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| Wednesday / 28 June 2006 | ||
FAA Environmental
Assessment Reveals More Information on Blue Origin.
Although its website reveals very little
and its press releases are few, news about Amazon.com, Inc. Founder
Jeff Bezos' Blue
Origin is still offering fuel
to the excitement surrounding the current space access revolution.
Looking to be a player in the space tourism industry by 2010, the
space vehicle, technology and tourism company will conduct most flights
from Dell City TX -- 'The Blue Origin West Texas Commercial Launch
Site,' to be exact. It's new "crewed suborbital launch system" passenger
vehicles, called New Shepard, will be nearly identical to the DC-X
built
by McDonnell
Douglas for
NASA in the mid-1990s, according to the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) document.
The DC-X program, which apparently had military
connections,
was concluded in 1997 after sloppy work caused an explosion during
flight testing that rendered significant damage to the craft. According
to NASA,
the DC-X, short for 'Delta Clipper, Experimental,' would require
less investment
than a new airlines, be able to access every state in the USA, and
cost passengers as little as US$40,000 a flight. NASA says the
envisioned Delta Clipper could have been redesigned at significant
cost so the new vehicles could land on the Moon after refueling
in Earth
orbit and return to Earth. Bezos is presumably
already reconfiguring the original NASA-McDonnell Douglas design,
which accommodated two crewmembers and about 9,000
kg for flights to Low Earth Orbit. According to the FAA, Blue Origin
will construct a private spaceport, training facility, vehicle processing
center and more in the middle of farmland, where it will deliver
humans to space -- over 99 km up.
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