The Experimental Aircraft Association kicked off its annual AirVenture airshow today in Oshkosh, Wis., and Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and crew capsule are on full display.
According to the EAA’s Twitter page, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ recycled rocket arrived on the scene last Wednesday, tucked away under a snug blanket on the back of a truck. It took two cranes to lift it up and into position.
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It’s no easy task to move the rocket around. In April, when Blue Origin set up shop at the Space Symposium in Colorado, Ariane Cornell from the company’s business and development team reportedly joked that moving the rocket was nearly as hard as landing it at their West Texas facility.
This week, the towering New Shepard rocket is among the main attractions in the airshow’s Boeing Plaza, where Blue Origin gave out goodies to its first 1,000 visitors. The rocket will share the plaza with presentations on historic warbirds, a concert by the Barenaked Ladies and Blue Origin’s own crew capsule.
The six-seater astronaut crew capsule is a one-to-one scale model of the craft that may eventually take space tourists into space. It was shipped out from its home in Kent, Wash. so potential customers can relax back into the reclining seats and take a look out of the largest space-ready windows in history.
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In 2015, New Shepard became the first booster to soar to the Karman line, a height of 330,000 feet, and return to Earth in an upright landing. Following its achievement on Nov. 23, 2015, Blue Origin proved it could recycle New Shepard and flew it four other times the following year.
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In addition to Blue Origin’s propulsion module, EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is hosting a panel discussion on Stratolaunch, a Washington-based project started by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The massive Stratolaunch plane stayed in Mojave, Calif., after rolling out of the hangar for the first time in May, but its manufacturer Scaled Composites will be on site to talk about it.