Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, plans to launch Wednesday morning from Texas what may be the last test flight for its New Shepard rocket before it carries people later this year. But people will be getting into and out of the capsule atop the 60-foot-high rocket as part of the test.

Liftoff is planned for 11:15 a.m. EDT from the company's spaceport near Van Horn, about 120 miles southeast of El Paso. The mission, called NS-15, is "a verification step prior to flying astronauts," the company posted on Twitter.

If successful, Blue Origin may become only the third private company to achieve human spaceflight, after Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin's rocket achieves space only briefly at the edge of the atmosphere about 60 miles high. SpaceX rockets, on the other hand, put people and cargo in orbit around the Earth.

On Wednesday, Blue Origin staff members will wear flight suits and enter the capsule before launch. They also will exit before launch, in a process that allows the company to test capsule accessibility procedures.

Upon landing with the aid of parachutes, the capsule again will face a test when Blue Origin sends those personnel to sit in the cabin and practice exiting.

While the rocket firms are competing with each other, such human spaceflight endeavors need as many companies as possible helping to advance human spaceflight, said Andy Turnage, executive director of the non-profit Association of Space Explorers, based in the Houston area.

"The larger and more varied the industry ... the less vulnerable it is to any single failure or even any number of failures," Turnage said in an interview Tuesday. The association includes more than 400 astronauts, cosmonauts and private space flyers.

"It appears that Blue [Origin] has demonstrated a methodical and conservative approach to launching and recovering their vehicles," he said, adding that such caution worked for SpaceX and NASA over a period of years.

Blue Origin's plan to put people on board just before launch, even without launching them, represents major progress for the company, said John Spencer, a space architect and founder of the non-profit Space Tourism Society based in Los Angeles.

"I think this is a significant step forward because of the interface with the people, real people being in the capsule," Spencer said Tuesday.

"I'm sure Blue will learn some things. When you put people and those pieces of high-tech equipment together there's always a chance for a problem or issue," he said.

Despite the risks of spaceflight, Blue Origin's rocket and capsule offer an experience more in line with the public perception of spaceflight than Virgin Galactic's spaceplane, Spencer said.

During the flight, the capsule will contain only a test dummy, Mannequin Skywalker, along with more than 25,000 postcards from members of Blue Origin's Club for the Future, a non-profit founded by Blue Origin that promotes space exploration.

The launch is to occur just after NASA announced Friday that it will partner with Blue Origin to use the New Shepard rocket for lunar gravity tests.

Blue Origin will spin the rocket briefly on future missions to simulate the low gravity of the moon, allowing NASA to test equipment and procedures for future lunar missions.

Related Links
Blue Origin
Rocket Science News at Space-Travel.Com

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