SoylentNews

fork(2) [soylentnews.org] writes:

      With SpaceX set to launch [space.com] it's ISS cargo mission, Rich Smith at the Motley Fool takes a look [fool.com] at Blue Origin's position in the space race. His conclusion? Blue Origin "doesn't plan to play second fiddle to SpaceX for long."

[...] Bezos has bigger ambitions than "just" launching tourists to the edge of space for a lookabout, then bringing them back down again. Like Musk at SpaceX, Bezos eventually plans to transform Blue Origin into a true orbital carrier, capable of launching rockets into space and keeping them there.

      To facilitate that dream, last month Bezos broke ground on an "orbital vehicle manufacturing complex" in Florida, where Blue Origin will build the rocket ships of tomorrow. Billed in a press release as a "custom-built ... 750,000 square foot rocket factory," his new complex, says Bezos, will "accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing" of entire rockets (except for the engines, which Blue Origin builds at another location).

      That square footage, by the way, is nearly as large as SpaceX's own Hawthorne facility. Indeed, if you include the 260,000 square feet of the plant in Kent, Washington, where Blue Origin builds its engines, Blue Origin could soon have more factory floor space than the "almost 1 million"-square-foot factory that SpaceX operates.

      [...]

      Current expectations are for Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft to begin manned test flights next year, and for Blue Origin to begin ferrying paying passengers to the verge of space by 2018. With the company's new factory expected to open just days before the calendar flips over to 2018, this suggests that Blue Origin has set itself a tight schedule.

      It also suggests that Jeff Bezos is serious about meeting it.

      In another article on GeekWire [geekwire.com], Allen Boyle reports that:

[Erika] Wagner [Blue Origin's business development manager] told the San Diego audience [at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference [issconference.org]] that Blue Origin's payload manifest has been planned out for the next year, and would add biology experiments to the mix. The team is also looking at ways to modify the spacecraft so that experiments can be exposed to the space environment, rather than staying inside the pressurized New Shepard capsule throughout the flight, she said.

      [...]

      Wagner said the suborbital space program was part of Blue Origin's long-term strategy of having millions of people living and working in space. "For us, success is people starting to make money on the back of our platform," she said.

Original Submission