Blue Origin ‘one step closer’ to human flights after successful suborbital launch

Taking another step toward flying space tourists to the edge of space, Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin again flew its New Shepard suborbital booster Thursday with a package of microgravity research experiments. The single-stage rocket took off from Blue Origin’s privately-operated launch site north of Van Horn, Texas, at 9:35 a.m. EDT (8:35 a.m. CDT; 1335 GMT). Named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the rocket climbed into a clear sky powered by a hydrogen-fueled BE-3 main engine, which accelerated the vehicle to a speed of more than 2,200 mph (3,540 kilometers per hour) in less than two-and-a-half minutes. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 3)