Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin New Shepard rocket was the first rocket to land vertically. But instead, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin successfully performed an in-flight escape test, while also improbably landing the first stage of its New Shepard rocket in the West Texas desert Wednesday. It was the fifth time the New Shepard rocket had flown and landed, and a significant step toward perfecting the art of reusable rockets that could help dramatically lower the cost of space travel. The capsule escape motor will slam the booster with 70,000 pounds of off-axis force delivered by searing hot exhaust." But if the booster does somehow survive, Bezos wrote that "we will in fact reward it for its service with a retirement party and put it in a museum.

Source: Washington Post October 05, 2016 13:55 UTC