Blue Origin Jeff Bezos Rocket Company to Launch from Florida
By KENNETH CHANG

Blue Origin, a secretive rocket company started by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, made a splashy public announcement on Tuesday, saying it will build rockets and send them into orbit from Florida.

Blue Origin has leased Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the historic site of 145 launches, including those of Pioneer 10 from NASA, the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter, and Surveyor 1, the first craft to make a soft landing on the moon.

But Launch Complex 36 has sat idle for a decade. “Too long,” Mr. Bezos said at the ceremony. “We can’t wait to fix that.”

Blue Origin will also open a factory to assemble rockets nearby. “We’re not just launching from here,” Mr. Bezos said. “We’re building here.”

The company will invest $200 million and create 330 jobs, state officials said.

It is the latest effort to revive Florida’s Space Coast, which was economically battered after NASA stopped flying the space shuttles in 2011. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk, and the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, already use nearby launching pads at Cape Canaveral.

In the past, Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., south of Seattle, has sometimes waited days or months to mention successes or failures, with Mr. Bezos providing brief updates on Blue Origin’s website.

But even after Tuesday’s public ceremony, exactly what Blue Origin plans to launch from Cape Canaveral remains somewhat mysterious.

The rocket, still unnamed, will be large enough to reach orbit, and it will debut later this decade, Mr. Bezos said. But he did not give specifics about which markets he is aiming for with his business model. “We’re building a vehicle for humans,” Mr. Bezos said in an interview. “That’s my personal passion.”

But such a rocket “can clearly lift payloads of all kinds,” he added.

The first stage of the rocket is intended to be fully reusable — landing vertically back on Earth — unlike most rockets today, which crash back to Earth after one flight.

That approach is similar to SpaceX’s attempts to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform, a first step to refurbishing it and flying it again. Blue Origin had patented the barge landing idea, but SpaceX successfully challenged the patent, and Blue Origin has since given up on the claim.

Blue Origin lost another skirmish with SpaceX last year in the bidding to take over one of two launchpads at the Kennedy Space Center that NASA had used for the space shuttles. After that setback, Blue Origin looked at options in five states before deciding on Launch Complex 36.

In April, Blue Origin completed the first test flight of its New Shepard spacecraft, accelerating past three times the speed of sound to reach an altitude of 307,000 feet above a testing site in West Texas. The capsule, without any passengers, separated and parachuted gently to the ground. The booster, designed to land back on the ground, crashed because of a malfunction in the hydraulic system. New Shepard, which is to take tourists on suborbital jaunts, will continue to launch from Texas.

At the end of his public remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Bezos looked to the future. “I don’t know how long this will take,” Mr. Bezos said, “but one day I look forward to having a press conference with you guys in space.”

亞馬遜貝佐斯 美佛州建火箭基地

商業太空領域如今已變得擁擠，亞馬遜公司創辦人貝佐斯15日宣佈，他創設的藍色起源公司(Blue Origin)將在佛羅里達的太空海岸建造火箭工廠和發射基地，預計幾年後開始自佛州的卡納維爾角發射火箭。

貝佐斯2013年曾經想競租1960、1970年代美國登月計畫使用的歷史性火箭發射場，但後來被另一企業富豪馬斯克領導的SpaceX公司搶走。

藍色起源14日宣布將投資逾2億美元興建火箭製造設施，帶來330個就業機會，地點就在美國太空總署(NASA)的36發射場，並將之改名為「探索公園」。

貝索斯在記者會上說：「今天我們為了開啟新的探索時代，很興奮地來到陽光之州。」

他說，包括第一個探測其它星球的「水手計畫」在內，共有145次的火箭發射「從此處轟隆奔向太空」。

他說：「這個發射場已經沉寂逾10年，太久了，我們迫不及待地想加以修復，我們將在幾年後從這裡發射。」

貝佐斯並未透露太多「藍色起源」飛行計畫的細節，但表示會有一個「21世紀生產廠，聚焦製造一個可以重複使用的軌道發射隊」。他並且表示，運送設施組裝廠將座落在發射台射附近。

他說，公司正在研究一具會在發射台上進行測試的美國製BE-4火箭引擎，該引擎最終將用以推動聯合發射聯盟的Vulcan火箭。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/science/space/jeff-bezos-rocket-company-to-build-and-launch-in-florida.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/science/20150917/c17space/zh-hant/

2015-09-16．聯合晚報．A6．國際焦點．編譯陳澄和