This morning, Jeff Bezos had predicted an explosion: His hard working little rocket, the New Shepard, would go up in flames during its fifth---and final---launch. That's because this launch, unlike previous ones testing the rocket's ability to land, was an experiment of its escape system.
The New Shepard is, like all rockets, a carefully contained catastrophe. It is also topped by a crew capsule, which needs a way to get clear of the booster should anything go wrong. The escape system is a small engine on the bottom of the crew capsule that will carry the passengers a safe distance away, should sensors detect any sort of anomaly in the booster.
Today, Blue Origin tested the escape system while the rocket was 16,000 feet above west Texas—about 45 seconds after launch. At this altitude, the rocket was at so-called maximum Q, when aerodynamic stress is at its highest. When the emergency escape engine fired, it unleashed 70,000 pounds of force against the top of the rocket booster. Blue Origin's engineers expected that pressure would be enough to send the booster off kilter, making it impossible to land.
They were wrong. While the crew capsule deployed parachutes, the booster continued going up into space. After reaching its target altitude, it cut the engines and began descending back towards Texas. It used its fins to steer most of the way back, and kicked on its main engines for the final few hundred feet before settling back onto the launchpad.
Blue Origin is manufacturing more New Shepard boosters and crew capsules so, starting sometime in 2018, it can send up to six paying passengers to the bleeding-blue edge of space—about 62 miles up. Then the capsule and booster will separate, and come down to Earth under chute and rocket, respectively.
Saving the rocket wasn't today's goal. Blue Origin accomplished that when the crew capsule safely touched down in the west Texas dust. But for defying the odds and landing, the booster will get its fifth turtle painted on its hull. And, for being the first reusable booster in history, Bezos plans to throw the rocket a party and then prop it up in a museum somewhere.
