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New Glenn’s first flight
Blue Origin formally announced the development of New Glenn which aims to outpower SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and haul spacecraft up to 45 metric tons (99,200 pounds) to orbit in 2016.
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The vehicle is long overdue, as the company previously targeted 2020 for its first launch.
Delays, however, are common in the aerospace industry. And the debut flight of a new vehicle is almost always significantly behind schedule.
Rocket companies also typically take a conservative approach to the first liftoff, launching dummy payloads such as hunks of metal or, as was the case with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy debut in 2018, an old cherry red sports car.
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Blue Origin has also branded itself as a company that aims to take a slow, diligent approach to rocket development that doesn’t “cut any corners,” according to Bezos, who founded Blue Origin and funds the company.
The company’s mascot is a tortoise, paying homage to “The Tortoise and the Hare” fable that made the “slow and steady wins the race” mantra a childhood staple.
“We believe slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” Bezos said in 2016. Those comments could be seen as an attempt to position Blue Origin as the anti-SpaceX, which is known to embrace speed and trial-and-error over slow, meticulous development processes.
But SpaceX has certainly won the race to orbit. The company’s first orbital rocket, the Falcon 1, made a successful launch in September 2008. The company has deployed hundreds of missions to orbit since then.
And while SpaceX routinely destroys rockets during test flights as it begins developing a new rocket, the company has a solid track record for operational missions. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, for example, has experienced two in-flight failures and one launchpad explosion but no catastrophic events during human missions.
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- 25/1/15(水) 12:44 -
