Bezos's Blue Origin Recycles a Rocket, Lands It Again

Two months ago, Jeff Bezos’s rocket company, Blue Origin, launched a rocket into outer space and landed it back on Earth — a big step in its quest to make space exploration cheaper by reusing rockets. On Friday, they did it again.

In a video that Bezos tweeted on Friday evening, the company says that its New Shepard rocket became the first used rocket to travel past the the Karman Line — which is about 62 miles above sea level and the de facto crossing into outer space — and land vertically.

https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/690731500812169217

“Our vision: Millions of people living and working in space,” the video reads. “You can’t get there by throwing the hardware away.”

Impressive? Yes. But one big caveat before the Elon Musk/SpaceX fanboys have a collective aneurysm: While Blue Origin’s landings are certainly historic, they are not as technically challenging as SpaceX’s. At a basic level, Blue Origin’s current spacecraft, which is much smaller than SpaceX’s, is going up into space and back down again. SpaceX’s is heading into orbit, which requires much faster speed.

Musk tweeted out an explainer back in November.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/669129655597731841

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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