Beyond running the world’s biggest e-commerce site and rivaling Apple, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos—like entrepreneur Richard Branson before him—is also actively trying to make commercial space travel a reality with his venture, Blue Origin. With $22 million in funding from NASA, Origin has made some recent strides with their New Shepard spacecraft, a reusable, water-tanked ship meant for short, sub-orbital flights—flights in which the craft would maintain the same vertical position upon launch and landing without completing an orbital revolution.
Watch the video above to see the New Shepard complete a “test hop” and proof that the company’s goal of an “enduring human presence in space” might not be very far off, despite the end of NASA’s Space Shuttle program.
[via Engadget]
