spacetoday.net: Blue Origin conducts first flight test

Posted: Tue, Nov 14, 2006, 7:50 AM ET (1250 GMT)
Blue Origin, the secretive commercial space venture established by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, performed the first flight test Monday of its suborbital vehicle. The low-level flight took place at about 7:30 am EST (1230 GMT) from Blue Origin's test site in West Texas, and lasted one to two minutes, according to FAA officials. A "notice to airmen" from the FAA last week cleared airspace around the test site to an altitude of about 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) from November 10-13 to permit the flights, although the vehicle being flown was not expected to go more than about 600 meters high in these initial tests. Blue Origin received an experimental permit from the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation in September 2006 to carry out tests of a vertical takeoff vertical landing suborbital vehicle the company is developing for space tourism applications. The company did not immediately disclose any details about the test.