Jeff Bezos secret private rocket

That secretive rocket work being bankrolled by billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com fame has shed some new light on its activities. Blue Origin is developing New Shepard, a rocket-propelled vehicle that takes off and lands vertically and is designed to routinely fly multiple astronauts into suborbital space at competitive prices. Flight tests of the suborbital craft have been staged at a private launch site in Texas. Blue Origin is now noting that, in addition to providing the public with opportunities to experience spaceflight, New Shepard will also provide frequent opportunities for researchers to fly experiments into space and a microgravity environment. To help shape this activity, the group has announced that interested parties should contact Blue Origin's independent representative for research and education missions, Alan Stern, the former NASA chief of space science.

Sounds kinda cool and is the first I'm hearing of the project. Anyone have any more information? Thanks.

[edit on 8-12-2008 by Raustin]

a reply to: Raustin

Bump.

You're welcome.

Quite fascinating, S&F, thanks for sharing mate!

a reply to: Raustin
yes, New Shepard made it's first sussesful landing Monday.

It wasn’t all bad news for Amazon’s Jeff Bezos this week. His other company, Blue Origin, scored a big symbolic first in the private-sector space race Monday — launching a rocket that returned back to ground base in one piece.

The rocket — New Shepard — soared 329,839 feet, or just above the 62-mile mark where outer space begins.
The new space race is a private-sector affair

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

Not really a secret either. They are not out in public discussing their work until they do something unlike others. That runs contrary to the Hyper-festers in NewSpace companies in general.

a reply to: anzha


what are you talking about,

here is a wiki,cause it's fast. if you google you can find reports about it when it happened.

History
A sub-scale demonstration vehicle made its first flight on November 13, 2006.[dated info] As of 2006 the launch vehicle was to be assembled at the Blue Origin facility near Seattle, Washington. Also in 2006, Blue Origin started the process to build an aerospace testing and operations center on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a 165,000-acre (668 km2) land parcel Bezos purchased 40 km north of Van Horn, Texas.[4] Blue Origin Project Manager Rob Meyerson has said that he selected Texas as the launch site particularly because of the state's historical connections to the aerospace industry, although that industry is not located near the planned launch site, and the vehicle will not be manufactured in Texas.[5]

On October 19, 2012, Blue Origin conducted a successful Pad Escape at its West Texas launch site, firing its pusher escape motor and launching a full-scale suborbital Crew Capsule from a launch vehicle simulator. The Crew Capsule traveled to an altitude of 2,307 feet under active thrust vector control before descending safely by parachute to a soft landing 1,630 feet downrange.[6][7]

In April 2015, Blue Origin announced that it had completed acceptance testing of the BE-3 engine that will power the New Shepard. Blue also stated that they intend to begin test flights of the New Shepard later this year, with initial flights occurring as frequently as monthly. They "expect a series of dozens of flights over the extent of the suborbital test program [taking] a couple of years to complete.[8] The same month, the FAA announced that the regulatory paperwork for the test program has already been filed and approved, and test flights were expected to begin before mid-May 2015.[9]

The first flight of the New Shepard vehicle was conducted on 29 April 2015 during which an altitude of 93,500 meters (307,000 ft) was attained. While the test itself was deemed a success and the capsule was correctly recovered via parachute landing, the booster stage landing failed because hydraulic pressure was lost during the descent.[10][11]
In September 2015, a deal with NASA meant they would now launch from complex 36 at Cape Canaveral.[12]

A second test flight of New Shepard was carried out on 23rd November 2015 reaching 100.5Km altitude with successful recovery of both capsule and booster stage.[13]

Blue Origin New Shepard

and a example from april of 2015

Bezos’ Blue Origin completes first test flight of ‘New Shepard’ spacecraft

ETA: if your talking about telling the world what they plan to do or try, well that's just good business.