Blue Origin to make commercial space announcement at Cape Canaveral
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla — Jeff Bezos, the founder of the commercial aerospace firm Blue Origin, will host an event at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, it is currently scheduled to take place on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and will begin at around 9:45 a.m. EDT. Not much more than that has been said about the event other than it will be about the emerging commercial launch industry. Speculation has it, however, that a new launch vehicle might be joining those who already fly from the Cape.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Blue Origin might be eyeing the Cape’s established infrastructure from which to both build and launch the company’s launch vehicles from, a possibility noted by Florida Today’s James Dean.
The Orlando Business Journal provided a bit more information, stating a $200 million investment that could see hundreds of new jobs created in the region was in the offing. This could serve to benefit the Space Coast as the area was severely impacted in 2010 when President Barack Obama cancelled NASA’s crewed program of record, Constellation.
For its part, Blue Origin has stated that Cape Canaveral is one of the locations from which it was considering launching from and Dean noted in his article the mysterious “Project Pathfinder” that Space Florida, the Sunshine State’s aerospace development firm, had approved last week, suggesting that the roughly 15-year-old company would join the two other current launch service providers along Florida’s Space Coast.
At present, United Launch Alliance (ULA ) and SpaceX fly their Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 9 rockets from the current active pads at the Cape, SLC 41, 37 and 40 (respectively).
Blue Origin’s offerings have already caught the eye of entities with a strong history in the launch industry. ULA has stated that its new Vulcan booster, which could fly as early as 2019 – would use Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine.
Bezos is perhaps best known as the entrepreneur who founded Amazon.com, which was initially an online site to publish books and has since expanded to include a wide array of other products. He founded Blue Origin in 2000 with an eye on expanding access to orbit while lowering the cost to send payloads aloft.
Jason Rhian
Jason Rhian spent several years honing his skills with internships at NASA, the National Space Society and other organizations. He has provided content for outlets such as: Aviation Week & Space Technology, Space.com, The Mars Society and Universe Today.
As accurately, you could have written “because President George Bush underfunded NASA’s crewed program of record, Constellation.”