![Jeff Bezos walks near Blue Origin’s New Shepard after flying into space on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1329731025-1-800x536.jpg)
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Virgin Galactic easily accomplished its sixth human spaceflight in six months on Thursday, continuing a powerful cadence of missions with its spacecraft. This performance has made the corporate the clear leader in suborbital space tourism.
A key query is where this leaves the opposite company with a launch system able to carrying private astronauts above the atmosphere: Blue Origin. That company’s Recent Shepard rocket and spacecraft have been grounded since an engine failure nearly 14 months ago. During that uncrewed flight, the rocket broke apart, however the capsule safely parachuted to the West Texas desert.
Blue Origin finished its accident evaluation this spring and implemented a fix to the problem, including design changes to the BE-3 engine combustion chamber. In May, the corporate said it planned to return to flight “soon.” Then, in September, the Federal Aviation Administration closed its mishap investigation. So where is Recent Shepard?
The corporate originally targeted an uncrewed return-to-flight mission in early October, two sources told Ars. This flight was to hold the scientific experiments on board the ill-fated Recent Shepard-23 to present them a second opportunity to try to succeed in space and undergo microgravity conditions. Assuming all went well, a crewed mission was to follow in February 2024.
Nevertheless, October has come and gone. Asked when Recent Shepard will launch, a Blue Origin spokesperson told Ars, “We’re preparing for flight and plan to return later this 12 months.”
That’s consistent with what some members of the Blue Origin team at the moment are working toward. Probably the most recent delay, in response to a source at the corporate, was brought on by a problem with certifying an engine part intended for flight.
It is just too strong to characterize the Recent Shepard rocket and spacecraft as an arrogance program for Blue Origin and its founder, Jeff Bezos. In any case, the corporate has learned some worthwhile lessons about vertical landing and rocket reuse that it’ll apply to the much larger Recent Glenn rocket. Nevertheless, after Recent Shepard gave Bezos his much-desired ride to space in 2021, it’s value contemplating the aim of this system going forward.
Does Recent Shepard have a future?
Of Blue Origin’s roughly 11,000 employees, about 400 people spend part or all of their time working on Recent Shepard. That could be a small fraction of the corporate’s overall workforce, but factoring in salaries, advantages, and programmatic expenses, an inexpensive estimate is that Recent Shepard costs Blue Origin about $100 million a 12 months to keep up and operate.
Prior to the accident, this system averaged a flight roughly every eight to 10 weeks. Even doubling that cadence, it is rather unlikely that Recent Shepard would come near being revenue-neutral. As one person conversant in the corporate’s funds told Ars, “It’s definitely a money loser. At all times has been.” One other person told Ars that Recent Shepard is “hemorrhaging” money.
Recent Shepard is just one in all many lines of business being pursued by Blue Origin. There’s competition inside the company for resources to construct engines, big rockets, lunar landers, and even an area station. At Virgin Galactic, there is simply suborbital space tourism. In other words, Blue Origin could end Recent Shepard and still be a serious space company. At Virgin, it’s the entire enchilada.
In December, a brand new chief executive will take the reins at Blue Origin, an Amazon veteran named Dave Limp, who has Bezos’ trust. When he was hired, Bezos gave Limp a transparent mandate: move faster. Specifically, Bezos wants Blue Origin to deliver on the massive Recent Glenn rocket and lunar lander for the Artemis Program. One approach to cut costs and move faster could be to take the talented and experienced engineers on Recent Shepard and allocate them to the rocket and lander programs.
It’s unimaginable to know what’s in Bezos’ mind, in fact. Ultimately, it’ll be his decision about whether Recent Shepard continues to fly. This system, which is managed in Washington state and flown out of West Texas, will last so long as he cares to subsidize it. However it is probably notable that Bezos just announced he’s moving from Washington to Miami. Florida has no capital gains taxes (which is significant if you’re selling Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin on the regular), his parents are there, and his partner Lauren Sanchez loves the beach.
Miami can be closer to Cape Canaveral, where the motion is for Blue Origin’s rocket and lunar lander activities. “Blue Origin’s operations are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral,” Bezos wrote on Instagram.
And it’s pretty removed from West Texas.