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer, known primarily for his science fiction works in the postcyberpunk genre with a penchant for explorations of society, mathematics, currency, and the history of science. ...

Test Flights

• First Test Flight: 13. November 2006, 06:30, Name of the vehicle : Goddard See video of the launch, [1]

Blue Origin Goddard is the name of the first development vehicle in the Blue Origin New Shepard program, which flew for the first time on November 13, 2006. ...

See also

• Virgin Galactic
• List of private spaceflight companies - A compiled list of private spaceflight companies

Virgin Galactic is a company within Sir Richard Bransons Virgin Group, which plans to offer sub-orbital spaceflights and later orbital spaceflights to the paying public. ... A list of private companies offering or planning spaceflight solutions // Ad Astra Rocket Company AERA Corporation ARCA Armadillo Aerospace Beal Aerospace (defunct) Benson Space Company Bigelow Aerospace Blue Origin Canadian Arrow/Planetspace Da Vinci Project Interorbital Systems JP Aerospace Masten Space Systems Rocketplane Scaled Composites/The Spaceship Company Space Adventures...

External links

• Official site, updated in June 2005
• Images and videos
• Newsweek article: Bezos in Space (May 7, 2003)
• Amazon Enters the Space Race Wired Magazine (July 2003)
• Amazon CEO gives us peek into space plans, a January 2005 article from The Seattle Times
• Van Horn Advocate
• Amazon.com founder's space venture has West Texas county abuzz (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 12, 2005)
• Amazon.com Exec to Open Aerospace Venture (Yahoo news, December 26, 2005)
• Blue's Rocket Clues (MSNBC's Cosmic Log, June 24, 2006)
• Blue Origin West Texas Commercial Launch Site Environmental Assessment PDF
• Buzz in West Texas is about Jeff Bezos space craft launch site