The veil that has been covering the activities performed by Blue Origin, the company created by Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the founder, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Amazon.com, has been lifted. Underneath, it seems there was assiduous work for the development of the spacecraft called New Shepard, comprised of a pressurized crew capsule and a propulsion module that will carry it aloft.

The spacecraft will lift off vertically and will land in a similar way. It is aimed at carrying astronauts (for private purposes or for research purposes), as well as scientific and experimental equipment into suborbital space from its operational private launch site in Texas. Blue Origin announced that they are expecting contractors to get in touch with their representative, Alan Stern, former NASA chief of space science.

 

The tests for the vehicle began in 2006. The first unmanned flights are set for 2011, with piloted operations following a year later. Astronauts will experience a maximum acceleration of 6G during the flight. The capsule will also offer a microgravitational environment for experiments for three or more minutes upon request, data recording, as well as at least three positions for astronauts or experiment racks, each able to contain about 120 kg (264 pounds) and provided with a window.

 

A NASA office already assesses the ways it could make use of the vehicle, given its adaptability for atmospheric or planetary observations and measurements, for indoor microgravity experiments, ranging from physiology to physics, but also for deploying payloads. The New Shepard vehicle could prove to be a viable substitute until the Constellation program is up and running, following the retirement of the spacecraft fleet in September 2010. There are other options being considered, such as SpaceX's vehicles, but Blue Origin officials emphasize the low cost of their solution.