The company plans to build a suborbital vehicle called New Shepard. The New Shepard will be controlled entirely by on-board computers, without ground control. It will be powered by high-test peroxide (HTP) and RP-1 kerosene.
A number of test vehicles will also be built. The first example, named the Goddard (also known as PM1), first flew on November 13, 2006. The flight was successful. However, a second test flight filed for December 2 never launched. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, two further flights were performed by Goddard.
In an interview with television show host Charlie Rose on November 19, 2007, Bezos reported that the construction of a second test vehicle was in progress and that a third development vehicle would be built after that, before any commercial flights would begin.
A Federal Aviation Administration NOTAM indicated that a flight test was scheduled for August 24, 2011. The August 24, 2011 test flight in west Texas failed when ground personnel lost contact and control of the vehicle. The company recovered remnants of the spacecraft after a ground search. Blue Origin released the results of the cause of the test vehicle failure on September 2. As the vehicle reached a speed of Mach 1.2 and 45,000 feet (14,000 m) altitude, a "flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle."
On October 19, 2012, Blue Origin conducted a successful Pad Escape at its West Texas launch site, firing its pusher escape motor and launching a full-scale suborbital Crew Capsule from a launch vehicle simulator. The Crew Capsule traveled to an altitude of 2,307 feet under active thrust vector control before descending safely by parachute to a soft landing 1,630 feet downrange.
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