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Blue Origin shuts down New Shepard suborbital tourist flights

Blue Origin yesterday announced it is “pausing” the suborbital tourist flights of its New Shepard spacecraft for no less than two years.

Blue Origin today announced it will pause its New Shepard flights and shift resources to further accelerate development of the company’s human lunar capabilities. The decision reflects Blue Origin’s commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.

Those “lunar capabilites” not only include its lunar landers, both manned and unmanned, but its New Glenn rocket, which it wants to sell to NASA to use for these missions. Both need more attention. In addition, it could be the company’s CEO, David Limp, wants to allocate more resources to the company’s Orbital Reef space station proposal, which has been sitting dead in the water for the past year-plus. All these projects have been very slow to get out of the starting gate, partly because of the very leisurely culture that Blue Origin’s previous CEO installed, and partly because the company has put out too many projects it is not focusing well on finishing.

There is also likely a third reason: New Shepard was not making a profit. While the company has been flying it quite regularly in recent months, it does not appear it could ever recover its costs. Moreover, I suspect the demand for these short suborbital tourist flights has diminished with advent of orbital tourism and the soon-to-arrive multiple commercial space stations.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Max

    Lunar space station? More likely lunar data center a hub for the spying network. (The moon is our future, there will be only one land rush until the inhabitants build their forts and defense systems to hold out everyone else)

    Now Elon musk‘s comments about a lunar base takes new relevance.
    https://youtu.be/yxax4xpZus8?si=-1D719z_l0k1zoQR

    A two hour interview of his future predictions condensed into one hour but he talks about lunar base, starship advancement about 2/3 the way through.

  • Jeff Wright

    I suppose New Shepard gave them enough experience with VTOVL to where they don’t need it anymore….those lessons going to Blue Moon lunar landers

    With Dream Chaser on the back burner and Branson being Branson… adherents of winged spaceflight just don’t have a lot of options.

    Anti-gravity will be discovered before Radian flies.

    This might be a good time for them to seek and audience with Bill Gates.

    Rumors have it that he got a bug at Epstein Island (Smiles everyone….smiles…Tattoo). That likely explains his divorce.

    But that makes him immune to the Paul Allen Sister Syndrome…no do-gooder Karen holding him back by trying to spend his fortune on the Third World.

    He needs to admit that Dambisa Moyo (author of DEAD AID) was right. That frees him up to become the Elon Musk of winged spaceflight.

    That is a much better legacy than being remembered as a little dweeb who had to pay to get companionship.

    For a couple of billion, Gary Hudson would volunteer to put on heels.

  • mkent

    ”I suspect the demand for these short suborbital tourist flights has diminished…”

    Blue Origin’s own announcement of the pause mentioned that New Shepard has a multi-year backlog.

    ”…with advent of orbital tourism and the soon-to-arrive multiple commercial space stations.”

    Which have nothing to do with New Shepard flights. They are completely different markets.

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