When you think of Amazon, you think of rockets, right?

Well, maybe not, but they now officially have a solid link. Jeff Bezos used (likely a very tiny portion of) his Amazon money to create Blue Origin. The goal, much like that of SpaceX, is to create a reusable launch vehicle. A typical satellite launch costs about $200 million. With a reusable launch vehicle, that cost is estimated to be closer to $50 million. This is a problem worth solving.

SpaceX got pretty close with their last launch, but again lost their rocket when it tipped over on landing.

From Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin blog entry:

Today we flew the first developmental test flight of our New Shepard space vehicle. Our 110,000-lbf thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet. Guidance, navigation and control was nominal throughout max Q and all of ascent. The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect. Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.

In fact, if New Shepard had been a traditional expendable vehicle, this would have been a flawless first test flight. Of course one of our goals is reusability, and unfortunately we didn’t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent. Fortunately, we’ve already been in work for some time on an improved hydraulic system. Also, assembly of propulsion module serial numbers 2 and 3 is already underway – we’ll be ready to fly again soon.

Video and images can be found here.