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Bezos unveils design of reusable heavy lift rocket

Xinhua, September 13, 2016 Adjust font size:

Blue Origin, the U.S. aerospace company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, on Monday unveiled the design of its reusable heavy lift rocket that will be capable of launching commercial satellites and people into orbit.

The rocket is named New Glenn after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, and would be ready to fly for the first time before the end of the decade at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Bezos said in an email update.

Both the two-stage and three-stage versions of the rocket would stand taller than the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy and SpaceX Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9, the company's main competitors in the commercial launch markets, according to an infographic in the update.

"Our vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step," Bezos wrote.

Just like the company's suborbital tourism rocket New Shepard, the New Glenn will have a booster capable of landing vertically after launch, making it possible for Blue Origin to recover and reuse it.

Actually, rocket booster reusability, which is being pursued by SpaceX and the ULA as well, recently seems to be becoming an industry trend that some including Bezos believe would cut launch costs.

The New Glenn, 23 feet (7 meters) in diameter, will be powered by seven BE-4 engines that burn liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, Bezos said.

These are the same engines that Blue Origin will supply to the ULA to power the latter's new Vulcan rocket. Combined, the seven BE-4 engines would have 3.85 million pounds (1.75 million kilograms) of thrust.

Bezos said the two-stage version, designed to launch commercial satellites and to fly humans into lower Earth orbit (LEO), is 270 feet (82 meters) tall, and its second stage is powered by a single vacuum-optimized BE-4 engine.

The three-stage variant, 313 feet (95 meters) tall, uses an identical booster and second stage but its third stage is powered by a single vacuum-optimized BE-3 engine that burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, making it capable of flying demanding beyond-LEO missions.

Previously, Blue Origin has already successfully landed its suborbital New Shepard rocket vertically for four times.

Its rival company SpaceX completed similar rocket recovery tests recently, but the latter landed its rocket on land or on ships at sea from low Earth orbit, which was thought to be much more difficult technically.

The New Glenn, undoubtedly, could change the situation and bring the company's launch capabilities to a new high.

Bezos' announcement came just about a week after SpaceX suffered a catastrophic failure when its Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral during a pre-launch test.

In the update, Bezos said that his company's mascot is the tortoise, and its motto is "Gradatim Ferociter," which means "step by step, ferociously."

"We believe 'slow is smooth and smooth is fast,'" he wrote, "In the long run, deliberate and methodical wins the day, and you do things quickest by never skipping steps." Enditem