Jeff Bezos and the Spaceship

The public space travel business is picking up suborbital speed thanks to a variety of private rocket groups and their dream machines. Joining the mix is Blue Origin's New Shepard Reusable Launch System. It is financially fueled by an outflow of dollars from the deep pockets of billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.

The Bezos-backed Blue Origin, LLC commercial space outfit has recently turned in a draft environmental assessment (EA) for their West Texas launch site to the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) in Washington, D.C. The document is the best glimpse yet of what Blue Origin is scoping out to develop "safe, inexpensive and reliable human access to space."

The more than 200-page draft EA is a necessary step required by the FAA/AST for Blue Origin to get the needed permits and/or licenses to fly their rocket hardware. Blue Origin proposes to launch its reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) on suborbital, ballistic trajectories to altitudes in excess of 325,000 feet (99,060 meters) from a privately-owned space launch site in Culberson County, Texas. As outlined in the EA, the Blue Origin launch site would be approximately 25 miles (40.2 kilometers) north of Van Horn, Texas. It lies within a larger, privately-owned property known as the Corn Ranch. Access to the proposed launch site is from Texas Highway 54, which is approximately five miles (8 kilometers) west of the proposed project's center of operations.

Also on the group's to do list at the site is putting in place a vehicle processing facility, a launch complex and vehicle landing and recovery area, as well as an astronaut training facility, and other minor support amenities [Map].