Progress in developing a vertical takeoff/vertical landing suborbital spaceship has been reported by billionaire Jeff Bezos, chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon.com. He is bankrolling Blue Origin, a rocket development company with engineering and manufacturing teams housed in a 280,000 square foot facility on 26 acres in Kent, Washington.

Bezos described Blue Origin progress during a November 19 interview on the Charlie Rose television show that focused primarily on Amazon’s Kindle, a wireless, portable reading device.

Bezos noted that Blue Origin’s first development vehicle — the Goddard — has been flown to low-altitude several times from a company owned 200,000 acre launch complex in western Texas. To date, the tight-lipped Blue Origin group has only publicized the November 13, 2006 first flight of that craft.

“We are now working on a second development vehicle,” Bezos said. “There will be at least one more development vehicle after that…at least, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be more.”

Blue Origin is building a vertical takeoff/vertical landing spacecraft that will take three or more astronauts to the edge of space, Bezos said.

Dubbed the New Shepard program — paying homage to the 1961 suborbital flight of Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard — Bezos said that Blue Origin’s effort is built on taking one step at a time. The company’s motto, he emphasized, is Gradatim Ferociter, “step by step, ferociously.”

“We’re not in any hurry…because we’re trying to build a very safe, well-engineered vehicle. [I] don’t see any reason to rush on this,” Bezos told Rose.

In building a suborbital, tourist-carrying vessel, Bezos said that he doesn’t know how big the public space tourism market is.

“People have done studies that have tried to size this market. But I’m highly skeptical of such studies because you don’t really know until you do it,” Bezos explained. “But I do think this can be made into a viable business. You have to be very long-term oriented,” he said.

People who complained about a seven year-long investment in Amazon, Bezos said, would be horrified by Blue Origin.

Bezos said he’s looking forward to his own flight into space, on a Blue Origin vehicle.

“I will go. I definitely will go. I can’t wait actually,” Bezos concluded.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Space & Astronomy, Technology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.