Does Jeff Bezos’ new rocket look like a dick, or what?
Yesterday, almost by surprise, rocket company Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2000, launched their spaceship, New Shepherd, from their West Texas launch base, ushering in another company that will potentially provide commercial space flights with affordable rockets — only this one is the most penis-shaped of them all.
The rocket consists of the reusable booster engine, or the shaft, if you will, and the crew capsule, also known as the tip. The rocket blasted off to an altitude of 307,000 feet before the tip separated from the shaft and gently floated back down to Earth — the shaft, unfortunately, could not be recovered successfully.
According to Wired, Bezos announced after the launch:
“Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return … Unfortunately we didn’t get to recover the propulsion module because we lost pressure in our hydraulic system on descent.”
It’s always quite unfortunate when things lose pressure and become flaccid before the job is finished.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, almost successfully landed their reusable rocket engine, Falcon 9, on a landing pad in the ocean. I’m no rocket scientist, but perhaps Musk was dreaming too big by making the shaft of his rocket much longer.
You may compare below.
I’ll bet Bezos understands the importance of the length-to-girth ratio.
