Amazon Chief Executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, who created the space company Blue Origin has unveiled a monster rocket that could one day carry humans into space. Its ambition is to make space travel more frequent and inexpensive.
Both the rocket and the ambitions appear to be big.
Named New Glenn – in honor of John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth – the three-stage rocket is 313 feet (95m) tall and 23 feet (7m) in diameter.
New Glenn has seven BE-4 engines, which are fuelled by burning liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen, producing 3.85 million pounds of thrust.
Blue Origin plans to first launch the rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Fla., before the end of the decade.
Mr. Bezos said that, their vision is millions of people living and working in space, and New Glenn is a very important step.
As a private company, Blue Origin could launch wealthy tourists into space, send commercial satellites into orbit and provide the technology to send NASA back to the moon, as well as to Mars and beyond.
It is thought that the ability to reuse rocket launchers will dramatically reduce the cost of space travel, and open the door to a range of scientific research and technological development opportunities.
