Blue Origin Launches Bezos’s Space Dreams and Lands a Rocket
By KENNETH CHANG

This time, Jeffrey P. Bezos’ rocket went up — and it came down in one piece.

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has been investing some of his wealth in space dreams, establishing a rocket company called Blue Origin. On Monday, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard rocket, named after Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space in a similar suborbital flight in 1961.

The rocket lofted a capsule that is to eventually carry paying passengers on suborbital jaunts to a height of 329,839 feet, or 100.5 kilometers, above its launch site near Van Horn in West Texas. That is just above the 100-kilometer altitude that is considered the beginning of outer space.

The capsule descended to the ground under parachutes 11 minutes after blasting off. The rocket itself turned around and, firing its engines again, set back down at the launchpad at 4.4 miles per hour — faster than a person strolling, but gentle enough to prevent damage. It landed less than five feet from its target.

“It was a totally nominal flight,” Mr. Bezos said in an interview. “We’re walking on cloud nine. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

This builds on a largely successful test flight in April. In that operation, the launch and the landing of the capsule were flawless, but the rocket crashed because of a failure with a hydraulic system. Mr. Bezos said engineers had replaced the hydraulics with a new design.

“Think of this as the beginning of a thorough test program,” Mr. Bezos said. The next flight, he said, “should be a matter of weeks.”

The company, based in Kent, Wash., south of Seattle, is selling space on the capsules during the test flights for research experiments, and it plans to begin flying them next year. “There’s no reason not to do that,” Mr. Bezos said.

Commercial flights for tourists, also to launch from West Texas, could begin in a couple of years. Blue Origin has not started selling tickets or decided the cost of a flight, which would provide about four minutes of floating.

Like another upstart rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, Mr. Bezos and Blue Origin are betting that reusable rockets can greatly reduce the cost of getting to space. Most rockets today fly just once, crashing back to earth after exhausting their fuel.

“The ultimate vision should be aircraftlike operations,” Mr. Bezos said.

SpaceX has taken a similar approach in trying to recover the first stage of its Falcon 9 rockets, coming close to landing them on a floating platform in the Atlantic.

The same technology is to be used in a larger Blue Origin rocket that is to be launched to orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

“Everything that we have learned here on New Shepard is completely applicable to our orbital booster,” Mr. Bezos said.

Blue Origin officials have not spoken in detail about which markets they are aiming for with the bigger rocket, but Mr. Bezos has said his passion is to send people to space. The company could also compete for commercial and military satellite launches.

火箭可重複使用 太空旅行邁步

亞馬遜創辦人兼執行長貝佐斯投資的美國太空公司「藍色起源」（Blue Origin）24日宣布成功完成測試，讓一具火箭在無人駕駛下飛行至太空邊緣後，再成功於地面「軟著陸」與加以回收。這是太空史上首次能夠回收火箭，除了意謂「藍色起源」在火箭回收技術上超前Space X公司，也代表太空觀光朝實現之期再邁出了一大步。

擁有Space X太空事業的電動車大廠Tesla創辦人穆斯克隨即在社群網站推特恭賀貝佐斯，卻又酸言酸語貼文說，其實這趟「次軌道」（suborbital）飛行並不算是達成真正的太空飛行成就。過去一年，Space X一再進行Falcon 9火箭發射與回收，但一再失敗告終。

穆斯克說：「恭喜貝佐斯團隊達成火箭的垂直起降。」稍後又貼文：「但釐清『太空』和『軌道』的區別是很重要的。」

回收火箭後，貝佐斯對外披露影片，慶祝勝利，並首度勾勒出頗具雄心的時間表，表示公司有望在兩年內展開載運付費乘客的商業次軌道飛行。貝佐斯24日表示：「當我們準備好時，我們將開始載人。若一切順利，我認為2017年即有可能上路。」

「藍色起源」24日宣布，可重複使用的太空船New Shepard 23日執行一項距離地面33萬英尺的次軌道測試任務，飛行速度接近音速4倍，隨後該太空船和液體燃料火箭引擎分別安全著陸。在返程途中，火箭引擎在海拔約5000英尺處再次點火，隨後以每小時4.4英里的速度垂直落地，降落在距離發射地約4英尺處。太空船的設計為可容納6人，進行約100公里的刺激次軌道旅行。

貝佐斯和穆斯克均積極研發可重複使用的火箭，以降低發射成本。迄今所有火箭發射後，不是在進入太空後遭到摧毀，就是無法再回收使用，等於每次升空都須製造新火箭，太空飛行成本難以降低。「藍色起源」的New Shepard 採用推進式著陸的技術設計，讓火箭成功軟著陸與回收。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/science/space/blue-origins-rocket-launches-and-lands.html

2015-11-26．聯合報．A3．焦點．編譯田思怡