Bezos space firm claims reusable rocket breakthrough

However, he was quick to point out that Bezos didn't achieve orbit - the New Shepard flight was only suborbital, meaning it essentially went very high up before coming back to Earth.

Bezos's Blue Origin is less known than Musk's SpaceX, yet it was Blue Origin that has now managed to successfully land a BE-3 rocket smoothly on the ground first. Blue Origin, launched in 2000, has had $500 million sunk into it by Bezos alone. That makes it less hard than landing a rocket from orbit, which is what SpaceX is trying to achieve.

"We are building Blue Origin to seed an enduring human presence in space, to help us move beyond this blue planet that is the origin of all we know", Bezos wrote in a blog post.

The private space firm founded by Internet entrepreneur Jeff Bezos claimed a breakthrough for its space travel efforts Tuesday with the launch of a reusable rocket.

And Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle is not powerful enough to make it -; yet.

The aim eventually is to carry astronauts, including tourists, into space - something NASA no longer does with its own rockets.

Named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard, the New Shepard vehicle is comprised of two elements: a crew capsule in which the astronauts ride and a rocket booster powered by a single American-made BE-3 liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen engine. Musk's company has attempted to land its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge after launch. The company succeeded in testing at landing a rocket sailing up 1,000 meters, or about 3280 feet.

While Blue Origin's spacecraft certainly isn't the first vehicle to fly into space, it is notable because the spacecraft is reusable.

Blue Origins is developing partnerships to launch small payloads to space as part of its space tourism business.

The landing - Rocket booster is reignited at 4,896 feet above ground level.

Between Boeing, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Xcor, and Blue Origin, the private space race is fully underway-and it appears that Jeff Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, is finally making some headway.

Indeed, Musk's SpaceX has also been attempting to develop reusable rockets, but has failed in a number of missions this year.

The company has launched a You Tube video documenting the take-off, an animated stimulation of what the flight in space will be like and the landing.