Blue Origin Crew Capsule 2.0 Launched For The First Time, Lands Safely

While Elon Musk's SpaceX has its sights on the grand colonization of Mars, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin's ambitions are a bit more down to Earth, almost literally. While both have reusable rockets in their crosshair, Blue Origin has space tourism as its intermediate goal. And it has just taken one step closer to that dream. Not only did it launch the New Shephard for the seventh time, and successfully landed it, Blue Origin also launched, and landed, its Crew Capsule 2.0, touted to have the largest windows in space.

What good would space tourism be if you had to make a new rocket for each and every launch? Imagine if passenger planes were the same. That was the reasoning behind both Blue Origin's and SpaceX's race to build reusable rockets.

But what good would space tourism be if you didn't get a glimpse of that beautiful space? For that, you'll need huge windows, which is exactly what the Crew Capsule 2.0 offers. The capsule's windows measure 2.4 feet wide and 3.6 feet tall (0.73 x 1.10 meters). Those large windows might be inviting disaster when it comes to pressure and impact. Fortunately for the test dummy inside and for future space tourists, they survived just fine.

It's a successful first try but still a first try. Blue Origin still has ways to go if it plans to start bringing tourists to space in two years. That is, presuming it passes all the legal hurdles that might be harder to defy than gravity.