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.
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.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"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
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.
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.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"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
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.
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.
”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.
mkent: Blue Origin can say whatever they want in a press release. I am not obliged to believe them.
Perhaps it’s just a matter of Blue Origin, as a company, lacking the ability to multi-task as well as, say, SpaceX. No shame in that and Limp would be remiss if he did not ruthlessly prioritize tasks and prune those least critical.
The would-be passengers of New Shepard can now exchange commiserations and uncertainties with the even longer-suffering would-be passengers of Virgin Galactic.
I agree with others who say that BO achieved a lot with New Shepard but it’s time to move on. The demonstrated a launch cadence from once an eon of the olden Cape days, they demonstrated re-use, demonstrated getting people up and down safely.
They DID something.
But now it’s time to move on.
Notable that after Bezos had his NS flight, his interest in the project seemed to wane. Likewise with Branson after he had his VG flight (though by that time Branson’s control of the company had faded).
Got the boss his ride, Mission Accomplished!
Jeff W,
I appreciate your dogged dedication to the spaceplane concept.
As a kid watching 2OO1, I imagined the future to feature graceful winged spacecraft bringing people into and out of orbit.
But if you’re looking for a billionaire to back it, Bill Gates is probably a poor choice. I expect he’ll be trying to keep a low profile these days.
The billionaire who could make it happen is Musk. But you’d have to prove to him that a winged craft could better accomplish his space goals than Starship. Remember Musk/SpaceX started with a totally clean sheet of paper. I’m sure they looked at winged concepts and evaluated them before deciding on the Starship/SH system.
Regarding SLS, yes it’s been successful getting to orbit, and I hope in a few weeks we’ll be talking about it’s success taking astronauts around the moon. But has SLS succeeded in it’s primary mission? As I remember, SLS was supposed to be our way of quickly and (relatively) inexpensively getting back into space once the Shuttle was retired. The concept was to use known/proven/available hardware to put a simple capsule up so we could get to ISS and go further in the future. Heck, even the name was simple. No Greek gods, just “Space Launch System”.
SLS/Orion should have been bringing astronauts and cargo to ISS 10 years ago and doing it at reasonable cost with a decent launch rate.
It failed so utterly that it isn’t going to be used to service ISS. That mission has been accomplished by F9/Dragon – at a cost and availability SLS could never hope to match.
Mitch S: FYI, NASA knew from day one, when Bush Jr. proposed it in 2004, that the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and Ares rocket (both of which became Orion and SLS) were never going to be used to supply ISS. That was never the mission. They were supposed to take us “to the Moon and beyond” (to quote Bush) when he announced this program.
Of course, from day one Orion was never an interplanetary spacecraft, and NASA has been lying about that from day one. It is simply an overweight ascent/descent capsule. And of course, Ares/SLS was never going to make it possible to settle the solar system, being from day one too expensive and poorly designed to launch frequently enough to do the job.
From day one (in that Bush administration) NASA began looking for alternatives to the shuttle for supplying ISS with cargo and crew. And that search produced the first cargo contracts to SpaceX and Kistler (later transferred to Northrop Grumman) in 2008.
Their only business plan9chance at breaking even) died when NASA did not give their passengers Astronaut status.
There goes my hopes that these piddly little suborbital hops would drop in price so that schmucks like me could afford it one day.
They wouldn’t stop flights if they were making money on a safe endeavor, unless whatever resources needed elsewhere are in short supply. You simply hire or buy more
I never did buy into the suborbital nonsense.
To Mitch,
The only spaceplanes that make sense are like X-37, Buran, and Dream Chaser——in that they aren’t trying to be LVs in their own right like Radian, Columbia, etc.
Air breathers like scramjets would be rather involved. Simple turbojets can be used after re-entry.
Maybe a spaceplane could fit inside or replace Starship at a later date.
What parallel staging does is allow wider wingspans. By keeping unwieldy tankage/rockets outside the airframe, you are free to experiment.
Musk wants Starship to be RLV…a business.
I want Shuttle 2 as a Manhattan Project….something that paves the way for Hypersonics over time.
Stratolaunch can carry more sizable test vehicles than B-52 ever could.
What sticks in my mind was how some of the CFD guys were flummoxed about SuperHeavy maneuvers upon return. That never surprised me.
The problem is that boostback has sucked all the oxygen out of the room faster than vacuum facilities.
A great nation should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. While Elon does his thing, others should research different approaches….and that is best done with modularity.
Jeff Wright: people *are* pursuing other approaches, and you dismiss them because they aren’t what you want to see. That said, transport tends to converge after a while, which is why we see more Falcon 9 lookalikes than anything else. People imitate what works. Parallel staging imposes numerous engineering problems, many of which are avoidable with in-line staging, which is why nobody has seriously pursued it after the Shuttle and Buran were designed. You’re too late on hypersonic research, there are already multiple approaches for pursuing it underway.
Trying multiple approaches is best done with a focus on low cost, not modularity. Modularity is expensive.
Tend to disagree with JW on this. If BO can’t make $$$ with a self-professed years long backlog of interested parties for a suborbital hop, then they have a fatal flaw with their business model. If they are unable or unwilling to grow the operation into Cis-Lunar space with a viable suborbital business as a foundation, they suffer failure of nerve, neither of which identify them as ready, willing, able or capable of growing the business sufficiently large to be sustainable. From here according to their own claims, it appears the New Shepard suborbital business is viable but they are overwhelmed by going to the moon. Talk about walking and chewing gum at the same time. OTOH, if they are pumping sunshine, they I understand the decision. Sheesh. Cheers –
Saville wrote: “I agree with others who say that BO achieved a lot with New Shepard but it’s time to move on.”
Maybe, but they made promises — commitments — to customers. If they are willing to easily break their promises to customers, then are they trustworthy? For the sake of their reputation, I think that they need to get back to New Shepard at some point, and the sooner the better.
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From the linked article:
This suggests to me that it is more than just the tourist flights but also the experimental flights, as well. I have to wonder what happens to the ground support crews, some of whom may not be needed to support New Glenn or any other Blue Origin projects, right now. For instance, New Shepard has astronauts, but the other projects won’t have any for several years.
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Jeff Wright wrote: “I want Shuttle 2 as a Manhattan Project”
I want future vehicles to be commercial projects. The costs are less and the usefulness more. When profit is the motive, usefulness and need are major drivers, and costs are major concerns. If hypersonics fit the bill, then they will be developed by commercial companies that want them in order to make money from customers that want to use them.
“A great nation should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. While Elon does his thing, others should research different approaches….and that is best done with modularity.”
There are plenty of other companies researching and developing different approaches. Different launch vehicles. Different manned and unmanned transportation spacecraft. Different space stations. Different orbital manufacturing reentry vehicles. Different lunar landers.