NASA and the Private Sector - Page 39

WASHINGTON — Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has invested at least half a billion dollars of his own money into Blue Origin, his spaceflight venture, a company official said July 17.

“We’re very fortunate to have a founder who has a vision and the funding and resources to match it,” Brett Alexander, director of business development and strategy at Blue Origin, said during a panel session of the Future Space 2014 conference in Washington. Bezos, best known as the founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, established Blue Origin in 2000.

Blue Origin has received a small amount of funding from NASA in the form of awards in the first two phases of the agency’s commercial crew program: $3.7 million in 2010 and $22 million in 2011.

“We got $25 million from the NASA commercial crew program, and that represents less than 5 percent of what our founder has put into the company,” Alexander said.

That would mean Bezos’ investment in Blue Origin is at least $500 million.

We will attempt our next water landing on flight 13 of Falcon 9, but with a low probability of success. Flights 14 and 15 will attempt to land on a solid surface with an improved probability of success.

The Pentagon’s premier research division wants to design an advanced spacecraft that engineers have tried and failed to build for years. So they’ve enlisted the help of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson, naturally.

No, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has not lost its marbles; it’s just that Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Bezos’ Blue Origin companies have technology the Pentagon needs to reduce the exorbitant cost of space flight.

While both Branson and Bezos are known as magnates in other industries, both men have a large interest in forwarding the human exploration of space.

Branson, for example, founded Virgin Galactic specifically as a space tourism company to allow the common—if extraordinarily wealthy—citizen to experience the thrill of leaving the Earth’s surly bounds.

Bezos—who has many business interests outside Amazon--founded Blue Origin specifically to further human space flight at low cost. The company is working on a rocket that can take off and land vertically like a helicopter.

On July 27 2014 08:39 Yurie wrote:


Is that typical of a US talk show? The guest, which is the reason I watched the clip, got interrupted multiple times and didn't get to answer questions that were stated. Feels like the pre show talk between them about what content should be on it wasn't done properly if they wanted to stream line it that much.

Overall a bad interview since it was very general and didn't expand on things it actually took up.

On July 27 2014 08:39 Yurie wrote:


Is that typical of a US talk show? The guest, which is the reason I watched the clip, got interrupted multiple times and didn't get to answer questions that were stated. Feels like the pre show talk between them about what content should be on it wasn't done properly if they wanted to stream line it that much.

Overall a bad interview since it was very general and didn't expand on things it actually took up.

SAN DIEGO — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. will perform a pair of crucial launch abort tests beginning later this year for the crewed version of the Dragon space capsule central to the company’s bid to become NASA’s post-shuttle provider of astronaut transportation.

The Hawthorne, California-based company plans to conduct a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in November, followed by an in-flight abort test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in January, Garrett Reisman, SpaceX Dragon Rider program manager, said here Aug. 6 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2014 conference.

In the pad-abort test, Dragon will be mounted to a mocked-up SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and use its hydrazine-fueled SuperDraco thrusters to boost itself up and away from the pad, as it might need to do in the event of a major problem just before or during liftoff. The in-flight test will attempt to repeat the feat at altitude.

As NASA considers what company will build a replacement for the space shuttle, which the space agency needs to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station and end an uncomfortable dependence upon Russia, one of the three competitors is offering more than just a spacecraft.

Boeing has put jobs on the table, too, saying it will build its CST-100 spacecraft at NASA's Florida space center, where the launch crowds could return as soon as 2017.

Boeing's insider style differs markedly from that of another competitor, SpaceX, an upstart that has taken an outsider's approach, preferring to build its spacecraft in-house. The final bidder, Sierra Nevada, is somewhere in between.

NASA should make its decision on the "commercial crew" competition in the next few weeks. At stake is not just a $4 billion contract, but prestige. The next spacecraft that flies U.S. astronauts will have an American flag, yes, but also a prominent corporate logo. That company will also join the elite club - whose only members include the United States, Russia and China - that has flown humans in space.