Blue Origin successfully launches suborbital rocket and returns it to launch site
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029401
Ars Technica : This morning, Blue Origin announced that yesterday it launched its New Shepard rocket to an altitude of 100.5 km and returned it safely to the launch site. It is the first rocket to achieve this task. The ability to reuse hardware could cut the costs of access to space or high-altitude flight substantially. Space X has been working on a similar technique for the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket, but has had only limited success. Blue Origin’s New Shepard combines a booster with a pressurized crew capsule, and its video of the launch suggests that the company intends to use New Shepard for space tourism: Passengers riding in the crew capsule would be lifted into space for a brief period of weightlessness, then the capsule would deploy a parachute before returning to Earth.
