Blue Origin is a privately-funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight, the company has built and flown a testbed of its New Shepard spacecraft design at their Culberson County, Texas facility. According to company statements, it plans on placing the New Shepard in commercial suborbital tourist service in 2010 with flights about once a week. According to the most recently publiciz...
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Blue Origin is a privately-funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight, the company has built and flown a testbed of its New Shepard spacecraft design at their Culberson County, Texas facility. According to company statements, it plans on placing the New Shepard in commercial suborbital tourist service in 2010 with flights about once a week. According to the most recently publicized timetable, Blue Origin will fly unmanned in 2011, and manned in 2012.
Since its founding the company has been notoriously tight-lipped about its plans. Although the company was formally incorporated in 2000, its existence only became public in 2003, when Bezos started buying land in Texas and interested parties followed up on the purchases. This was a topic of some interest in local politics, and his rapid aggregation of the lots under a variety of whimsically named shell companies was referred to as a "land grab".
In January 2005, Bezos...
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