01 SPACEX VS. BLUE ORIGIN
From a dusty expanse in West Texas, Jeff Bezos and the crew of Blue Origin, his well-funded aerospace company, fire up their New Shepard rocket. It rises vertically, thrusting into the heavens at more than 2,800 mph. The unmanned crew capsule it’s carrying detaches and it crests roughly 64 miles above sea level, and the booster begins plummeting back to earth, a pencil dive from space. At 3,635 feet, the engine reignites, blazing a streak at its tail that flares as the rocket nears the ground, slowing its fall. Within a plume of dust, New Shepard softly touches down at around just 4 mph—a controlled test landing that Bezos calls “flawless.”
When Blue Origin first achieved this feat in November 2015, Bezos, wearing aviators and a cowboy hat, sprayed champagne in celebration of a landing many proclaimed “historic.” By April, when Blue Origin reused the same rocket for the third time, the remarkable had become routine. And soon, old news: On April 8, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its Falcon 9, a rocket that’s substantially faster, more powerful, and larger than Blue Origin’s—roughly as tall as a 24-story
