High Frontier Forums

The Blue Origin rocket that went to the edge of space and landed a couple months ago has just done it again — the very first time a vertical take-off-and-landing rocket has done so.

(Though not the first time for rocket-powered craft in general; that would be SpaceShipOne.)





This friendly rivalry between Blue Origin and SpaceX is great for all of us.  I expect that in 5-10 years they will both have reusable orbital launch vehicles, and costs are going to continue to drop sharply.

What I really dig about Blue Origin is "Our vision: Millions of people living and working in space."  That's space colonization they're talking about... High Frontier, here we come!

SpaceX, Blue Origins and Virgin Galactic remind me of that wonderful sci-fi novel partly written by Buzz Aldrin from the mid nineties called Encounter with Tiber in which he predicts that in the future some of the world's billionaires would fund rival bids for space development. And it's happening!

I just read Encounter with Tiber a couple months ago! Good book.

I agree, these are some very exciting times. And I think it says something very fundamental about humanity... even when governments are lacking vision, there will always be individuals with the drive, and eventually the means, to create the future.