Blue Origin is a privately funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. The company was awarded $3.7 million in funding in 2009 by NASA via a Space Act Agreement under the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program for development of concepts and technologies to support future human spaceflight operations. They received another $22 million during the second phase of the Commercial Crew Development program. The company's "pusher" Launch Abort System (LAS) was one of the technologies that was of particular interest to NASA. To date abort systems have been of the tractor variety, which pulls a crew vehicle to safety in case of an emergency.
Initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight, the company has built and flown a testbed of its New Shepard spacecraft design at their Culberson County, Texas facility. According to company statements, it initially planned on placing the New Shepard in commercial suborbital tourist service in 2010 with flights about once a week. However, in 2008 the publicized timetable stated that Blue Origin will fly unmanned in 2011, and manned in 2012.
Read more about Blue Origin: History, Facilities, New Shepard, Space Vehicle, Test Flights
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