A reusable-rocket milestone has
sparked a mini-squabble between two of the billionaires who are helping
transform the private spaceflight industry.
On Monday
(Nov. 23), Blue Origin — a company established by Amazon.com founder
Jeff Bezos —launched a rocket into suborbital space and then brought it back down for a soft landing
at a pad in West Texas. The uncrewed test marked a big step toward full
rocket reusability, which could open the heavens to human exploration
by dramatically lowering the cost of spaceflight, Bezos said.
"To be able to do a vertical landing with a fully reusable booster
stage is a really big deal," he said during a press briefing Tuesday
(Nov. 24). "It is the Holy Grail — to get full reuse." [See more photos of Blue Origin's epic test flight]
Billionaire Elon Musk, who founded the private spaceflight company
SpaceX in 2002, congratulated Bezos and Blue Origin via Twitter Tuesday.
But he also mentioned the suborbital nature of Monday's test and said
Blue Origin did not exactly make history.
"But credit for 1st reusable suborbital rocket goes to X-15 ?en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 … And Burt Rutan for commercial ?en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne … ,"
Musk tweeted, referring to the U.S. Air Force/NASA X-15 experimental
rocket plane and SpaceShipOne, the Rutan-designed craft that reached
space twice in the span of two weeks back in 2004.
A little context here: SpaceX is also working hard to develop reusable,
vertically landing rockets. Indeed, the company's Grasshopper prototype
landed successfully multiple times during flight tests over the last
few years, though it never came close to reaching space.
SpaceX has also brought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back for
a soft "ocean landing" in the Atlantic during orbital launches, and
nearly succeeded in landing the booster on a floating ocean platform on
two other orbital flights.
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